Small Things Considered

We remember Tom Brock

by Elio | Tom Brock (1926 − 2021) can rea­di­ly be con­sider­ed the father of ex­tre­mo­phile mi­cro­bio­logy. He pio­neered the study of high tem­pe­ra­ture-lov­ing mi­crobes, by in­ves­ti­gat­ing, in a near­ly fro­lic­some way, the hot springs of Yel­low­stone Park. He car­ried out this work pret­ty much alone, with both ex­pe­ri­men­tal in­ge­nuity and con­cept­ual gusto, ... Read more →

Cyanobacteria fly kites? Come on...

by Christoph | You've probably heard of spiders that fly with­tout wings. They climb on­to flow­ers or leaves, stand on their tip­toes, and push gos­sam­er threads of silk from their spin­nerets, glands in their ab­domen, and take off. They do that to reach a near­by twig when weav­ing their webs or to make long-dist­ance flights, some­times over... Read more →

Of Terms in Biology: Alpha, Beta, Gamma Diversities

by Elio
In ecology, these terms refer to various le­vels of species diversities... Read more →

Fungomania III. A Yeast Messes with the Gut Microbiome

by Elio | The microbiome of the large in­test­ine of mam­mals, mainly com­posed of bac­te­ria, is the sub­ject of in­numer­able cur­rent stu­dies. And for good rea­sons. Of all the body's mi­cro­biomes, it is the lar­gest in num­bers, varie­ty, and of like­ly im­port­ance in health and dis­ease. De­fy­ing ex­pect­ations, it is re­mark­ably stable... Read more →

Fungomania II. A (not so) new face of Fusarium

by Roberto | This is a story about fusaria by an admittedly non-expert. Much of what I write in this post I just recently learned, thus revealing from the start my naïveté on the fascinating subject of fungi as high protein foods. Read more →

TWiM 238: Parkinson’s disease gut microbiome

Elio reveals his thoughts on the big themes of modern microbiology, followed by an analysis of the gut microbiome in patients with Parkinson’s disease. Read more →

Fungomania I. Fungi Make Flowers

by Elio | Nature seems to be in­tent in fool­ing every­one, ex­per­ienced bo­tan­ists included. An ex­ample is seen in the abi­li­ty of some fungi to change the ter­mi­nal leaves of cer­tain must­ard plants into what look like flo­ral pe­tals, mak­ing them look like real flowers. Polli­nat­ing in­sects are at­tracted to them and land on these struc­tures... Read more →

Talmudic Question #185

Can you conceive of a virus that can divide by binary fission? Read more →

Antibiotics and the Foods We Eat

by Roberto | When it comes to the ani­mals that hu­mans raise to eat, a quick look at their num­bers proves sober­ing. World­wide, there are some 650 mill­ion pigs, 1 bill­ion heads of cattle and 26 bill­ion chickens. Such numbers ca­not be achieved by tra­di­tio­nal ani­mal rear­ing pract­ices that use ex­ten­sive surface areas. Rather, most of these ani­mals are grown... Read more →

Towards a More Open Science

by Roberto | If there's a silver lining to these very trying pandemic time, it's a sense that the scientific community is moving more in the direction of open science. In the pre-pandemic era (which now feels eons ago) we commented on the problems with for-profit publishing and offered optimistic outlooks in terms of novel publishing strategies such as... Read more →