Small Things Considered

In the Company of Microbes: Ten Years of Small Things Considered

by Elio — This is the 10th anniversary of this blog, perhaps noteworthy because, as I say, "blog years are like dog years." In celebration, a book has just been published by the American Society for Microbiology Press entitled "In the Company of Microbes: Ten Years of Small Things Considered" The book consists of... Read more →

Elio's Day

Today is Elio's day! A day to reflect on 88 good years, many of those decades spent engaged with the microbial world... Read more →

Evolution? Who Needs It Now That We Have CRISPR/Cas9s?

by Marcia Stone — As reported on Small Things Considered in September 12, 2015, the Vogons in Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy consider evolution a waste of time and fix everything they think needs fixing with surgery. Now humans can do almost the same thing, albeit on a much smaller scale, with tiny molecular scissors called "Cas9s" carried to their targets by DNA-seeking RNAs known as "CRISPRs." Read more →

Pictures Considered #36 : The Discovery of Bacterial Minicells

by Elio — Bacterial minicells were first reported in detail in 1967 by a group at the Oak Ridge National Labs led by Howard Adler. The paper had a provocative title: "Miniature Escherichia coli cells deficient in DNA." The authors realized that a mutation was involved and pointed to the fact that the division process appeared to be "normal", if misplaced along the cell. Read more →

A Sphere of Free Food

by Rachel Diner — At the February 2016 Ocean Sciences Meeting (OSM) in New Orleans, hundreds of presenters shared their experiences investigating the exciting lives of microbes in the world’s oceans. Coming from near and far, nearly 5,000 scientists and policy-makers swarmed the conference center; some zipping from room to room to catch several talks of interest, while others were content to stay... Read more →

A Snippet of Recent Microbial Reads

by Daniel P. Haeusser — Next semester I'll be starting a course co-taught with another member of the Canisius College Biology Department that integrates concepts from Environmental and Pathogenic Microbiology. After all, what is pathogenic disease other than the ecology of microbes interacting within their host environment? There are many books I have piled to mention here in a future post, but for now... Read more →

This Week in Microbiology #125: A minimal cell operating system

A deep sequencing study of commercially available probiotics, and design and synthesis of a minimal bacterial genome are the topics tackled by Vincent, Michael, and Michele on this episode of This Week in Microbiology. Read more →

Weakening The Mycolic Acid Fortress of M. tuberculosis

by Monika Buczek — Tuberculosis (TB), is an infectious disease caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb). Symptoms of an active TB infection include chronic cough with blood-tinged sputum, fever, and weight loss. In fact, prior to the 1882 discovery of the microbe by Robert Koch, TB was called "consumption" because the rapid rate with which infected patients lost body mass made them appear to be "consumed" by some unknown entity. Read more →

Talmudic Question #132

Best we know, endospore formation in bacteria is limited to the phylum Firmicutes. Why haven't others evolved to use this wonderful survival device? How would you teach a non-spore forming bacterium to make spores? Read more →

Let's eat! Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus couples predation with replication

by Jacky Lu — Predation in the animal world revolves around the senses. Anglerfish use light to lure in prey, sharks can smell the tiniest drop of blood in the ocean, bats rely on their keen sense of hearing to catch a passing insect. Predators not only have to find their prey, but they must also make the decision to pursue and capture them. Such dynamics between predator and prey exist in the macroscopic world of animals, but do they exist... Read more →