Small Things Considered

The European Academy of Microbiology

by Miguel Vicente  
On June 29, 2009, the European Academy of Microbiology (EAM) was established in the Swedish city of Gothenburg. The objective of the academy is to provide a voice for European microbiology and to foster its quality and dissemination within Europe. Its goals include... Read more →

An Iconoclastic Endosymbiont

by Merry  
The endosymbionts of insects provide an unending parade of novelty. They seem to knock on our door, one after the other, each purveying some new twist of microbial evolution. They break the rules, remodel the genetic code, and blur the line between organism and organelle. Here is one more... Read more →

Talmudic Question #51

Is it possible that prototypical bacterial endospores (e.g., those of Bacillus subtilis) carry out some metabolic activities, albeit at extremely slow rates? Read more →

All the News That’s Fit to Print

by Elio  
The august New York Times proclaims that on its masthead, and well it should. On July 21, they published a column by the highly regarded author and evolutionary biologist Olivia Judson entitled Microbes 'R' Us. In it, Judson gives a brief but illuminating account of... Read more →

The Ten Minute Leeuwenhoek Microscope

by Patrick Keeling  
I was on leave from teaching for a couple of years. The summer before re-starting my third year Protistology course I began to think about some things I wanted to change. One thing I wanted to do was to add a section on the history of microbiology to put things into perspective and... Read more →

Mycobacteria Make Spores?

by Peter Setlow  
Rarely does news come along that threatens to overturn our cherished beliefs. Since early after the discovery of tubercle bacilli by Robert Koch in 1882, the mycobacteria have been considered not to be spore formers. Now this is being challenged by a new report. Read more →

Life in a Big Mac

by Merry  
From the bacterial point of view, a paramecium is a microcosm offering several tempting niches for colonization. When you collect a paramecium from nature, it's likely to have hundreds – even thousands – of bacterial endosymbionts on board, in different locations. Some will likely be in the... Read more →

Fine Reading: In the Company of Ciliates

by Merry  
Organisms such as ciliates that dine daily on bacteria run the risk of getting an infection. Indeed, ciliates – large, complex cells – are host in nature to gazillion different bacteria that they acquire primarily through phagocytosis at their "mouth." Resident bacteria are generally termed symbionts even though... Read more →

The Viral Selenoprotein Theory

by Chitra Rajakuberan  
Just when you thought that HIV has bared all its secrets, new ones come along. The HIV genome encodes 3 main polyproteins and six regulatory proteins. Like all other viruses, HIV relies extensively on the host for replication; of course, what sets it apart from most other viruses is... Read more →