Small Things Considered

Fungomania 1. Who's The Biggest?

by Elio | Anyone can freely claim bragging rights for their favorite topic, but with caution. In this light, the assertion that a mushroom growing in either Michigan or Oregon is both the largest and oldest living thing is questionable. Read more →

The Vicissitudes of a Talmudic Question

by Elio | When we try to construct a Talmudic Question, we are con­cerned with the accuracy of the premise and ensuring that an answer has not been previously provided. We were toying with this one: “Bac­terial endosymbionts of insects have reduced genomes but, best we know, they have not exported some of their genes to the host cell nu­cleus (as organelles have)... Read more →

Blown Out of Proportion – The Role of ppGpp in Balanced Metabolism

by Elizabeth Mueller & Corey Westfall | Chocolate chip cookies are one of our guilty pleasures in the Levin Lab. They provide a satisfying, albeit unhealthy, avenue to celebrate success (or escape failure) in the lab. In addition to being warm, gooey, and delicious, a more practical attribute we appreciate is the scalability of the recipe: We can adjust the quantity of cookies we bake in proportion to our accomplishments or to the volume of ingredients in our kitchens without compromising the quality. Read more →

Of Terms in Biology: Bacterial Fitness

by Elio | Broadly speaking, fitness in microbiology is the ability of microbes to thrive in a competitive environment. It is often determined by comparing the growth rate in a given environment of a mutant strain with that of its non-mutant isogenic relative. If the mutant is less fit, it will grow more slowly... Read more →

A Whiff of Taxonomy – Cycloclasticus

by Christoph | Whenever you stumble across the name of a bac­te­ri­al spe­cies you've ne­ver heard of be­fore you pro­bab­ly won­der what the heck that name wants to tell you. You're not alone, al­so mi­cro­bio­lo­gists often scratch their heads. Sure, they are fa­mi­liar with the ve­ne­rable tra­di­tion in all of bio­lo­gy to name spe­cies ac­cording to the rules... Read more →

Talmudic Question #162

Can you imagine a eukaryotic virus that can infect a bacterium or an archaeon? Read more →

Book Review: The Power of Plagues

by Daniel | Microbiology nonfiction books tend to fall into the acade­mic category, basically as curated collections of review articles that detail a relatively specialized niche of the field. At the other end of the spectrum lie those books written purely for a general audience that might bring in microbiological themes within a larger scope, usually human health. Read more →

Happy Birthday LTEE!

by Roberto | Come this Sunday, February 24, 2019, all of us at STC will be raising a celebratory glass in honor of the remarkable LTEE, the E. coli long-term evolution experiment, which will be reveling in its 31st birthday. Read more →

Escape From the Wall

by Roberto | Who would have thought it? That the bac­terial cell wall would turn out to be so rea­di­ly dis­pen­sa­ble. Among the first les­sons I taught on bac­te­ri­al cell struc­ture was the fact that the ever pre­sent cell wall, com­posed pre­do­mi­nant­ly of pep­ti­do­gly­can, forms a pro­tec­tive shield around the cyto­plas­mic mem­brane. A shield that pre­vents the bac­te­ri­al cell... Read more →

Nano Pétanques – A Snippet

by Christoph | "The power of evolution is revealed through the di­ver­si­ty of life." Aha! It was so­lemn­ly de­clar­ed by the No­bel Prize com­mit­tee in their sta­te­ment an­nounc­ing last year's che­mis­try priz­es for "the di­rect­ed evo­lu­tion of en­zymes [and] phage dis­play of pep­tides and anti­bodies". Roy­al aca­de­mies – na­tio­nal or other aca­de­mies like­wise – tend to add luster... Read more →