The identification, sorting and export of single bacterial cells rather than just populations of them has long been incredibly complex, expensive and often just does not work without damaging the cells.Now, researchers from the Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology (QIBEBT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and their collaborators have proposed a new system called "Eas...

Currently, the best way for scientists to isolate a specific microbe with a particular metabolic function from an environment is to take a sample of cells, culture them, and then screen them for the desired cell functions.This method has several limitations. First, scientists have not identified most cells in nature, limiting the results to previously cultured cells. Second, the way cells behav...

​Knowing whether or not marine microbes engage in photosynthesis — the use of sunlight to turn carbon dioxide and water into energy — could help scientist to learn if ocean bacteria play a role in the global carbon cycle.However, most marine microbes remain unstudied, in part because they do not grow under laboratory conditions, which limits the scientific community’s knowledge on if these ...

The formation of persisters is an important feature of bacteria like Escherichia coli (E. coli). These noxious cells, being able to go dormant, are highly resistant to antimicrobial treatments and crucially account for various relapsing chronic infections with common symptoms such as severe stomach pain, vomiting and bloody diarrhea.Formation of persister cells is thought to be one of the most ...

Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori), the bacteria that can cause human gastritis, peptic ulcers and stomach cancer, infects about half of the world's population. It is essential to quickly identify the infection and select the right combination of sensitive antibiotics. Current tools, however, are limited, mainly because H. pylori are slow growing and hard to cultivate.Researchers from the Qingdao ...

​Raman spectroscopy is a scattering technique that relies on the inelastic scattering of photons. The excitation of molecular bonds results in the shifts of the energy of laser photons and thus frequency change of the incident light. Therefore, a compound can have a specific Raman spectrum, while a Single-cell Raman Spectrum (SCRS) can depict the overall profile of metabolites in the cell, i.e...

When treating acute infections in patients, health care providers must be able to quickly and accurately identify the best antibiotics for fighting the infection.A research team led by researchers from the Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology (QIBEBT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and Peking Union Medical College Hospital has developed an automated system that pro...

A Chinese research team has devised a ramanome-based technique to catch pathogens that are still present and metabolically active in a tooth about to undergo root canal treatment even after they appear to have stopped growing.The technique could limit re-infections while reducing the amount of disinfectant required, in turn dialling down the chance of side-effects.The technique and its applicat...

Researchers with the Single-Cell Center, Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology (QIBEBT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), have developed a fast, low-cost and high-throughput technique capable of profiling dynamic metabolic features from just one isogenic sample of cells.The study was published in mBio on August 31.​New Ramanome Technology Unveils Metabolite Conversio...

A single cell can reveal much about the biological world through genomic sequencing. Scientists can compare a single, isolated cell to other samples, analyzing the differences and similarities to better understand how the organisms originated and evolved — or even to discover entirely new species.However, despite the rapid development ofsingle-cellsequencing technologies, sample preparation is...