Small Things Considered

Pictures Considered #49 : C-Reactive Protein

by Elio | Among the blood tests that your doctor may prescribes is the one for C-Reactive Protein (CRP). What is it? CRP is a protein made by the liver in response to inflammation anywhere in the body, so a positive result will alert the physician that something along those lines is going on some place within you. Read more →

TWiM 212: A coronavirus outbreak and IRF4 deficiency in Whipple’s disease

The TWiM team reviews the coronavirus outbreak that began in Wuhan, China, and the finding that an TLR4 deficiency underlies Whipple’s disease. Read more →

Life After CPR

by Mechas Zambrano and Roberto | For most English speakers, CPR would be assumed to stand for cardiopulmonary resuscitation, oftentimes a real life saver. But for many readers of this blog, the acronym has a whole different meaning. For the last few years, CPR, has stood for the "Candidate Phyla Radiation." The discovery of the CPR superphylum was (and remains) one of the most remarkable developments in our growing realization that the genetic diversity of the microbial world is unimaginably vast. Read more →

A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Ocean

by Roberto | Plasmids, autonomously replicating extrachromosomal elements, have long been recognized as important HGT agents. A striking early example of this was the discovery – some sixty years ago – of the very rapid and efficient plasmid-mediated transfer of multiple antibiotic resistance genes in clinical settings. Read more →

Whipple’s Disease and Its Bovine Ilk

by Elio | Whipple’s disease is both uncommon and strange. Among clinicians, it is best known for causing malabsorption, leading to malnutrition and even death. The causative agent is a bacterium but its identity was mysterious, being that it was (and remains) "not-yet-cultured" in laboratory media. It was one of the first bacterial pathogens to be identified using molecular techniques (see this 1992 paper by Relman et al.), and was subsequently named Tropheryma whipplei. Read more →

Pictures Considered #48 : Contributions to the Biology of the Bacilli

by Roberto | It was fifteen or twenty years ago, I can't recall the year any more. But I vividly remember walking into Harvard's Farlow Botany Library, being shown to a seat next to an elegant wooden table, and asked to don a pair of white gloves. The protocol stemmed from the fact that I had requested to see an original of the second volume of the journal Beiträge zur Biologie der Pflanzen (Contributions to the Biology of Plants), from 1876. Read more →

Stay Away, Stay Away – There Is Danger Ahead

by Elio | In ancient times, persons suffering from a dreaded disease believed to be contagious, such as leprosy, were given a bell to ring and thus noisily announce their presence. Healthy people could then move away and try to avoid contact.  Amazingly, bacteria use an analogous strategy. Read more →

Talmudic Question #173

Can you envisage a Winogradsky column consisting of only Gram-negative bacteria (or just Gram-positives, for that matter)? Read more →

A Simple Decision

by Manuel Sanchez | The story to be told here is about how a 'data' biologist had to 'put on his lab coat' to solve a problem of a 'boot biologist.' In 1906 the American zoo­logist Herbert Spencer Jennings conducted an experiment with the protozoan Stentor roeseli to determine how it reacted to an irritant stimulus. S. roeseli is a sessile, trumpet-shaped protozoan. Read more →

Of Terms in Biology: The Exome

by Elio | An exome is the collection of exons, the sequences within the primary mRNA transcripts of an organism that are eventually used for making proteins. The rest, non-coding sequences, called introns, are removed by RNA splicing. (Note that there is no ‘introme,’ at least not yet.)   Read more →