Small Things Considered

Microtubules in the Verrucomicrobial Closet

by Daniel P. Haeusser
General biology textbooks, like the one I use for teaching, often depict the prokaryotic cell as an oval of homogenous-appearing cytoplasm surrounded by two membranes. This simplified image of a Gram-negative bacterial cell contrasts with the depiction of a well-organized, feature-laden eukaryotic cell with its membrane-bound organelles. While many would… Read more →

Green Flypaper

by Merry Youle
Troubled by pesky flies in your home or office? Tempted to reach for the toxic flypaper? Here’s a green alternative long known by the Indians of the Central Mexico highlands. Step outside and look around for a tree with entire branches covered by a large spiderweb. Clip out a section… Read more →

The Paenibacillus Moving Company

by Elio
Microbes get around. They can be carried by the wind, by insects, or by water currents, sometimes across large distances, sometimes from one grain of soil to the next. Some bacteria contribute to their own dispersal by their motility or, rarely, one may think, by the motility of other… Read more →

Talmudic Question #83

Assume the Earth is hit by a large asteroid that lowers the average temperature of the planet to the extent that would eliminate most multicellular life. What would be... Read more →

Pushing the Thermodynamic Envelope into the Proteomic Edge

by Tracey McDole
The word marginal means to be at the outer or lower limits; minimal for requirements; almost insufficient. Certainly being marginal sounds bad, but is it always? In a recent issue of PNAS, Dill and colleagues show that the proteome – a cell’s collection of thousands of different types of proteins – is… Read more →

That Scary Restroom Microbiota

by Elio & Joshua Fierer
Newspapers and other media are reporting with regular frequency that restrooms, ATM machine pads, money bills, and other sites carry many different microbes upon their surfaces including potentially pathogenic bacteria and viruses. Headlines call attention to such scary-sounding news and alarm the general public. We can expect that this practice… Read more →

It’s Raining Viruses!

by Merry Youle
It’s true! Each year it rains viruses, more than a trillion of them per acre over thousands of forested acres in the USA. This is the work of the airborne arm of the USDA Forest Service, part of their efforts to reduce the devastation to hardwood forests caused by the imported gypsy moth… Read more →