How do bacteria continue to evade death by antibiotics? Guillaume Lambert applies physics to the task of discovering how. (Photo Credit: Dave Burbank)

Bacteria, Can’t Keep Them Down

by Jackie Swift

Forget the stereotype of bacteria as simple life forms, swimming mindlessly in a water droplet or stuck on bathroom door handles, waiting for someone to pick them up. “Bacteria are not simple at all,” says Guillaume Lambert, Applied and Engineering Physics at Cornell University. “They are actually extremely sophisticated. They’ve been around for billions of years; they have all kinds of tricks…