Small Things Considered

Fine Reading: Evolution of Pathogen Tolerance

by Roberto | While reading a review yesterday, I recalled a conversation I had with a student nearly forty years ago. He did not appear interested in the subject of my lectures – bacterial genetics and physiology – so I was curious to know the reasons why. Read more →

TWiM #250: E-Scaffolds and Paper Stickers

An electrochemical scaffold that delivers safe doses of hypochlorous acid to treat wound infections in humans, and a method for sampling and monitoring bacteria and viruses or surfaces using plain paper stickers. Read more →

Goodbye Sandcastle, Hello Microbial Bio-Brick

by Janie | The foundation of much of modern civilization? Sand, actually. It's a key ingredient of concrete, and to construct any building you need a lot of it. It has to be sand from oceans, beaches, riverbeds, deltas, lakes. All that desert sand made slippery-smooth by wind erosion won't do... Read more →

Farewell San Francisco Sourdough?

by Roberto | Back in 1980, when I was a post-doc in the San Francisco Bay Area, I began to develop a taste for what I considered a truly unique bread: San Francisco sourdough. There was a certain mystique to it, everyone familiar with it claimed there was nothing like it anywhere else... Read more →

Replay: On Teaching

by Stanley Falkow | A graduate student came to my office recently to say that she was increasingly bothered by anxiety and the ‘terror’ of having to speak at laboratory meetings. She had also learned a month ago that she was expected to lecture to a class organized by her mentor. The thought of… Read more →

Rainfall and a Phyllosphere's Microbiota

by Mechas Zambrano and Roberto | Where do the microbes that colonize newly emerging ecosystems come from? Plants are ideal systems to address this fundamental question in microbial ecology. When a seed germinates, new ecosystems emerge as the plant grows and acquires its microbiota... Read more →

Borrelia and it's not-so-loose ends(part 2)

by Christoph
I wrote in the first part that "in the the se­cond part I will con­si­der their ex­tra­va­gant pe­ri­plas­mic(!) fla­gel­la. There will be no "loose ends" left in ei­ther part, I pro­mise." Spoi­ler: no "loose ends" but a (know­ledge) gap in the middle, that is, when it comes to cell di­vis­ion in Bor­re­lia. Here it goes... Read more →

On Stories and Science, Plus Fish

by Janie | It's probably fair to say that people, when afraid, turn to stories and to science for solace. The last year and a half has solidified that: the yarns spun range from conspiracy theories to escapist novels that transport the reader far, far away from bleaker realities (The Midnight Library phenomenon, anyone?)... Read more →

Borrelia and it's not-so-loose ends(part 1)

by Christoph | Christina Savage, postdoc in Kumaran Ramamurthi's lab at the NIH, re­cent­ly post­ed on Twit­ter the mo­vie you see on the right with the re­mark:"And we just got our dark­field ob­jec­tiv­es in to­day! This was tak­en with my ca­me­ra look­ing down the eye-piece, so not great qua­li­ty. But I just love watch­ing them!" I re­plied:"eve­ry­time I have the rare plea­sure... Read more →

Talmudic Question #189

Can you imagine an active mode of motion that unicellular microbes are not capable of, but multicellular eukaryotes are? Read more →