Small Things Considered

Are all stresses oxidative stresses?

by J. Jeffrey Morris | I have a confes­sion to make. I get stres­sed. A lot. I think I've spent the bet­ter part of the last three years with the va­gue feel­ing I'm for­get­ting some­thing real­ly im­por­tant. I bet there are a few people in the rea­ding au­di­ence that can sym­pa­thize – it seems to be a pret­ty com­mon ex­pe­ri­ence for as­sis­tant pro­fes­sors. The stres­sors come... Read more →

TWiM #200: In the company of Elio

Vincent, Michele, and Michael travel to San Diego to reminisce with Elio about his career, his work in microbiology, and his love for microbes and mushrooms. Read more →

Of Terms in Biology: Trophosome

by Elio | A rather specific term, trophosome refers – as per the Wikipedia – to 'an organ found in some animals that houses symbiotic bacteria that provide food for their host.' Trophé (τροφή) denotes nourishment, soma (σῶμα), body, denoting that trophosomes are intimately involved in their host's nutrition. Read more →

A Sulfur For An Oxygen

by Elio | Tampering with the chem­is­try of our ho­liest of mo­le­cules may seem sa­cri­le­gious, but it is wide­spread and con­spi­cuous. In fact, DNA mo­di­fi­ca­tions abound. Think, for star­ters of DNA me­thyl­a­tion, which is the main tool of epi­ge­ne­tics, or an even lon­ger known mo­di­fi­ca­tion, the DNA gly­co­sy­la­tion that in some phages pro­tects their DNA from... Read more →

Summer Vacation

by the STC team
We are taking our customary two week vacation. Do you think we deserve it ? Looking forward to seeing you again on July 8th ! Read more →

Talmudic Question #166

Why haven’t eukaryotes developed a CRISPR system? (the immune system doesn’t count) Read more →

Retrospective, June 2019

by Elio
We resume our custom to list the posts from the last half year, lightly annotated. Read more →

Good Readings

by Elio | Here are books that cry out to be read. I start out with a list that appeared in a website called Five Books under The best books on Microbes. Read more →

Genome with the Wind...

by Jaime E. Zlamal | When there is geogra­phi­cal se­pa­ra­tion, we can an­ti­ci­pate ge­ne­tic dif­fe­ren­ces. That's ex­act­ly what a team led by Kon­stan­tin Se­ve­ri­nov ex­pec­ted to find when they set out to stu­dy geo­gra­phi­cal­ly dist­ant po­pu­la­tions of Ther­mus bac­te­ria. Af­ter all, these mi­cro­bes ge­ne­ral­ly live in hot springs at tem­pe­ra­tures around 160 de­grees Fah­ren­heit (~70° C). How­ever, despite... Read more →

Of Terms in Biology: Colicins, Bacteriocins, Pyocins and Tailocins

by Roberto | This is the tale of the tail, of a phage. Years before Alexander Fleming's chance discovery of penicillin, many scientists were already interested in bacteriolytic activities. Bacteriophages played a big role in the early days of searches for bacterial killers. Read more →