Small Things Considered

Talmudic Question #49

by Ian Booth

Do bacteria ever take up intact RNA molecules? Read more →

Collateral Damage

by Merry Youle | It's not news that coral reefs around the world are in trouble. One obvious symptom of this has been the dramatic increase in coral diseases starting in the 1980s. There is black band and white band, brown band and yellow band, white pox and white plague, galls and bleaching, and… Read more →

Of Terms in Biology: Metabolomics and Metabonomics

by Merry Youle
What is metabolomics? Oh, that's easy. It's the study of the metabolome. Very good. Now, what is the metabolome? Read more →

The Secret Under the Ice

by Manuel Sanchez | There is an old science fiction story called 'Who Goes There' that was twice made into a movie. It dealt with a scientific expedition to the North Pole which, under the ice, found an extraterrestrial spaceship carrying alien forms of life. Well, now a real scientific expedition to the Antarctic found a complete ecosystem that was trapped... Read more →

Of Terms in Biology: Panmictic

by Elio | A recent encounter with this term prompted a Web search for its precise meaning. Here is a sampling of the definitions we found. Read more →

The Bacterium That Doesn't Know How To Tie Its Own Shoelaces

by Elio | A greater microbial wonderland there isn't than the one inside cells of insects. Many, perhaps most, insects harbor bacterial endosymbionts that are full of physiological, genomic, and structural surprises. To confirm our predilection for the subject, go to Search on the right of this page and enter “endosymbionts.” Or... Read more →

Talmudic Question #48

Can you think of an example of an intact protein molecule being taken up by a free-living bacterium? Read more →

The View From Here — by Shmuel Razin

I would like to raise an exciting issue that has become very hot recently and has been of great interest to me for a long time: the possibility of synthesizing a living cell from its components. My story starts in 1964. I spent then my first sabbatical with Prof. Harold Morowitz at Yale University. Let me first remind you that these were the early sixties, times of revolutionary ideas. It was the time of... Read more →