Small Things Considered

Talmudic Question #180

Why didn’t mitochondria keep a DnaA-dependent origin of replication? Read more →

The Cake-Cutting Problem in the Archaeal World

by Kanika Khanna | Have you ever wondered how to slice a cake in equal pro­por­tions for a large party? Hugo Stein­haus, a fa­mous Polish ma­the­ma­ti­cian in­tro­duced a ma­the­ma­ti­cal way to deal with the fair cake-cut­ting prob­lem af­ter the se­cond world war. He pos­sib­ly used cakes as an ab­stract re­pre­sen­ta­tion of the li­mit­ed... Read more →

Erisipelothrix rhusiopathiae on TV – A Snippet

by Elio | A recent epi­sode of the Brit­ish TV series 'Doc Mar­tin' dealt with a some­what un­usu­al bac­te­ri­um. Se­ver­al child­ren in the small town in Corn­wall came down with what the good doc­tor thought was im­pe­ti­go, a high­ly con­tagi­ous skin in­fect­ion caused by staph or strep. But the lab re­port... Read more →

Getting to grips with the intangible

by Christoph | Imagine the E. coli nucleoid as a swig but of of a high­ly vis­cous tan­gle of a 2 nm thin and ~1.5 mm long DNA poly­mer, de­co­rat­ed with and high­ly com­pact­ed by a ple­tho­ra of pro­teins, and some­how sus­pend­ed in the cy­to­plasm of a cell with a vol­ume of ~1.3 µm³. It's vir­tu­al­ly im­pos­si­ble to "grip" the nu­cleoid, to mea­sure... Read more →

A Change in the Plan of Construction

by Roberto | On occasion you might come across an odd-look­ing plant where the flower or­gan has been re­placed by a leafy struc­ture. To the ama­teur gar­dener this will seem a re­mark­able cur­iosi­ty, to the pro­fes­sio­nal plant grower it will sig­ni­fy sub­stan­tial eco­no­mic los­ses. To Jo­hann Wolf­gang von Goethe such sights meant the... Read more →

TWiM 224: One hundred million year old bacteria

The genetic mysteries of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and 100 million year old living bacteria. Read more →

Sticking together «...wie Pech und Schwefel»

by Alexander Loy (@LoyTeam)
Hey geomicrobiology and microbiome tweeps! Do you know that the sul­fo­sugar #sul­fo­qui­no­vose (SQ) is a ubi­quit­ous mi­cro­bi­al nu­trient in the en­vi­ron­ment and in a ve­ge­ta­ri­an diet? No? Here comes some SQ pro­pa­gan­da…a thread Read more →

Of Terms in Biology: Phylogeny, Phylogenetics, Phylogenomics

by Elio | You may remember the solemn proclamation that "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny," meaning that during our embryological development we (and everybody else) go through the steps in our evolution. This turns out to be quite wrong, but I bring it up because because it illustrates that phylogeny denotes the history... Read more →

Biofilms by Insect Endosymbionts

by Janie | From a microbial perspective, in­sect me­ta­mor­pho­sis is a trea­cher­ous bu­si­ness. The trans­for­ma­tion from little earth­bound craw­ler to lapis-blue flier is a fla­shy eye-cat­cher, but the change is more than skin-deep. Deep with­in the lar­va, the con­tents of the gut are emp­tied, in­tes­ti­nal cells wi­ther away by auto­phagy and apo­pto­sis, and the ca­vi­ty is re-up­hol­ster­ed with di­vi­ding stem cells... Read more →

Talmudic Question #179

There is talk that Vibrio natrigens may supplant Escherichia coli as the model system for many bacterial studies. Do you think that the day of such model systems may have passed and, if so why? Read more →