Small Things Considered

Talmudic Question #182

Difficult as it may be to predict which agent will cause the next pandemic, which *single* measure would you recommend should be taken now to mitigate its future effects? Read more →

Underground Highways

by Roberto | This photograph, taken from our book Life at the Edge of Sight, shows a network of almost invisible fungal filaments which, like miniature highways, wind their way around peaks and form bridges over valleys all within a minute amount of soil. Read more →

An Enlightening Evening to Remember

by David Westenberg | Each summer, the Microbial Diversity course at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA is the place for exploring the incredible beauty and diversity of the microbial world. Read more →

Of Terms in Biology: Trans-Translation

by Janie, Christoph and John McCutcheon | This could become a very short explainer of the term "trans-trans­lation", as gi­ven by Vioque and de la Cruz in their mini­review:"Trans-trans­lation is a pro­cess found in all bac­te­ria, which con­tri­butes to the re­lease of ri­bo­somes that are stalled through a va­rie­ty of causes, for ex­ample when the 3' end of a trun­cated mRNA lack­ing a stop codon... Read more →

A Whiff of Taxonomy – The Apicomplexa

by Elio | The phylum Apicomplexa encompasses a large number of obligate intracellular parasitic protists, including the Plasmodium of malaria, toxoplasma, cryptosporidium, coccidia, and many others. Read more →

TWiM 229: Dirt is not simple

The hidden biochemical diversity in soil-dwelling Actinobacteria that could lead to a second Golden Era of antibiotic discovery, and structures of glideosome components reveals the mechanism of gliding in apicomplexan parasites. Read more →

Putting Life on Earth in Perspective

by Roberto | Last week I was very fortunate. I had the opportunity to focus my attention on putting life on Earth in perspective. It was a welcome respite considering these trying times. Almost one year ago, thanks to Nassos Typas, I received an invitation to speak on microbial diversity at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg... Read more →

Teachers Corner: material collections we recommend

by Christoph | We at STC are happy to take care of the interests of teachers. We most often do this by choosing and treating topics in our articles in a way that is suitable for teaching (check our category "Teachers Corner".) Today we would like to draw the attention of the teachers among you to collections of materials... Read more →

Having the bow and arrow might not be enough...

by Natália C. Drebes Dörr | Daily challenges in the life of mi­cro­sco­pic or­gan­isms are not that dif­fer­ent from those ex­per­ienc­ed by chee­tahs and ga­zel­les in the sa­van­nas. Bac­te­ria are usu­al­ly em­bed­ded in com­mu­ni­ties where they need to ac­tive­ly com­pete for food and space. Also, they are often under the at­tack of vo­ra­cious pre­dators such as bac­te­rio­pha­ges and pro­tists, which they fight... Read more →

Talmudic Question #181

Some authors have written describing single cells as "cog­ni­tive" or "agents with agen­das." Cog­ni­tion may not be far from con­scious­ness… . In what­ever sense you choose, could you ar­gue that bac­te­ria have con­scious­ness? Read more →