by Meaghan O’Neill — Ever since the domestication of wolves, humans have probably remarked upon the particularly bad breath that our dog companions frequently display. Medieval illuminated bestiaries speculated that the strong odor from a wolf's mouth could betray his presence to prey – like a flock of sheep – causing the wolf to its make approach from downwind. Read more →
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Let's make some more tyrosine, together! (2|2)
by Christoph — Figure 2 in the Anbutsu et al. paper is so stuffed with information about the weevils' Nardonella endosymbiont genomes that I better tear it a little apart to show you that it is actually possible to observe genome reduction 'at work'. As said in part 1, the genomes are tiny (0.2‒0.23 Mb) and contain... Read more →
Talmudic Question #161
by Elio — Can you imagine a way in which the microbiome is directly involved in human intelligence and/or consciousness? Read more →
Let's make some more tyrosine, together! (1|2)
by Christoph — Surprisingly, it is not particularly difficult to persuade the yeast S. cerevisiae to accept E. coli bacteria as 'roommates', that is, as substitute for defective mitochondria (see Elio's recent blog). As 'housing mediator' you have to provide the prospective roommate with a defense against the host's SNARE system, 'disable' both partners by engineering... Read more →
How is Light Made? – A Snippet
by Elio — Ever since as children we saw fireflies emitting light at night, we ranked luminescence high in excitement of natural phenomena. We learned later that other kinds of living things, such as bacteria, protists, fungi, insects, and many others, are also capable of emitting light. Read more →
Sensing Quorum Backwards
by Elio — Obvious in the establishment and progress in bacterial pathogenesis is that the inoculum, the number of bacteria entering their host at one time, must be of an effective size. Depending on the infectivity of the species, this can vary from a single bacterium to millions of them. Read more →
Phage Therapy – an Update
by Elio — Has there ever been a more perplexing topic in microbiology than phage therapy? Well, that of probiotics comes close. Both have an over 100-year history, both have proponents as well as detractors, both have seen major investments in research and commercialization. Read more →
Go Ahead, Prove that Eukaryotic Cells Arose Via Endosymbiosis
by Elio — Say you want to prove once and for all the endosymbiotic theory of the origin of eukaryotic cells, substantiating that a cell (according to many, an archaeon) acquired a bacterium that eventually morphed into a mitochondrion. Read more →