Pictures Considered #8 by Elio — Electron microscopy of phages came into prominence in the 1950's and revealed many of their physical attributes such as their particulate nature, morphological complexity, "tail first" attachment to host cells, etc. Among these discoveries was that T‑even coliphages contract their tail upon absorption to their E. coli hosts. A 1967 paper…
by Merry Youle — I offer this as an echo to Elio's post from last October, Teaching E. coli to Endocytose. There Elio reported the recent education of E. coli by the heterologous expression of a mammalian gene. I tell of a bacterium instructed by a phage…
Vincent, Michael, and Michele discuss how a Staphylococcus aureus superantigen is critical for pathogenesis in a rabbit model, and the relationship of body odor to the axilla microbiome.
by Elio — Over the many years that I taught microbiology to medical students, perhaps my least favorite lecture was the one on the "normal flora," what we now call the microbiome. What used to make me grumpy was that I could talk only in vague generalities, rambling about the intestinal flora being…
by S. Marvin Friedman — Tuberculosis is an ancient disease that still affects millions of people, largely in developing countries. A startling statistic valued by fundraisers for tuberculosis research is that this devastating disease claims three lives every minute worldwide. Since a major factor underlying this important health threat is the alarming rate at which drug-resistant…
