Small Things Considered

The View From Here – by John Coffin

by John Coffin  
Why is it so hard to make an HIV vaccine? The answer lies in the unusual relationship of this particular virus with its host. By and large, viruses of humans and other animals interact with their hosts in one of two ways. After an initial period of rapid (often symptomatic) infection, some viruses... Read more →

Archaeal Happy Hour

by Elio  
A few months ago, we fished for a little help from our readers in our post about the association between two archaea, Ignococcus hospitalis and Nanoarchaeon equitans. This comes to us from Fred Rosenberg... Read more →

The Fastest Flights in Nature

by Elio  
If you were a fungus growing on dung and if, for propagation, you depended on having your spores ingested by an animal, you’d have a problem. Few animals graze near their poop. The solution would be to evolve a powerful discharge mechanism that ensured that your spores traveled far afield. Read more →

You Can't Judge a Book by Its Cover

by Merry  
Bacteria run a tight ship. Compared to many "higher" plants and animals, they have a larger proportion of coding and regulatory DNA, a lesser percentage of "junk" DNA. Nevertheless, there is some "junk," including, among other things, relics of past infection by temperate phages. These "defective prophages" often include... Read more →

Talmudic Question #38

Not a novel question, but nevertheless …what’s the current thinking as to why early RNA life went the way of making double-stranded DNA instead of double-stranded RNA? (Yes, dsRNA is extra stable, but there are ways around that.) Read more →

The View From Here – by Richard Losick

by Richard Losick  
My dear friend Linc Sonenshein introduced me to Bacillus subtilis forty years ago when he was a graduate student with Salvador Luria. The remarkable capacity of B. subtilis to transform itself into a spore has been the focus of my research ever since. Before too long, Sonenshein and I focused on 168 and related strains... Read more →

Fine Reading and Fine Memories

by Elio  
The June 2008 issue of the journal Geobiology consists of a tribute to the late Terry Beveridge by some of the many people he mentored. Terry made stellar contributions to a number of fields, including... Read more →

Species Come and Species Go

by Elio & Merry — While philosophizing about what is a species, should one laugh or cry? Maybe it matters how you feel at the moment. For me (Elio), that’s the case. In my bilious mood, I despair about the chances for a useful, encompassing, and consensual definition. But when I feel more jovial, I applaud the continuous efforts... Read more →

Musings: The Guild

by Elio  
The dictionary defines a guild as “an association of craftsmen in a particular trade.” Let’s extend this term a bit and apply it to the community of microbiologists. I make this point because I am intensely aware that I belong to a group of people united by their particular professional interests. Whenever I meet another microbiologist... Read more →

The View From Here – by Julian Davies

by Julian Davies  
This is in response to Mark Martin’s prompt; he is an interesting and eclectic character. Well, I was not inclined to write anything, but since this week has been spent on grant writing (for not very much money, this being the style in Canada) and today, being a sunny day, I decided to cut the grass but... Read more →