Small Things Considered

A Passing Observation

by Elio
Nothing is easier to get hold of than samples of human feces and nothing is harder to obtain that samples from undisturbed portions of the gut of people, both along the tract and across its various layers. It is widely recognized that fecal samples represent the end of a highly complex process of... Read more →

The Red Queen – Running Uphill

by Christoph  
Imagine you're outside, taking your customary Sunday walk to enjoy ‒ it's still March! ‒ a chilly breeze and the (barely) unfolding springtime. You stroll along and, upon reaching a fork, you proceed on whatever path just looks inviting enough. It's Sunday, after all! Eventually you arrive at the top of a hill... Read more →

Medicine Man

by Manuel Sánchez Angulo
The mid-80's of the last century saw the birth of an environmental movement directed at the conservation of the Amazon jungle. It reached its climax in 1989 when the singer Sting published a book on the destruction of the habitat and culture of the indigenous communities. Already in 1985, British cinema devoted a movie... Read more →

New Bug in Old Bottles

by Christoph
"For beverage packaging the barrier properties [= very low permeability] of the PET to certain gases, the excellent mass to strength ratio and the recyclability of the final product are very important features influencing the choice of PET over other plastics or more traditional packaging materials." (quoted from the essentialchemicalindustry.org website). Given such attractive features, it's no wonder... Read more →

Pictures Considered #35 : The Isolation of the Inner and Outer Membrane of E. coli

by Elio
In 1968, Miura and Mizushima published the first report showing that that the inner (cytoplasmic) and outer membrane of E. coli could be separated from one another. The existence of two membranes had been surmised from thin EM sections, but being able to isolate and purify them allowed further studies, especially biochemical ones. Read more →

Opening Windows into the Cell

by Kanika Khanna
In the 1940's, electron microscopy (EM) single handedly propelled cell biology into a new era. The discovery of cell organelles and their ultrastructure can be attributed to its application. The opportunity to cross the barrier set by the limitations in the resolution of optical microscopy was a crucial development for many researchers. Read more →

Talmudic Question #131

by Nicole Flanagan
Is there any human-associated bacterial species that cannot cause disease if introduced into some site of the body? Read more →

This Week in Microbiology #123: A microbial MAGE

Harris Wang joins Vincent, Elio, and Michael to describe multiplex automated genome engineering, a method for targeting many modifications in a population of bacterial cells. Read more →

How to Make a Photosynthetic Bacterium in One Simple Step

by Elio
Can one turn an organism into photosynthesizer in one or two simple steps? That seems unlikely, as photosynthesis as we know it developed over a long time via a series of complex and sophisticated evolutionary events. Just making chlorophyll leave alone the rest of the machinery, took much doing. Read more →

At first, 4.6 million sounds like a lot, but in term of moles, it's nothing…

by Elio
"The fibers themselves are composed of long cellulose molecules coiled in a helix around a hollow axis. If arranged end to end, about 2,000 cellulose chains, each one of them composed of about 1,000 glucose or sugar units strung together, would equal about one tracheid length. There are about 2 billion... Read more →