by Merry Youle — Back in 1983, researchers at Yale borrowed a microbiological tactic to study evolution at a "single gene locus" in a multicellular animal: the use of altered growth media to select for nutritional mutants. They confronted populations of Drosophila pseudoobscura with a growth medium containing either maltose or starch as the sole carbohydrate source and... Read more →
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The Flying Cow
by Elio — Here’s a bird that thinks it’s a ruminant. Or, speaking science, ruminants may have coevolved their singular way to digest plant material with a bird. I am talking about the hoatzin, a tropical pheasant-sized or, in honor of the day, turkey-sized bird of Central and South America that ferments in its crop the leaves it eats. Read more →
Physical Virology
by Manuel Sánchez — 'Physical Virology.' Such is the title of the article that appeared in 'Nature Physics'. This is the name for a new discipline that is under development. Its focus is the study of viruses from a physical perspective. Seen this way, viruses are natural nanoparticles... Read more →
Talmudic Question #68
by Mike Rust — Why have the bacterial signaling systems based on histidine and aspartate phosphorylation been abandoned (with some exceptions) in favor of serine/threonine and tyrosine phosphorylation in eukaryotes? Read more →
Siblings Strike Again
by S. Marvin Friedman — Bacteria capable of sporulation go out of their way to grow rather than sporulate. They will therefore try to obtain needed nutrients, even at the cost of killing their neighbors. When starved for nutrients, cells of Bacillus subtilis engage in cannibalism, that is they lyse their siblings and... Read more →
Of Terms in Biology: Bacterial Ploidy
by Elio — Ploidy is not a term that has much currency in bacteriology, but it does make an appearance once in a while. Ploidy, as per the dictionary, is the number of chromosomes per cell. It’s a term widely used for cells that are generally uninucleated, such as our gametes and our somatic cells. The problem here is that bacteria are not consistently uninucleated. Read more →
Fattening Up Microbial Geological Biomarkers
by Paula Welander — First Evolved! Last Extinct! This prokaryotic pride motto was coined by my undergraduate advisor (and good friend) Prof. Mark Martin. As a microbiologist, I love this motto for many reasons, but especially because it alludes to one of the underlying principles of my current research. Microbes were indeed the first to evolve and the metabolic inventions... Read more →
One Symbiont Is Good, Two Are Better: The Forever Fascinating Story of the Leaf-Cutting Ants and Their Bacteria
by Elio — Now here’s a question you’ve been asking all along about the interaction between the leaf cutting (Attine) ants, the fungi they cultivate, and the bacteria that make antifungals against unwanted fungal species. Have these bacteria evolved along with the ants to protect their gardens from unwanted "weeds," or do the ants pick up such bacteria from their environment? Read more →
Tales of Death
by Merry Youle — Bacteriophages are expert killers, having been delivering death to bacteria for several billion years. We are not the first organisms to recognize their skill. Bacteria themselves have borrowed the tail of a phage and fashioned from it a targeted bacterial killer for their own use. We first became aware of this in 1925 when André Gratia observed... Read more →