Small Things Considered

The Min System: All the Places You’ll Go!

by Veronica W. Rowlett
Most bacteria divide quite precisely and their daughter cells are often the same size. The reason for this accuracy is not really known, but it must be important because it is such a frequent phenomenon. This requires good measuring sticks, systems that calculate distance from the ends and restrict the... Read more →

STC Downtime

Small Things Considered apologies for any downtime you may have experienced with the blog over the course of the last week. Our service provider TypePad was hit with repeated distributed denial of service attacks(DDoS), which made all of their blogs and services inaccessible for various stretches of time. If you... Read more →

Pictures Considered #16 : Who Produced The First Ultrathin Section of Bacteria?

by Elio
It’s hard to tell for sure, but it seems to have been a pair of investigators at the University of Southern California, Richard Baker and Daniel Pease, who published a paperin Nature in 1949 showing rather undifferentiated sections of Bacillus megaterium that lack discernible internal details. Interestingly, the very next... Read more →

The Tale of a Tubeworm and a Biofilm

by Jordan Kesner, Bryan Hancock, and Nicole Nalbandian
The oceans of our world harbor an incredible diversity of life, the vast majority of which has yet to be observed or characterized. This is part of what makes the study of marine biology so exciting; there is, in essence, an endless sea of new and exciting underwater discoveries to... Read more →

Of Terms in Biology: Syntrophy

by Elio
Syntrophy or “eating together” is a kind of symbiosis widespread in biology and of great importance for key biochemical transactions on this planet. Indeed, the cycling of carbon in many of its aspects depends on microbial syntrophy. Thus, the breakdown of waste material critically depends on chemical modifications brought about... Read more →

TWiM #76: Genetic Biopixels and a Pathogenic Sweet Tooth

Vincent, Elio, Michael, and Michele discuss the use of bacteria to build a genetic sensor for heavy metals, and how host sugars help enteric pathogens to expand after antibiotic treatment. Read more →

By Chance and Necessity: The Role of the Cytoskeleton in the Genesis of Eukaryotes

by Daniel P. Haeusser
One of the most exciting and enduring obscurities of biology lies in the early stages of the evolution of “our” eukaryotic cells (Figure 1). The endosymbiotic theory accounts well for the present existence of the mitochondrial and chloroplast organelles of eukaryotes. Although there is evidence for present day inter-bacterial endosymbiosis... Read more →

Talmudic Question #107

Suppose you are once again strolling on that deserted beach and again, on cue, the genie reappears. This time he is offering you some mice from a lineage that he has bred for hundreds or more generations under germ-free conditions... Read more →

The Oldest Gem Tells its Tale

by Gemma Reguera
Modern Earth is nothing like it was in its early days. Our planet was formed some 4.56 billion years ago when a giant stellar cloud collapsed on itself due its massive size and gravitational force. The explosion also generated the sun and many other planetary bodies, including those that would... Read more →

The “Microbe Hunters” by Paul DeKruif - A Major Force in Microbiological History

by Elio
The chances are good that when you ask a senior microbiologist how he or she got into this science, they will tell you that they were influenced as teenagers by reading “Microbe Hunters.” I was about 14 years old when I did, and I became transfixed by the glorious and... Read more →