by Elio — Cholesterol and MRSAs vie for headlines. Both are formidable topics of enormous interest to readers of mass media and to scientists (many of whom read mass media, probably in the bathroom). It turns out that Staphylococcus aureus and arteriosclerosis have... Read more →
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A Red Letter Day (on Merry's calendar)
by Merry — Not every one makes it to the age of 80. And of those who do, only a precious few are still doing what they love. Elio's 80th birthday is this Saturday, April 26. He told me to restrain my eloquence here, but to see him... Read more →
On Being 80
by Elio — Long ago, I thought that reaching 72 years of age would be a reasonable accomplishment, as this would bring me into the new millennium. Done, some time ago. I now have no mileposts in mind, just a still horizon. If anything, it’s this blog that counts. So, let me tell you why this has been and continues to be such an... Read more →
Play It Again, Cyan
by Merry — The evidence is quite compelling. All plastids (photosynthetic organelles and non-photosynthetic kin) are thought to be descended from one cyanobacterium that was engulfed by one unicellular heterotrophic eukaryote approximately one billion years ago. The descendents of that host are... Read more →
Talmudic Question #31
Many unicellular protists have a very complex body plan. One can find “legs” (see our posting on Euplotidium), “mouths,” food vacuoles, etc. Some of these structures reflect the feeding... Read more →
Some Like It Linear
by Merry — Last year, a team of Japanese researchers deliberately converted the circular chromosome of E. coli into a linear one. To do this, they borrowed some tricks from the lambdoid coliphage N15, a temperate dsDNA phage whose prophage exists and replicates as a 46 kb linear plasmid. When tested in L broth at 37°C, the... Read more →
Feed From the Hand That Bites You
by Elio — If you look for them, you'll find them – bacteria that can feed on antibiotics, that is. Here, looking means to make an enrichment culture using a medium whose single carbon source is an antibiotic. Add a soil sample with its resident bacteria and look to see who, if anyone, will grow. As reported in a recent issue of... Read more →
A Letter to the Blog
by Bob Murray — A program on the English language stimulated my looking at my copy of Johnson’s Dictionary and by accident reading part of the Preface. A paragraph seemed singularly appropriate to the bloggery we had on "species" and the need to classify... Read more →
The Bile Salt Giveth and the Bile Salt Taketh Away
by Elio — We needn’t be reminded that pathogenic microbiology is a branch of microbial ecology but a nice example helps makes the point. The story is about a nasty disease, pseudomembranous colitis, which affects mainly immuno-compromised people who have been on antibiotics and are lying in a hospital bed. The disease, as the name suggests, is an... Read more →