Small Things Considered

Wayward Locomotive

by Elio Poor wand'ring one! Though thou hast surely strayed... Pirates of Penzance by Gilbert and Sullivan Mycoplasma have good press agents. They frequently make the news these days, often because they have the smalles...

Measuring Up

by Jamie Henzy Figure 1. (click to enlarge) How do viruses and bacteria measure up? Adapted from source One could say that bacteria get quite a bit more attention than viruses here at STC. In fact, one could say that they hog the lime...

The View From Here by Shmuel Razin

by Shmuel Razin Constructing a Synthetic Mycoplasma Zabriskie Point. Source I would like to raise an exciting issue that has become ve­ry hot recently and has been of great interest to me for a long time: the possibility of synthesi...

Bacterial Genomes, IKEA-Style (Some Assembly Required)

by Janie Figure 1. A few pieces in the grand puzzle of li­feforms. Source: Janie Kim. Frontis­piece: DNA containing an unna­tural base-pair, X-­Y. Source What had once seemed discrete has turned fuzzy around the edges these days, whet...

Ways to Go

by Elio The special issue of Science of 27 November 2009 (Vol­ume 326, Issue 5957) focusing on Spatial Cell Biology con­tains a larger than usual number of items with a mi­crobial focus. Although only one1 of the six featured Re­view...

Retrospective, June 2018

by Elio As is our custom, we provide a lightly annotated list of our posts from the past half year. Obits We mourn the loss of three giants in our field. Oddly, they died on consecutive months (March, April, May) Charles Yanofsky R...

Of Terms in Biology: Obligate Parasite

by Elio Drawing a line in the sand? Source For bacteria, the term "obligate parasite" can have at least two distinct meanings. A parasite that naturally only reproduces within a host and cannot be artificially cultured on cell-free...

Retrospective, July 2008

by Elio Photo Credit: Unhindered by Talent Previous posts to this blog may be not easy to find. We present here a lightly annotated list of our "mini-essays" posted during the last year. You can also find them under "Categories" in t...