Small Things Considered

The King of the Fungi

by Elio
Small things are not being considered here. Au contraire, I'm reporting on the largest fungus known, if by 'fungus' you mean the fruiting body of the organism. The reason for making this distinction is that a fungal mycelium can reach humongous proportions. The hyphae of a kind of oyster mushroom… Read more →

Fungi That Spit Like Baseball Players

by Gemma Reguera
Although I was a tomboy as a child, I never had the stomach for spitting competitions. But that changed recently when I read an article by Nik Money and collaborators about spitting competitions among fungi. Yes, you heard me right. Some fungi spit, and they do so with amazing… Read more →

Talmudic Question #78

Why are there so many species of microbes on earth? Read more →

Going Next Door Without Getting Your Feet Wet

by Elio
Intracellular life has its perks. Inside host cells, bacteria are protected from neutrophils, complement, antibodies, some antibiotics, and the other unpleasant things floating around in tissue fluids. In addition, here they have access to ample food. But there is a catch, namely how to infect other cells and other hosts… Read more →

How to Improve Vaccines (or Not), 1912 Style

by Elio
By accident, I ran into a paper by an illustrious early British microbiologist, Sydney Rowland, on how to improve (or not) a vaccine. He picked on a claim by one of Metchnikoff’s student, the Russian scientist Alexandre Besredka working at the Pasteur Institute, that a vaccine against the plague bacillus… Read more →

And We Thought We Knew What CRISPRs Do!

by Merry Youle
Imagine that you have been growing Pseudomonas aeruginosa strain PA14 in your lab for some time, studying biofilm formation among other things. A student in your lab isolates a phage, dubbed DMS3, that mediates generalized transduction between this and other P. aeruginosa strains. Oddly, this strain, when lysogenized by DMS3…
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Fine Reading: Microbial Genomics and Infectious Diseases

by Elio
Would you like to read a concise and well-written review about how genomics has influenced our understanding of infectious diseases? Click here for a satisfying account by David Relman, one of the leading contributors to this field... Read more →

Some Like it Cold

by S. Marvin Friedman
About 70% of Earth’s surface is ocean. In all of them, the temperature at depths of 1000 meters or more is a constant 4 °C, constituting a vast environment populated by a diverse group of psychrophilic ("cold-loving") microorganisms. Much of terra firma also lies in the realm of the psychrophiles… Read more →

A Microbe By Any Other Name Would Smell As Sweet…

by Mark Martin
It has long been known that the sense of smell can evoke the richest memories. Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote: Memories, imagination, old sentiments, and associations are more readily reached through the sense of smell than through any other channel. How does this relate to microbiology? One of the most common complaints from…
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The Janus Bug

by Elio
If you wonder what I do with myself when I'm not blogging, well I'll tell you. Among other things, I participate in an ASM-sponsored podcast called This Week In Microbiology (TWIM). It’s posted every two weeks and is easily accessible by clicking here or going to the MicrobeWorld home page... Read more →