by Christoph
I had a short exchange with Philip Ball recently when he announced his next book How Life Works on Twitter. If you don't recognize the author's name: Philip is a chemist by training, holds a PhD in physics, was a long-time editor of Nature, and is a prolific book author and science writer...
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«Anything found to be true of E. coli must also be true of elephants»
Emiliania huxleyi : Past, Present and Future
by Roberto
Christoph recently brought to my attention a resource for anyone interested in a brief introduction to coccolithophores, with particular emphasis on Emiliania huxleyi. Christoph knew well that I, as a fan of this microalga, would enjoy the site. This got me thinking about Ehux (its endearing name that many use) yet once more.
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Eukaryogenesis: Questions in Questions in Questions
by Janie
For a very long time, symbiogenesis was scoffed at as a fringe science. This mindset plagued the field from the get-go in the 1880s, when the botanist Andreas Franz Wilhem Schimper first put forth the idea that eukaryotic organelles might be bacterial, to the turn of the century, which saw the first key paper on symbiogenesis...
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Talmudic Question #204
Mitochondria evolved from an ancestral alpha proteobacterium. However, present day mitochondrial DNAs (mtDNA) from plants and animals are very different. ... What different selective pressures might have led to these two vastly different evolutionary outcomes?
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TWiM 287: When Replicas Do Not Replicate
TWiM investigates the high variability in the rate and amount of current production from microbial fuel cells, and how bacteria link their growth rate to external nutrient conditions via a protein that functions as a cellular rheostat.
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Honey Bee Social Immunity
by Roberto
Flying insects are key to the functioning of many ecosystems, where they play numerous important roles such as pollination. Thus, the sharp decline in their numbers is cause for great concern. From a human perspective, the observed demise of many honey bee (Apis mellifera) populations is particularly troubling because of their critical role in the food chain.
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The Hitchhiker's Guide to... Flagellar Tips
by Christoph
The same frontispiece twice within a few days at STC? No, not quite. It's not about Roberto's hitchhiking phage this time, or the flagellated bacterium, or the hitchhiking spore, but about the tip of the flagellum (black, left). Disclosure: already back in 2020, I talked with Alise, who created the image, and three other passionate science illustrators...
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Phage as Hitchhiker
by Roberto
When I started graduate school at UCSD in the mid-1970s, I sometimes found myself hitchhiking at dawn along the Pacific Coast from Solana Beach to the lab. There were some wild rides! Which is probably why some years later, as they crossed my path, I was attracted both to "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" and (in biology) to the evolutionary and ecological concepts of hitchhiking.
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Mycorrhizae and Land Plants – An Update
by Roberto
I am fortunate that among the first impressions of my day, I take in this view of land plants. Given my proclivity for microbiology my mind inevitably wonders to what I cannot see, the underground network of filamentous fungi connecting the roots of those plants, the mycorrhizae.
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TWiM 286: Integrons and Invasion
TWiM investigates the high variability in the rate and amount of current production from microbial fuel cells, and how bacteria link their growth rate to external nutrient conditions via a protein that functions as a cellular rheostat.
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