Small Things Considered

Are You Me or Am I You?

by Elio
When one cell meets another, it must make decisions. This extends itself to practically every attribute of living things, from avoiding mating with self to the establishment of territorial boundaries. Do we fuse? Will you attack me? Are you a potential mate or are you lunch? And, in the bodies… Read more →

Two New Books (with my name on the spine )

by Elio
When I’m not blogging, I tend to get involved in book publishing. Twelve, so far. Mostly what I do is editing, although I have been an honest co-author for a few. My most recent venture was a project somewhat simpler than most. I had served as the editor-in-chief of the 3rd edition of… Read more →

Ringing a Microbial Dinner Bell

by Mark Martin
A few weeks ago, I wrote a short Small Things Considered essay describing the diverse roles that odors can play in microbiology. Articles here and there written by others attest to a growing interest in sociomicrobiology. As for myself, I have long suspected that microbes are constantly sending and… Read more →

Is a Good Offense the Best Defense?

by Merry Youle
Most eukaryotes possess an RNA interference system (RNAi) that they use to regulate gene expression and to defend against viruses and other mobile elements. However, some budding yeasts, such as Saccharomyces cerevisiae, appear to get along just fine without it even though RNAi has benefited other yeasts by silencing transposons… Read more →

Virus Hacks Intercellular Communications Network

by Merry Youle
What do monocytes, lymphocytes, and neutrophils all have in common? Well, yes, they are all leucocytes and part of our immune system, but what else? They all can be prompted to migrate to the site of infection by a specific class of cytokines known as chemotactic cytokines, or chemokines for… Read more →

Talmudic Question #81

Given that most mutations are deleterious, why does the mutation rate not evolve to zero? Read more →

A Pestis from the Past

by S. Marvin Friedman
In recent decades we’ve come to realize that victory goes not to the swift or to the strong, but to the immune. The introduction of agents of deadly diseases into immunologically naïve populations determined momentous events in human history. The conquest of the Americas resulted in good part from the… Read more →

Fine Reading: Adaptations to energy stress dictate the ecology and evolution of the Archaea, by D. L. Valentine

by Elio
It's been over thirty years since Carl Woese discovered the Archaea, yet they still qualify as the most puzzling of the domains of life. Many of them are extremophiles, but not all, and they differ from the Bacteria in significant ways, such as their rRNAs and tRNAs, the lipids in… Read more →