Small Things Considered

From Geology to Biology: A Serpentine Story of Early Life

by Samantha Trumbo
Over 4.5 billion years ago, the Earth was a superheated sphere of molten rock, radiating heat to space at over 2000 K. A billion years later, it had global oceans, teeming with microorganisms. In that time, the Earth underwent massive geological changes, somehow serendipitously creating conditions right enough to lead... Read more →

Pictures Considered #15 : The Dynamo at Work

by Christoph
Why on earth would one stare – even for a few seconds – at a blurry, low-res, pixelated movie, watching a jittery rod tumbling counterclockwise around its pivot? Because it's ATP synthase, a key enzyme of the energy metabolism in every living cell, that's rotating there. And when... Read more →

Six to Tango

by Elio
One genome at a time can be exciting, but two even more so. I’m not entirely sure why this is, although it may explain our fascination with sex. And what if more than two entities were involved? What if the intimacy were not just between two individual organisms, but between... Read more →

Why Do Viruses Cause Disease?

by Vincent Racaniello
Virulence, the capacity to cause disease, varies markedly among viruses. Some viruses cause lethal disease while others do not. For example, nearly all humans infected with rabies virus develop a disease of the central nervous system which ultimately leads to death. In contrast, most humans are infected with circoviruses with... Read more →

TWiM #74: It Came from the Siberian Permafrost

Vincent, Elio, and Michael discuss a huge 30,000 year old virus recovered from Siberia, and nested symbiosis facilitated by horizontal gene transfer from bacteria to insect. Read more →

The Bacterial Chromosome: A Physical Biologist's Apology. A Perspective.

by Suckjoon Jun
I entered the bacterial chromosome field in 2004 as a fresh Ph.D. trained in theoretical physics. Ten years is not long enough for one to gain the depth and breadth of a scientific discipline of long history, certainly not for an early career scientist to write an essay of the... Read more →

Pictures Considered #14 : Rickettsia undergoing binary fission (from a paper authored by Elio in 1957)

by Elio
The series of photomicrographs illustrates part of the cytoplasm of a mouse fibroblast cell containing two rickettsiae “A” and “B,” each of which divides into two daughter organisms. During the 20-minute period between the photographs shown in the right corner of each... Read more →

The Cold Side Of Microbial Life

by Gemma Reguera
The Cold Side Of The Earth In the midst of one of the worst Michigan winters on record, I felt inspired to learn more about how microbes cope with the cold (it is true: misery does indeed like company). So it happens that the polar vortex that has visited our northern states a few times this season has given us a glimpse at the subzero temperatures that prevail in the northern lands of our planet, sometimes all year... Read more →

Talmudic Question #106

What may be the reason why E. coli is usually the most abundant facultative anaerobe in mammalian feces? Read more →

A Mouthful Of Microbes

by Gemma Reguera
After watching Hollywood movies of medieval knights with neat haircuts and bright smiles, it may shock you to be reminded that our dear medieval cousins looked anything but clean. The truth is that hygiene was not a top priority in the Middle Ages and germs were in heaven. This was a time in which cities lacked sewage systems and feces, urine, and garbage were dumped onto the streets or into the castle moat. Not surprisingly, outbreaks... Read more →