by Sabrina Fitzgerald — Most people are familiar with the concept of a carbon footprint. Some may also know there is such a thing as a water footprint. But who has ever heard of a plastic footprint? Well, soon, more and more people will have. Read more →
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A Whiff of Taxonomy – Pseudoalteromonas
by Elio — One runs into new names of bacteria all the time and making sense of this taxonomic cavalcade is demanding. Which taxa are worth remembering? Clearly, that is dictated by your current interests, but that is dangerously insular, a hit-and-miss proposition if there ever was one. What to do? Read more →
TWiM #152: Wooden steps
The TWiMmers get cozy with symbionts: the bacteria that allow a giant shipworm to oxidize sulfur, and algae that live within salamander cells. Read more →
Breaking the Oxygen Barrier in Microbial Cultivation
by Jesse McNichol — Oxygen comprises one fifth of our atmosphere, and we take for granted that this a good thing. After all, aerobic creatures like ourselves could not exist without free O2. Not all life shares this feeling. Oxygen and its derivatives (known as "reactive oxygen species" or ROS) can wreak havoc on the biochemistry of many microbes. Read more →
Snippet ‒ The Fluke of the Eye
by Elio — The wide-ranging stories of how parasites alter their host's behavior rank among the most fascinating in all of biology. I, for one, am enthralled by the convolutions of these interactions, all involving a high level of communication between disparate organism. Read more →
Making Genes from Scratch? Prokaryotes do too, after all
by Christoph — When bacteria add new genes to their 'fexible genome' by integration of a temperate phage they find themselves in the precarious situation of 'shared ownership'. Because, at any time or under stressful conditions, the phage can enter the lytic cycle. The phage then 'reclaims ownership' of its genes... Read more →
Making Genes from Scratch? Prokaryotes not so much...
by Christoph — There is now convincing evidence that yes, Eukaryotes make novel genes from scratch (see our previous post). But what's about the Prokaryotes? Turns out an answer to this question is not so straightforward. Let me try anyway... Read more →
Making Genes from Scratch? Eukaryotes do...
by Christoph — One curated database, that of the Joint Genome Institute (JGI), has collected 10,000+ complete genomes of prokaryotes and eukaryotes over the last two decades. Multiply this number by 10 for 'draft' or 'unfinished' genomes and you understand why we sometimes talk of 'the sequencing craze'. Impressive as this number is, for the... Read more →
TWiM #150: Microbiology is where it’s at
In recognition of National Medical Laboratory Professionals Week, Robin Patel speaks with the TWiM team about directing a clinical bacteriology laboratory, and how an observation made by a laboratory technologist lead to the finding that Ureaplasma species can cause a system metabolic disturbance, hyperammonemia. Read more →
Island Stories and Venus's Hair
by Christoph — El Hierro is the last in a row of islands in the Canary archipelago, Atlantic Ocean: the farthest west and farthest south, the smallest, and youngest. Its geographic coordinates 27°45'N 18°00'W translate to a longitude of ~450 km west of the Moroccan coast, and to the latitude of Tampa, Florida. All Islas Canarias are... Read more →