Small Things Considered

Vacation

by Elio | As is our custom, we take a two week vacation at this time of year, deserved or not. We'll see you again in the new year, starting on January 6th. Please accept our wishes for a fine Holiday Season. May cheerful... Read more →

TWiM #70: A Paroxysmal Cough

Vincent, Elio, Michael, and Michele discuss evidence that the acellular pertussis vaccine fails to prevent infection and transmission in nonhuman primates, and the use of bacterial cytological profiling to identify pathways targeted by antibiotics. Read more →

Talmudic Question #104

Can you conceive of an entity that can replicate as a cell under some circumstances or as a virus under others? Read more →

A Letter to STC from Julian Davies

Bravo Randy Schekman! I strongly support your comments on the tyranny of "impact factors" and I will be pleased to join in efforts to prevent the misuse of these ratings. Impact Factors have become a symbol of terror for scientists in all disciplines and their use in promotion and other... Read more →

The Result of the Microbiome Poll

The results from 135 votes are: What have we learned? The various comments confirm that the term microbiome means different things to different people. Lita points out that in the early days when HMP was formed, the NIH officially defined the human microbiome as “all of the microorganisms and their... Read more →

Retrospective, December 2013

We continue our semi-annual ritual and post this quick tour of our featured blog posts published since June 2013. Read more →

Pictures Considered #11. Invisible Portraits: A Microbial Art Exhibit

by Patrick Keeling, Erick James, and Kevin Carpenter | Getting the message out to the public that the microbial world is about much more than just diseases is a challenging topic, but one we should keep trying to improve on. There are many ways to do this, but as the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words… Read more →

Seeing How Antibiotics Work

by Elio | One would assume offhand that the pathways for synthesis and assembly of the major constituents of a bacterial cell “talk to each other,” i. e. they are tightly interwoven processes. Tampering with the biosynthesis of one should affect all the others, right? Wouldn’t you expect, for instance, that if protein… Read more →

Abigail Salyers (1942-2013)

by Elio | Prof. Salyers’ contributions to microbiology as well as the quality of her teaching are widely known and much admired. Her lab provided important tools for the genetic dissection of Bacteriodes and its metabolism of complex carbohydrates. More broadly, she pointed to the importance of the human microbiome well before it… Read more →

TWiM #69: Bacterial DNA in the Human Genome

Vincent, Elio, Jo, and Michele review evidence for bacterial DNA integrated into the human genome, and control of the symbiont population in an insect midgut. Read more →