by David Lipson — Thanks, Elio – this is a fascinating post. The silica cycle indeed deserves respect, and it is probably responsible for major planetary events, such as driving the evolution of C4 photosynthesis in land plants since the formation of the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau helped drive down CO2 levels to their low, pre-industrial levels. Some... Read more →
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Snacking on thistles (second bite)
by Christoph — For the thistle tortoise beetle, Cassida rubiginosa, biting once into its preferred food is not enough, it takes a second bite. So, 80 years after the first description of a bacterial symbiont in C. rubiginosa by H.-J. Stammer, Hassan Salem and his colleagues took up the thread and studied the symbiont to more... Read more →
Snacking on thistles (first bite)
by Christoph — Way back in 1936, the zoologist H.-J. Stammer published a study of various beetles of the Cassidinae family (order Coleoptera) and their microbial symbionts. Among them was the thistle tortoise beetle, Cassida rubiginosa, an obligate foliovore, or put another way, a dedicated vegan with a penchant for thistles (Cirsium sp.). Thistles were a pest for farmers in the pre-Roundup™ age, and some... Read more →
More Respect For the Silicon Cycle, Please
by Elio — Silicon is the second most abundant element within Earth’s crust and is necessary for the livelihood of protists, plants, and animals. Maybe best known, silica (SiO2 or opal) is used by marine organisms such as diatoms and rhizarians to build their glassy and often beautiful shells. Read more →
Occasionally, Microbiologists use Macroscopes...
by Christoph — If you'd ask people around you which hand tool characterizes a professional microbiologist, they would probably come up with the microscope. Much like hammer and saw would be named as typical carpenter tools, or the plough as typical for farmers ('hammer and sickle' is a similar case, yet not the point here). The light microscope... Read more →
What To Do When You Run Out of a Cherished Symbiont?
by Elio — The answer is easy: pick up another one. This happens with the cicadas, those noisy insects that have been in the mindfulness of humans since antiquity. Cicadas, like aphids, psyllids, leafhoppers and others, feed on plant sap fluids, which are rich in sugars but poor in amino acids and vitamins. Read more →
How to Build a Giant Winogradsky Column
by Scott Chimileski — In part one of my tour of the Microbial Life exhibition at the Harvard Museum of Natural History (HMNH), I wrote that the microscopy station and the live bacterial colonies are my personal favorites. Actually, those are my second and third favorites. I was saving my "most favorite" exhibit for its very own post: a giant-sized, living and changing Winogradsky column. Read more →
The Microbial Life Exhibition at the Harvard Museum of Natural History
by Scott Chimileski — In late 2015, I wrote an STC post about plans for a microbial exhibition at the Harvard Museum of Natural History. That article, Bringing the Microbial World into Our Natural History Museums, and another written at ASM.org in 2016, Age of the Microzoo, describe the background and motivation behind the exhibition. Now, I am pleased to share with the STC audience... Read more →
Talmudic Question #155 ...and #156
Coxiella burnetii, the agent of Q fever, is the only organism known to survive in an acidic lysosome of its host cells. Why haven’t other intracellular bacteria developed this skill? If that's old hat for you, look at Talmudic Question #156 by Samantha Kwah... Read more →