by Elio — It’s seldom that a bug has a negative effect on me. It's usually just the opposite: bugs make my day. But this time, some kind of bronchitis virus prevented me from going to a meeting that I would have truly loved to attend. Read more →
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by Elio — It’s seldom that a bug has a negative effect on me. It's usually just the opposite: bugs make my day. But this time, some kind of bronchitis virus prevented me from going to a meeting that I would have truly loved to attend. Read more →
Posted on June 20, 2009 at 02:30 PM in Odds & Ends | Permalink | Comments (2)
by Elio — We have now posted Talmudic Question #50, so this may be a time to reflect on this endeavor. True to our intent, these have been questions that have no definitive answers but most of the responses offered thoughtful conjectures. Read more →
Posted on June 18, 2009 at 09:18 AM in Talmudic Questions, Teachers Corner | Permalink | Comments (1)
What do you think are the most interesting questions in present day microbiology? Read more →
Posted on June 18, 2009 at 09:16 AM in Talmudic Questions, Teachers Corner | Permalink | Comments (6)
by Elio — We present here a lightly annotated list that includes most of our posts from the past half year. Read more →
Posted on June 15, 2009 at 10:07 AM in Odds & Ends, Retrospectives | Permalink | Comments (0)
by Elio — Just when you thought that everything conceivable has been written about Charles Darwin on his bicentennial, a revealing perspective on his wife, Emma, appeared in the journal 'International Microbiology'. Written by the distinguished science writer Mercé Piqueras, the article... Read more →
Posted on June 11, 2009 at 09:54 AM in Odds & Ends | Permalink | Comments (1)
by Elio — So there! By this rash assertion I mean that in the biological world almost every macromolecular constituent is likely to function in more than just one way, that is, is pleiotropic. One and the same protein may be enzymatic, regulatory, and structural... Read more →
Posted on June 08, 2009 at 09:36 AM in Physiology & Genetics, Teachers Corner | Permalink | Comments (3)
by Merry — Certain mussels called “bathymodiolins” are part of the spellbinding fauna of the dark world of oceanic hydrothermal vents and cold seeps. Similar to other metazoans in that realm, they rely on chemosynthetic bacteria... Read more →
Posted on June 04, 2009 at 10:13 AM in Ecology, Pathogens, Teachers Corner | Permalink | Comments (1)
by Merry — Mention horizontal gene transfer (HGT) in bacteria, and what comes to mind is the acquisition of new traits and capabilities across large evolutionary distances. Not so for the neisseriae. For them, HGT is a means to swap genes with other members of the species and to maintain... Read more →
Posted on June 01, 2009 at 10:14 AM in Pathogens, Teachers Corner | Permalink | Comments (5)