by Merry Youle
Nematodes – those small, nondescript roundworms – are among the most numerous animals, found in virtually every ecological niche. With an estimated 400,000 to possibly 10,000,000 species, their diversity might match that of the insects, but no one knows for sure. Most nematodes live quiet lives, unknown even by...
Read more →
« February 2009 | Main | April 2009 »
The Two Faces of Photorhabdus
A Personal Note: The Encyclopedia and I
by Elio
For the last couple of years, during hours not spent blogging, I served as the editor-in-chief of the third edition of the Encyclopedia of Microbiology. If this sounds like a large undertaking, it is. The work consists of nearly 300 entries compiled into six volumes that weigh...
Read more →
No Phosphorus? No Problem!
(There’s More Than One Way to Skin a Phytoplankton)
by Elio
Are you a lipophobe on a low fat diet? Or do you just believe that lipids are boring? Try again. Monotonous they are not. There’s greater variety to be found among the lipids than almost any other cell constituent. It’s truly mind-boggling. Within the prokaryotes alone, archaeal membrane lipids differ from “regular” ones in nearly every respect...
Read more →
Talmudic Question #46
by Daniel Portnoy
Why don't mammals make antibiotics of the type so readily made by bacteria and fungi?
Read more →
30,000 Parasitoids Can't Be Wrong
by Merry
Over 30,000 species of parasitoid wasps can't be wrong. Au contraire, their reproductive strategy has been highly successful. They deposit their eggs inside the larvae (or eggs) of other insects...
Read more →
Fine Reading: HGT in Eukaryote Evolution
by Merry
Is horizontal gene transfer (HGT) a game for prokaryotes only, or can eukaryotes play, too? In their recent review of HGT in eukaryotes, Patrick Keeling and Jeffrey Palmer remind us...
Read more →
A Happy Hot Couple
by Elio
We don't know about you, but we've become pretty blase about the stream of papers, each with the customary two dozen or more authors, reporting the completed genome of yet another microbe. But the recent one on the archaeon Ignicoccus hospitalis merits special attention.
Read more →
Of Terms in Biology: Ortholog
by Elio
The terms 'ortholog' and 'paralog' have wide acceptance. Yet, we find that they are used in nuanced ways by different people. Sure enough, here is some of what the Internet comes up with...
Read more →
A Pathogen's Swiss Army Knife
by Maren von Köckritz-Blickwede
Staphylococcus aureus is an amazingly impressive bug that endlessly fascinates and worries microbiologists. It has an exceptional ability to exploit host immune functions, thereby causing a wide range of life–threatening infections. For more than 40 years, new discoveries about its virulence potential have been made at a steadily increasing pace.
Read more →