Small Things Considered

How Much Does Biology Weigh?

by Elio
The very last thing that happened to me at the June 2018 ASM's Atlanta meeting (Microbe 2018) was a particularly rewarding coincidence. As I was ready to step on an escalator at the convention center, ready to go to the airport, a young man stopped me and asked to talk to me. It was... Read more →

Why You Must Plot Your Growth Data On Semi-log Graph Paper

by Elio
Take our word for it. For experiment involving growing cells, bacterial or otherwise, God meant you to pay attention to the condi­tions of growth. He also meant you to plot the results of a growth ex­periment on semi-log paper. Why? Plotting the log of the number of cells versus time buys you... Read more →

The History and Politics Surrounding our Attempts to Harness and Control Germs

by Daniel
The scientific pursuit does not occur in a social vacuum, dis­con­nected from our cultural experiences. At Small Things Considered, we usu­ally stick to the data and stay away from potentially explosive topics like po­litics. Sometimes we detour into historical context or con­sider bio­gra­phi­cal tidbits on the personalities involved... Read more →

Cultivating the Uncultivable

by Elio
In our age of metagenomics, the uncultivable microbe is no longer a ghost-like entity whose existence is to be surmised. Instead, 'uncultiva­bles' now occupy prominent daises in a microbiome stage. Fine and good, but cultivation is still a mainstay in microbiological work and growing a someone in the lab is still highly desirable. In the case of... Read more →

Tainted

by Vivienne Baillie Gerritsen
It has happened to all of us. You are seated in a good restaurant and the waiter has just brought you the wine you ordered. He solemnly shows you the label. You nod, and he proceeds to slit open the lead seal with the tip of his corkscrew. Pealing the seal off the bottle neck, he then... Read more →

Why, oh, why, can't life be less complicated ?

by Christoph
It could all be so easy! Take a bacterial cell, say, a single E. coli  cell with all its ~4,300 genes nicely strung like pearls on the neck­lace of its single circular chromosome. Present this E. coli  cell with so­mething to eat and it starts growing and, while growing, replicates its chromosome starting at oriC, the unique replication origin. When the cell has reached twice its original size and now con­tains two chro­mo­so­mes, the cell divides... Read more →

Friend & Foe

by Christoph
In a post two month ago, I referred to 'defensive symbioses'. In a nutshell: one or more symbiotic bacteria produce a cocktail of antibiotics that provide protection of a eukaryotic host against an array of opportunistic bacterial and fungal pathogens. I introduced the term not in contrast but... Read more →

Microbe 2018

by Elio
recently attended the ASM Microbe 2018 meeting in Atlanta and have a short report to make. I went to my first such meeting as a graduate student in 1952 and to many others subsequently, so this was hardly a new experience for me. Read more →

How To Turn An E. coli Into An Archaeon (Sort Of)

by Elio
Things pop up in microbiology that are truly astounding. The claim that one can partially turn a bacterium into an archaeon rates high on this list. Archaea and Bacteria belong to different main branches of the tree of life and have many distinctive biochemical and structural differences. Read more →