Scientists commonly use bacteria as tiny factories that can produce molecules for uses ranging from drug development to pollution remediation. Recently, NC State biologist Carlos Goller and former undergraduate students Pushkar Sai and Andrew Hoyek did a deeper dive into Delftia, a bacterial strain that is found everywhere from soil to the kitchen sink, to determine its usefulness in applications such as malarial suppression and gold detoxification. The team's paper is published in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

UCF College of Medicine Assistant Professor Renee Fleeman continues to refine a powerful therapy for drug-resistant bacteria that pierces the gooey coating that anchors and protects such germs from the drugs we take to kill them. Her research has found that an antimicrobial peptide naturally found in cows weakens the biofilm defenses of Klebsiella pneumoniae bacteria and destroys it.