Small Things Considered

Gram versus Derm

by Elio
As you well know, bacteria are divided into two groups, historically known as Gram positives and Gram negatives (Archaea are all Gram negative as they lack the telling peptidoglycan). By and large, Gram positives have a cell envelope consisting of a single membrane and a thick layer of... Read more →

Green Sloths and Robots

by Roberto
... in the case of red par­rot feath­ers the pig­ment has the ad­ded be­ne­fit of pro­tect­ing the plu­mage from bac­te­ri­al de­gra­da­tion. To­day I stay on the to­pic of ani­mal co­lor­a­tion by de­scrib­ing the pe­culi­ar pe­lage pig­ment of sloths. Exact­ly what con­sti­tutes an eye-catch­ing color is, of course, in the eye of the be­holder. Read more →

Shepherding bacteria with specks of light

by Helena Massana-Cid
The celebrity among bacteria Escherichia coli, as many other swimming cells, inspects its surroundings by moving in zigzag motion while searching for "greener pastures." Thus, if a group is swimming in a homogeneous area they will fill all available space uniformly... Read more →

Psittacofulvin: Polly's Peculiar Plumage Pigment

by Janie
In macro-fauna, eye-catching colors typically serve two purposes: to woo potential mates, or to signal that the creature is not a snack and will in fact poison you. This is where parrots diverge – and get embroiled in connections to microbiology... Read more →

Sulfur disproportionation is exergonic in the vicinity of marine hydrothermal vents

by Elio
Now that’s a title of a paper for you. I confess, it baffled me. At a minimum, I had to look up "disproportionation". What is it? Also known as "dismutation", this refers to a redox reaction in which a compound that is partly oxidized converts to two compounds... Read more →

Giant Soil Viruses

by Abigail Curtis
My first niche microbiological interest came freshman year of high school, when I discovered that viruses don't solely infect animals. Indeed, viruses are pervasive in every ecosystem, including the smallest ones in the ground. The aspect of viruses in microbial ecosystems... Read more →

Talmudic Question #197

Why aren’t any Archaea known to make spores? Read more →

"Off with Their (tRNA) Heads"

by Janie
Some bacterial molecules have the social graces of certain 1700s French revolutionaries, or Shakespeare's Richard III, or the Queen of Hearts from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – in that all share a penchant for beheading those they encounter! In the microbial case... Read more →

A Message to the Attendees

by Elio
With kind permission by the organizers, we reproduce here Elio's message to the attendees of the meeting on 'Major ideas in quantitative microbial physiology: Past, Present and Future' held in June this year in Køben­havn, Denmark. Read more →

Heavy-duty Traffic, Microscale

by Christoph
Men­tion "fla­gel­la" and we mi­cro­bio­lo­gists in­stant­ly think of these in­gen­ious ap­pe­nda­ges that bac­te­ri­al cells use to pro­pel them­selves through fluids of va­ry­ing vis­co­si­ties (ar­chaea do this, too, with their ar­cha­el­la). We ra­re­ly think of them as an ac­ces­sory to trans­port car­go. Yes "car­go," you read cor­rect­ly, but may­be you re­mem­ber... Read more →