A twist on Schrödinger's Cat… Instead of radioisotope, a Geiger counter, a poison and a cat, inside a sealed box with a light and kept at ambient temperature and atmospheric pressure, you place a Winogradsky column and a sealed vial... Read more →
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Unicellular Capsaspora and animal multicellularity
by Victoria Shabardina — It is common in biology to look at little things to learn how the big parts work: we study molecules to understand cells and study organs to know how the body functions. But it is different with Capsaspora, because it is a whole, a complete single-cell organism, and it is actively studied for elucidating how... Read more →
Of Terms in Biology: Cytokines
by Elio — Cytokines are small proteins (~5−20 kDa) that play a large role in our defenses against infection. They stimulate both the innate and the acquired immunity and coordinate the interplay between the two, thus can be properly called immunomodulators. There are lots of them, including interferons, interleukins, tumor necrosis factors, chemokines... Read more →
TWiM 216: It starts with a cough
Is saliva more sensitive for SARS-CoV-2 detection in COVID-19 patients? Read more →
Virus. ...simply a piece of bad news wrapped up in protein, really ?
by Christoph — In my prior post, I answered the question "are viruses alive?" with a firm: no. That was the short answer, but there is also a long answer... and it's long because it's complicated. Read more →
Virus? ...simply a piece of bad news wrapped up in protein.
by Christoph — In the middle of the first major pandemic of my lifetime I feel the need, as a microbiologist, to make occasional contributions that may help individuals and society approach the pandemic in a reasonably informed way. Today, I'd like to contribute with a small dose of 'microbial literacy,' as called for by Ken Timmis and colleagues... Read more →
Bacterial Genomes, IKEA-Style (Some Assembly Required)
by Janie — Much like “artificial” languages like Esperanto or Tolkien's fifteen (!) Elvish tongues, genomes, too, are subject to manipulation and modulation, by the scientist's hand. There's been a smattering of posts here on the blog that touched on synthetic genomes... Read more →
Pictures Considered #51 : Headful Packaging, Literally...
by Christoph — For more than two decades we have known that the double-stranded DNA of phages is neatly rolled up in their capsids and fills them completely. Cerritelli et al. (1997) have demonstrated this for coliphage T7, and later Jiang et al. (2006) for Salmonella phage ε15. Yet, with a length of ~40 kb, both phages have more 'medium sized' genomes, and it is fine to learn now... Read more →
The Crowded Nucleoid
by Elio — Eukaryotic cells may be composed of many parts, but, by and large, they make some kind of sense. Take the nucleus for example. Its space is defined by the nuclear membrane and, for all the complexity of its many transactions, it is amenable to a reasonable understanding. You cannot say this for the prokaryotic nucleoid... Read more →