Both marine phages and predatory protists prey on bacteria. Something has been written about how phages may help bacteria escape protist predation. Click here for an erudite treatment. Is something known about the converse, namely communication between protists and phages? For instance, do protists make compounds that diminish predation by phages, e.g., by making… Read more →
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Now That's Using Your Head!
by Merry Youle — Something bizarre can be seen in TEMs of a Caulobacter crescentus phage, φCbK. This was first reported in a paper published back in 1972 (see the image to the right). In most respects, φCbK is your typical ho-hum siphovirus with an elongated head (60 nm diameter, 200 nm long) sporting… Read more →
Vital or Not Vital: That Is the Question
by Gemma Reguera — If you are as a stubborn as I am, you probably just cannot let go of things easily. That is exactly what happened with me a few months ago when I sent a paper for peer-review that included results obtained using a commercial ‘vitality’ assay. The kit uses a fluorogenic redox… Read more →
Rafting Through Time
by Elio — In the placid old days, cell membranes were assumed to be fairly simple affairs: lipid bilayers with some proteins floating in them like corks. This “fluid mosaic” arrangement took a beating around the 1970’s, when biophysicists suggested that membranes may be composed of microdomains, where certain lipids and proteins become... Read more →
Did van Leeuwenhoek Spend His Youth in France?
by Nanne Nanninga — This title might be unexpected. Yet it is not without logic after reading a little book, The Cleere Observer: A Biography of Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, by Alma Smith Payne, published in 1970 by Macmillan in London. The booklet is amply and skillfully illustrated by Charles Pickard. According to the back… Read more →
Viruses that Infect Parasites that Infect Us: The Matryoshka Dolls of Human Pathogens
by Jamie Schafer — We’re all too familiar with the viruses that can infect us, from the common cold to yellow fever virus to the endogenous retroviruses that make up a chunk of our genome. Many of us are also acquainted with parasites, such as tape worms or Giardia, that like to set up camp… Read more →
Taking Bugs Out For a Spin
by Linh Truong and Shabana Din — Microbes are the most robust of all life forms inhabiting our planet. Their ability to proliferate in extreme temperatures, pH, pressure, and radiation is well documented. They not only withstand but grow at physical extremes, which makes us wonder about the physical bounds for life not only on our planet… Read more →
How We Tell The Good Bacteria From The Bad
by Micah Manary — Recently, Yale’s Richard Flavell led a team of researchers into the most talked about and yet one of the least understood of microbial environments—the human gut. Rather than present the usual metagenomic characterization of the microbial population, he teamed up with Jeff Gordon at Washington University in Saint Louis… Read more →