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 →