Small Things Considered

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 →

A "Cultural" Renaissance

by Paul Carini | Sometimes, to move ahead, you must take a look at where you have been. Cul­tur­ing mi­cro­bes is a foun­da­tio­nal un­der­pin­ning of mi­cro­bio­lo­gy. Be­fore ge­nome se­quenc­ing, re­searchers spent count­less hours te­dious­ly de­duc­ing the nu­tri­tion­al re­quire­ments of bac­te­ri­al iso­la­tes and tin­ker­ing with me­dium for­mu­la­tions to en­ti­ce new mi­cro­bes in­to cul­ture. This art of cul­ti­va­tion took a back seat to the pow­er­ful mo­le­cu­lar tools of the last 25 years, and as a re­sult, ma­ny re­search­ers have for­got­ten the uti­li­ty of hav­ing a cul­ture in hand. This per­cept­ion is chang­ing, as there is clear­ly a re­newed in­ter­est in iso­la­ting mi­crobes from va­rious en­vi­ron­ments. Here, I sug­gest three focus areas to en­sure con­tin­ued growth and suc­cess of this "cul­tu­ral" re­nais­sance, in­clu­ding (i) set­ting clear cul­ti­va­tion goals, (ii) fund­ing ex­plo­ra­to­ry cul­ti­va­tion, and (iii) cul­tur­ing and stu­dy­ing un­usu­al or­gan­isms. "Un­cul­tur­able" is a frame of mind, not a state of micro­bio­lo­gy; it is time to dust off the bottle of yeast ex­tract. Read more →

Turdopoiesis

by Elio | When it comes to consistency, we are somewhere between cows and goats. I am talking of course about the texture of our feces, which in health are neither runny nor very hard. When it comes to the speed of evacuation, we are also in-between: we poop at about 2 centimeters per second, elephants at 6 cm/sec and dogs at 1 cm/sec. Read more →

Secondary Metabolites

by Andy Bodnar, Michelle Prieto, and Carleen Villarreal | The war between bac­te­ria and pha­ges has been wa­ging for eons lon­ger than hu­mans have ex­ist­ed. Con­sequent­ly, ma­ny bacte­ria have de­ve­loped no­vel and unique ways for de­fen­ding them­selves against these fo­reign in­va­ders. Some change their sur­face pro­teins to pre­vent de­tec­tion, like chang­ing a lock on a door. Others give their own lives, ini­tia­ting... Read more →

Talmudic Question #165

Describe the properties of a yet-to-arise new DOMAIN of life. Read more →

Prokaryotic Pointillism: When a Sea Sponge Endosymbiont Paints the Bigger Picture

by Janie
A while ago, I read a piece from Catapult Magazine that mused about the strangeness of eating fish. The article asked, why do we so willingly eat creatures that come from a place so poorly understood? Read more →

Chinese Surnames in Science

by Elio | Names matter a great deal in science, as, ob­vi­ous­ly, they do in all hu­man en­dea­vors. To a sci­en­tist, the name of the au­thor – or the au­thors – of a pub­li­ca­tion is par­ti­cu­lar­ly co­gent since a sci­en­ti­fic dis­co­ve­ry is fre­quent­ly asso­cia­ted with the name or na­mes of the dis­co­ver­er (no­tab­ly, Avo­ga­dro's number, Hal­ley's co­met, Wat­son and Crick DNA struc­ture, etcetera). I should note... Read more →