Small Things Considered

TWiM #79: A Community of Microbiologists

Vincent, Michael, and Michele review highlights of the 2014 General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology in Boston, MA. Read more →

Talmudic Question #109

Which infection has the most levels of parasitism? We can come up with Salmon Poisoning disease an illness lethal in (1) dogs and their relatives who ate (2) a salmon or other fish infected with (3) a fluke that developed in (4) a river snail and carried (5) a rickettsia, Neorickettsia heliminthoeca that causes the symptoms of the disease. That’s five levels... Read more →

Small Sticks of Biology

by Elio | How a proteins folds into a particular shape is about as central a concern as there is in our postgenomic world. Protein molecules bend, curl up, writhe, and, generally undergo big time changes in shape and form, plus they can make strong connections between segments along their length and with other molecules… Read more →

Pictures Considered #17. The Meselson-Stahl Experiment

by Elio | Described as the “Most Beautiful Experiment In Biology” the demonstration by Meselson and Stahl that DNA replicates semiconservatively is one of the major landmarks in the genesis of modern biology. And indeed it is most pleasing, both visually and cerebrally... Read more →

Flights of Discovery

by Mizuho Ota | I wonder if you are familiar with this icon. It depicts the “eyedropper,” a commonly used tool in computer graphics and painting programs that allows you to choose any spot on an image and identify its exact color. On a computer this is easy information to obtain; however, in dealing with real materials, the question “but what exactly IS it?”… Read more →

TWiM #78: A Bacterium Grows in Brooklyn

Vincent, Elio, and Michael consider a fungal pathogen of insects that acquired a gene from its host that facilitates infection, and presence of gram-negative nosocomial pathogens on community surfaces near hospitals in Brooklyn. Read more →

Of Terms in Biology: The Parvome

by Elio | The term Parvome was introduced in 2008 by Julian Davies right here in this blog. It had been coined by Mark Martin from the Latin, parvus, for small, to describe the “humungous microbial world of small (secreted) molecules of great structural diversity” and, I should add, of immensely varied… Read more →

The Jelly Roll of Life

by Jacqueline Humphries | We know that life on earth is incredibly diverse. It can survive deep in the trenches of the ocean and in the frozen permafrost of the arctic. Surely we have much to learn from the study of life, but we also have much to learn about the virus. Even though… Read more →

STC Downsize

by Elio | No, not in content, mainly in the heading. The old one seemed venerable, being nearly 8 years old. The main reason for the change, however, is to make the blog more accessible to other media. We thought it's about time that our readers can consider not just small things but also small devices, no? So... Read more →

A Snippet: One Fungus, Two Bacteria

by Elio | How often have you heard of two or more bacterial species coexisting within the same cell of a host? It’s known to happen with some frequency in some amebas, insects and other invertebrates (including the strange case of the mealybug bacteria, which have an endosymbiotic bacterium that carries another bacterium… Read more →