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The 2017 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Jacques Dubochet, Richard Henderson and Joachim Frank for the development of cryo-electron microscopy, a technique for high-resolution structural determination of biomolecules in solution that has provided unprecedented insight into the biology of microorganisms.
In many countries, the success of misinformation, alternative facts or fake news is promoting a climate of science denial, where false claims such as vaccination causing autism can spread. Learning lessons from behavioural studies can help advocate for vaccination in the face of vaccine refusers and deniers.
CRISPR–Cas is an adaptive immune system found in Bacteria and Archaea that confers sequence-specific protection against invasion by foreign nucleic acids. CRISPR–Cas is also a powerful tool for microbiology education and has been an inspiring model for our students for the past three years.
Many species of Archaea, Bacteria and eukaryotes are polyploid in natural populations. The mixture of species with unknown but widely varying ploidy levels compromises marker-gene-based analyses of community structures, population dynamics and microbiomes.
