Small Things Considered

Talmudic Question #186

In their classical experiments, Oswald Ave­ry, Colin Mac­Leod, and Mac­lyn McCarty showed that strep­to­coc­ci in a spe­ci­fic growth phase take up exo­genous DNA, result­ing in a trans­for­ma­tion of their phe­no­type... Read more →

Happy Birthday Elio!

by Roberto and the STC team  
Not long ago, Elio offered some mus­ings "On Old Age." As is of­ten the case when read­ing Elio's writ­ings, the first couple of sen­ten­ces al­ready taught me se­ve­ral les­sons. For one, I learn­ed a new word, se­nec­ti­tude. I sus­pect I will be using it more and more with each pas­sing day. But there was more, Elio re­vealed that his birth­day... Read more →

A Losing Battle

by Elio  
Relatively few people are aware the virus that causes Covid19 has its own name, to wit, SARS-CoV-2. Outside the scientific literature, this is seldom used. Yet, almost everyone is aware that the AIDS virus is called HIV. But this is exceptional. The overwhelming number of people call a virus after the disease... Read more →

TWiM 239: The Phoenix of Bacteria

The TWiM team reviews how variants of P. aeruginosa survive anti­mi­crobial treatment, and a decrease in the antimicrobial resistance of the gut microbiome in the presence of the fungus C. albicans. Read more →

Thankfully We Aren't Facing Ebolenza

by Daniel  
If you haven't had your fill of pandemic related media yet, there is one recent novel that you may want to add to the Spring/Sum­mer reading list. Even if you're tired of hearing about SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19, The End of October... Read more →

We remember Tom Brock

by Elio  
Tom Brock (1926−2021) can rea­di­ly be con­sider­ed the father of ex­tre­mo­phile mi­cro­bio­logy. He pio­neered the study of high tem­pe­ra­ture-lov­ing mi­crobes, by in­ves­ti­gat­ing, in a near­ly fro­lic­some way, the hot springs of Yel­low­stone Park. He car­ried out this work pret­ty much alone, with both ex­pe­ri­men­tal in­ge­nuity and con­cept­ual gusto, ... Read more →

Cyanobacteria fly kites? Come on...

by Christoph  
You've probably heard of spiders that fly with­tout wings. They climb on­to flow­ers or leaves, stand on their tip­toes, and push gos­sam­er threads of silk from their spin­nerets, glands in their ab­domen, and take off. They do that to reach a near­by twig when weav­ing their webs or to make long-dist­ance flights, some­times over... Read more →

Of Terms in Biology: Alpha, Beta, Gamma Diversities

by Elio  
In ecology, these terms refer to various le­vels of species diversities... Read more →

Fungomania III. A Yeast Messes with the Gut Microbiome

by Elio  
The microbiome of the large in­test­ine of mam­mals, mainly com­posed of bac­te­ria, is the sub­ject of in­numer­able cur­rent stu­dies. And for good rea­sons. Of all the body's mi­cro­biomes, it is the lar­gest in num­bers, varie­ty, and of like­ly im­port­ance in health and dis­ease. De­fy­ing ex­pect­ations, it is re­mark­ably stable... Read more →

Fungomania II. A (not so) new face of Fusarium

by Roberto  
This is a story about fusaria by an admittedly non-expert. Much of what I write in this post I just recently learned, thus revealing from the start my naïveté on the fascinating subject of fungi as high protein foods. Read more →