Small Things Considered

What’s the Score on the Microbiome?

by Elio
Just for kicks, let’s count up recent papers that say the microbiome is a good thing and those that say otherwise. Just count titles.... Read more →

Retrospective, December 2011

We’ve prepared this quick tour for you, with brief visits to all the major articles we posted since our May, 2011, retrospective. Read more →

Talmudic Question #82

Are there any surface structures or components on bacteria that are NOT used as receptors by some phage?
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A Wormful of Bugs

by Elio
Let’s start out with a little quiz. What examples can you name of endosymbiotic bacteria so tightly packed that they’re nearly wall-to-wall within cells of their host? If you said legume root nodules, you can claim a prize. (Ask someone else for it, as we don’t have any.) You would get… Read more →

The Astonishingly Rich Smörgåsbord of New Methods for Light Microscopy

by Elio
The two age-old problems of the light microscope are resolution and contrast. Resolution is a function of the wavelength of light, so that in the visible it is, at best, about 200 nm. (It also depends on the lenses, but they have been pretty good for a long time.) This means that… Read more →

Lynn

by Elio
Lynn Margulis, a preeminent figure in modern biology, died suddenly at the age of 73. She was a good and an old friend of mine. When we were both living in Newton, Massachusetts, our spouses wanted nothing better than for us to take the kids out of the house on… Read more →

Our Sixth Year Is Starting

by Elio
Five years and over 500 posts behind us, I would like to share with you a bit of the history of this blog. How did it start? I had retired officially in 1995 from Tufts University in Boston and came to San Diego. I arrived with the intention of staying involved in… Read more →

Why Blog?

by Merry Youle
After five years, you’d think I’d have an answer to that question, a coherent and satisfying answer that I could share. Well, I dug around inside for a bit and this is what I came up with... Read more →

A Gathering of Comments on a Talmudic Question

by Elio
First it may be appropriate to repeat what we mean by Talmudic Questions (and therefore Talmudic Answers). We use the term loosely to denote questions that may lack definitive answers but that open the door to ingenuity and dialectic. These questions embody the musings: “I have often wondered… Read more →