by Janie
Almost a century ago, Walther Goebl and Oswald Avery observed that Streptococcus pneumoniae cells lysed upon entering stationary phase, but the mechanism behind this autolysis remained elusive.
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by Janie
Almost a century ago, Walther Goebl and Oswald Avery observed that Streptococcus pneumoniae cells lysed upon entering stationary phase, but the mechanism behind this autolysis remained elusive.
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Posted on July 29, 2019 at 04:00 AM in Physiology & Genetics | Permalink | Comments (0)
What is a microbe? (Defend your definition.)
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Posted on July 24, 2019 at 11:58 PM in Talmudic Questions | Permalink | Comments (0)
by Christoph
Worry not, this is no lengthy contemplation on the use of classical Latin in scientific language. It's a not-so-short piece to emphasize that it makes sense to mark the ends of non-branched polymers like DNA and RNA, and thereby define their chemical directionality. Bioinformaticians who routinely work with DNA and RNA in fasta...
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Posted on July 21, 2019 at 10:29 PM in Physiology & Genetics | Permalink | Comments (0)
by Christoph
«let not Vanity ſeduce you to perſiſt in your Miſtake». No, it's not a spelling mistake that you see here. It's the 'long ſ', which was used in print well into the 18th century. And also the capitalization of nouns, unusual today, was common in 1743 when Henry Baker's treatise The Microscope Made Easy was published...
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Posted on July 17, 2019 at 11:43 PM in Methodology, Odds & Ends | Permalink | Comments (0)
by J. Jeffrey Morris
I have a confession to make. I get stressed. A lot. I think I've spent the better part of the last three years with the vague feeling I'm forgetting something really important. I bet there are a few people in the reading audience that can sympathize – it seems to be a pretty common experience for assistant professors. The stressors come...
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Posted on July 15, 2019 at 12:48 AM in Physiology & Genetics | Permalink | Comments (0)
Vincent, Michele, and Michael travel to San Diego to reminisce with Elio about his career, his work in microbiology, and his love for microbes and mushrooms.
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Posted on July 12, 2019 at 02:13 PM in This Week in Microbiology | Permalink | Comments (0)
by Elio
A rather specific term, trophosome refers – as per the Wikipedia – to 'an organ found in some animals that houses symbiotic bacteria that provide food for their host.' Trophé (τροφή) denotes nourishment, soma (σῶμα), body, denoting that trophosomes are intimately involved in their host's nutrition.
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Posted on July 11, 2019 at 04:00 AM in Physiology & Genetics, Symbioses | Permalink | Comments (0)
by Elio
Tampering with the chemistry of our holiest of molecules may seem sacrilegious, but it is widespread and conspicuous. In fact, DNA modifications abound. Think, for starters of DNA methylation, which is the main tool of epigenetics, or an even longer known modification, the DNA glycosylation that in some phages protects their DNA from...
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Posted on July 08, 2019 at 12:53 AM in Physiology & Genetics | Permalink | Comments (0)