Small Things Considered

Fungomania III. Of a Fungus and a Crop

by Roberto | There are literal­ly thousands of fun­gal spe­cies that cause plant dis­eases and their ef­fects on agri­cul­tu­ral crops ends of cost­ing bil­lions of dol­lars eve­ry year. Many of these fun­gal plant pa­tho­gens are fas­ci­na­ting sub­jects for stu­dy. Among the many, I have a per­so­nal "fa­vo­rite." I place the word in quotes be­cause I re­cog­nize the od­di­ty of la­bel­ing a pa­tho­gen... Read more →

Fungomania II. Singing Frogs

by Roberto | Like many others, I am having trouble focusing on work these days. I admit it, I've had dif­fi­cult­ies sit­ting down to write this post; the mind keeps wan­der­ing off, ima­gin­ing the like­ly sce­na­rios of the coming months. After all, we are in the midst of the COVID-19 pan­demic. In an ef­fort to over­come my an­xie­ty, I find so­lace in think­ing that... Read more →

Talmudic Question #175

by Morgan Feeney
Are there any bacterial species that simply never form biofilms/are genetically incapable of doing so? Read more →

@NAChristakis on COVID-19 and Immunity

by the STC team | We came across a long thread on Twitter these days that out­lines rea­lis­tic per­spec­tiv­es for a way through and out of the pan­demic. The au­thor, Ni­cho­las A. Chris­takis (@NAChris­takis), a so­cio­lo­gist and phy­si­cian who con­ducts re­search in the areas of so­cial net­works and bio­so­cial sci­ence at Yale Uni­ver­si­ty, kind­ly gran­ted us per­mis­sion to re-blog... Read more →

Merry Youle, our Blogger Emerita has died

by Elio and the STC Team | Merry joined me almost at very inception of this blog. She modestly offered to proofread the ma­terial. Although she had a background in science (Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins, long ago), she had given it up in favor of an unconventional life. But, luck would have it, shortly before she contacted me, she had bought a microbiology textbook,... Read more →

Fungomania I. Enoki

by Elio
You most likely have eaten enoki mushrooms in a Japanese soup or a salad. You may have wondered about them, looking as they do as thin whitish noodles with a small cap at the end... Read more →

Teachers Corner: Who bears the load?

by Roberto | First, let me comment on the title I wrote. It should have read, what bears the load? Better yet, what part of the bacterial cell envelope is the load-bearing component? Whenever I taught bacterial cell biology I always started by describing the components of cell envelope, cytoplasmic membrane, cell wall and, in the Gram-negatives, the outer membrane. Read more →

Pictures Considered #50 : The Four Kingdoms of Nature

by Christoph | We often talk sloppily of «algae» or «pro­tists» on these pa­ges when we con­si­der, ra­re­ly enough, uni­cel­lu­lar eu­kar­yo­tes. For my part, I at­tach little im­port­ance to bio­lo­gi­cal sys­te­ma­tics or taxo­no­my per se be­cause I'm more in­ter­es­ted in learn­ing how li­ving be­ings go about their bu­si­ness than in sort­ing them in­to va­ri­ous draw­ers. The­re­fore I most­ly con­fine my­self to the names of the... Read more →

Preparedness

by the STC team | Surely our readers have been en­cir­cled by news of the ra­pid­ly ex­pand­ing COVID-19 out­break. Or­di­na­ri­ly, at STC we do not co­ver cur­rent events. But these be­ing ex­tra­or­di­na­ry times, we de­ci­ded to pre­sent a few thoughts on the need for pre­pa­red­ness in the face of this pan­demic. We were great­ly in­spir­ed by the com­mu­ni­ca­tion work that Rich Lenski has... Read more →

A Bacterial Protein Takes on "Birds of a Feather Flock Together"

by Janie | For a bacterium, stick­ing onto things is the go-to way to play it safe. The abi­li­ty of bac­te­ria to ad­here to sur­faces is a ma­jor boon to their sur­vi­val, en­abling them to co­lo­ni­ze and form com­mu­ni­ties in di­verse en­vi­ron­ments rang­ing from deep sea vents to steel pi­ping to ani­mals' teeth. In ma­ny in­stan­ces, stick­ing on­to sur­faces... Read more →