Small Things Considered

Hard Biology

by Elio
For some time, I've had the urge to learn something about diatoms. They are dazzlingly beautiful, relatively easy to manipulate, and have left a fossil record immense in quantity. I never had followed up on this yen, so here’s my chance. A recent paper shed light on the way they make… Read more →

Talmudic Question #75

What would the world be like without the Archaea? Read more →

Retrospective, May 2011

by Elio
From December 16, 2010, to May 16, 2011. Another six months, another 50-plus posts, another retrospective...
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Of Terms in Biology: Aptamer

by Elio
Picture yourself looking for a molecule that specifically inhibits an enzyme, impairs the binding of a ligand to a receptor, or does some other such wonder. Classically, one thinks of antibodies, but these require a lot of work and are not easy to come by. Easier is to fish out… Read more →

Frost Flowers Come to Life

by Jody Deming
Biofilms are the hallmark of microbial life in all manner of natural and engineered settings. The defining features of a mature biofilm include high densities of microbes, association with a surface, and extracellular polysaccharide substances (EPS)—often very specific compounds—that give architectural structure to these habitats. But what about… Read more →

A Beef

by Elio
I have a complaint. Scientific papers can be quite demanding to read. So, why make life more difficult by making the legends of the figures so hard to read? My big complaint is that when a legend pertains to multiple parts, the letters corresponding to them are nearly… Read more →

Fine Reading: When Microbial Conversations Get Physical

by Elio
In a recent Opinion piece in Trends in Microbiology, Gemma Reguera invites us to think outside the box. The box in question harbors the notion that communication between microbes is chemical, and only chemical. Here, the author cuts through the confines of this perspective to point out that microbial communication also takes…
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A Protection Racket

by Merry Youle
Two review papers published last year each devoted many pages to recounting the numerous ways that bacteria avoid becoming phage food. The list of defenses attests not only to the intense selection pressure exerted by phages, but also to the evolutionary quick-footedness of their intended hosts. Because… Read more →

Going to Great Lengths

by Merry Youle
Given the streamlined genomes and the frugal nature of the Bacteria and Archaea, one might expect their proteins to be short and to the point. However, a survey of the 580 prokaryotic sequenced genomes available in 2008 found many genes apparently encoding large proteins. Specifically, 0.2% of the ORFs (3732 genes) were longer… Read more →

Designer Genes for Special Bacterial Lifestyles

by S. Marvin Friedman
Thanks to the extensive research of the past ten years, we've become aware that many prokaryotic endosymbionts and habitual intracellular pathogens have undergone genome reduction over evolutionary time. Characteristic of this process, termed reductive convergent evolution, is the discarding of genes involved in metabolic pathways and regulatory functions that have… Read more →