Small Things Considered

Has the Time Come? Or Has the Time Gone?

by Elio  
Inevitably, there will be those who believe in the value of high throughput data collection in biology and those who propose that it’s a waste of time and resources. At a time when powerful new methodologies emerge, such extreme views can be expected. The argument is usually about the ultimate value of... Read more →

Special Interest Symposium

by Elio  
At the forthcoming General Meeting of the ASM, which starts Sunday, June 1, in Boston, there will be a Special Interest Symposium on the topic 'Reflections on the 50th Anniversary of Schaechter, Maaløe, Kjeldgaard'. I will... Read more →

The Science Social Media Breakfast

Join Elio Schaechter of Small Things Considered and Chris Condayan from the MicrobeWorld Radio and Video podcasts for a lively breakfast discussion about using new media for science communication. All attendees are encouraged to share their experiences in using new media, such as blogs, social networks, video and audio podcasts, and wikis, to promote the life sciences... Read more →

With a Little Help from Their Friends

by Merry & Elio  
Genomic islands are long stretches of chromosomal DNA that look suspiciously foreign in origin and are found in many pathogenic and non-pathogenic bacteria alike. Some of them, called pathogenicity islands, encode toxins or other factors that contribute to the virulence of the pathogenic ones. It is suspected that they... Read more →

Fine Reading: Pathogens, Evolution, & Ecology

by Elio  
Three Spanish microbiologists (F. Baquero, C. Nombela, and J. A. Gutierrez-Fuentes) plus one American (G. Cassell) edited Evolutionary Biology of Bacterial and Fungal Pathogens (ASM Press, 2007). We needn’t contribute a review of our own because a particularly informative one by Ricardo Guerrero appeared in... Read more →

The Blog in the Classroom

by Elio  
Students in Integrative Microbiology, a graduate course taught jointly by the University of California at San Diego and the San Diego State University, could fulfill an assignment by optionally answering either one of two specified Talmudic Questions. Their answers are now posted... Read more →

Gulliver and the Lilliputians

by Elio and Merry  
"Two archaea walk into a bar and the bartender says…" No, we don't have an ending for this joke (tell us if you do!), but if the temperature of the bar were around 90°C and the locality a hydrothermal vent off Iceland, there is a chance that the pair sauntering in could be... Read more →

Recent Blog Items We've Enjoyed – Spring Harvest

by Elio  
Alan Cann’s MicrobiologyBytes has a great video showing magnetotactic bacteria darting back and forth in response to a moving magnetic field. Besides a lot of other interesting news, Tara Smith’s Aetiology has an update on the case of Robert Farrell, the geneticist who... Read more →

Fine Reading: Fungal Alchemy Revisited

by Elio  
One of the most breathtaking reports in this blog has been the finding that ionizing radiation stimulates the growth of some fungi, such as those found in the encased Chernobyl reactor. A recent review in FEMS Microbiology Letters expands on this phenomenon and... Read more →

Where Art Thou, O Ribosome?

by Elio  
In a recent post (The Age of Imaging), I mused about advances in microscopy that are revolutionizing our concept of bacterial cell structure. High on the list of amazing developments is cryoelectron tomography (CET), a technique that allows one to look inside bacterial cells. Flash-freezing cells at very low temperatures... Read more →