Small Things Considered

Unicellular Capsaspora and animal multicellularity

by Victoria Shabardina | It is common in biolo­gy to look at little things to learn how the big parts work: we study mo­le­cul­es to un­der­stand cells and study or­gans to know how the bo­dy funct­ions. But it is dif­fer­ent with Cap­sa­spo­ra, be­cause it is a whole, a com­plete single-cell or­gan­ism, and it is ac­ti­ve­ly stu­died for elu­ci­dat­ing how... Read more →

Of Terms in Biology: Cytokines

by Elio | Cytokines are small proteins (~5−20 kDa) that play a large role in our defenses against infection. They stimulate both the innate and the acquired immunity and coordinate the interplay between the two, thus can be properly called immunomodulators. There are lots of them, including interferons, interleukins, tumor necrosis factors, chemokines... Read more →

TWiM 216: It starts with a cough

Is saliva more sensitive for SARS-CoV-2 detection in COVID-19 patients? Read more →

Virus. ...simply a piece of bad news wrapped up in protein, really ?

by Christoph | In my prior post, I answered the question "are viruses alive?" with a firm: no. That was the short answer, but there is also a long answer... and it's long because it's complicated. Read more →

Virus? ...simply a piece of bad news wrapped up in protein.

by Christoph | In the middle of the first major pan­de­mic of my life­time I feel the need, as a mi­cro­bio­logist, to make oc­ca­sio­nal con­tri­bu­tions that may help in­di­vi­duals and so­cie­ty ap­proach the pan­de­mic in a rea­son­ab­ly in­form­ed way. To­day, I'd like to con­tri­bute with a small dose of 'mi­cro­bial li­te­ra­cy,' as cal­led for by Ken Tim­mis and colleagues... Read more →

Bacterial Genomes, IKEA-Style (Some Assembly Required)

by Janie | Much like “artificial” languages like Esperanto or Tolkien's fifteen (!) Elvish tongues, genomes, too, are subject to manipulation and modulation, by the scientist's hand. There's been a smattering of posts here on the blog that touched on synthetic genomes... Read more →

Pictures Considered #51 : Headful Packaging, Literally...

by Christoph | For more than two decades we have known that the doub­le-stran­ded DNA of pha­ges is neat­ly rol­­led up in their cap­sids and fills them com­ple­te­ly. Cerritelli et al. (1997) have de­mon­stra­ted this for coliphage T7, and later Jiang et al. (2006) for Sal­mo­nel­la phage ε15. Yet, with a length of ~40 kb, both phages have more 'me­di­um si­zed' ge­nomes, and it is fine to learn now... Read more →

The Crowded Nucleoid

by Elio | Eukaryotic cells may be composed of many parts, but, by and large, they make some kind of sense. Take the nucleus for example. Its space is defined by the nuclear membrane and, for all the complexity of its many transactions, it is amenable to a reasonable understanding. You cannot say this for the prokaryotic nucleoid... Read more →

Little things matter, in both virology and your PhD

by Shuxuan Zheng | Blaise Pascal said that "Little things console us because little things afflict us." In the time of CO­VID-19, Pascal's words have never been more prescient. Viruses – those little things behind the global microbiological threat – demand not only our fear but also our respect. Read more →

TWiM 215: Cultural transformation and pathogen emergence

A ferret model for infection by SARS-CoV-2, and how Neolithization lead to emergence of a human bacterial pathogen. Read more →