Small Things Considered

Talmudic Question #188

Best we know, which contains the largest number of species: the Bacteria, the Fungi, or the Protists? Read more →

The Life of an RNA Molecule, Through a Phase-Separation Lens

by Janie | Inside of a cell, some biomolecules cluster together to behave as a liquid. These liquids can reversibly form distinct phases, like the classic example of lava lamps, where mineral oil blobs slip and slide off the water-and-alcohol mix. This is liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS)... Read more →

Fine Reading: Did You Know That Algae Can Be Pathogens?

by Elio | Not all of us, me in­clud­ed, are ful­ly aware that the al­gae in­clude pa­tho­gens of many ver­te­bra­tes, such as hu­mans and do­mes­ti­cat­ed ani­mals. The most im­port­ant ones are Pro­to­the­ca bo­vis (once P. zopfii) and P. wicker­hamii. A fine over­view of this sub­ject by Shave, Mill­yard and May from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bir­ming­ham, UK, has been... Read more →

Paradigm Shifts, Paradigm Drifts

by Elio | In 1962, Thomas Kuhn wrote a book of se­mi­nal im­port­ance, The Struc­ture of Scien­ti­fic Re­vo­lu­tions"se­ries of peace­ful in­ter­ludes punc­tua­ted by in­tel­lec­tu­al­ly vio­lent re­vo­lu­tions," in which "one con­cept­ual world view is re­placed by another." Pa­ra­digm shifts oc­cur... Read more →

Teachers Corner: The Name for the Small Things We Consider

by Elio & Roberto | As microbiology teachers, ma­ny of us de­light in re­tel­ling the 17th cen­tu­ry sto­ry of Leeu­wen­hoek peer­ing through his mi­cro­sco­pe at samp­les from his den­tal plaque or Delft ca­nal wa­ters and nam­ing the crea­tur­es he ob­serv­ed "ani­mal­cul­es." How­ever, that sto­ry is apo­cryph­al be­cause Leeu­wen­hoek spoke Dutch. The words he used to de­scribe Read more →

Care For A Glass Of Chicha?

by Elio | Alcoholic beverages typify human societies. Think of champagne and the French, scotch and the Scot, and so on. In the Western regions of South America, mainly Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia, the main artisanal alcoholic drink made by the native people is called chicha. Read more →

Pictures Considered #53 : The ocean water column is profoundly dark...

by Christoph | ...for the most part. And it's vastly deep­er than the dia­gram Ro­ber­to showed in his re­cent post "The Bio­lo­gi­cal Pump." The eu­photic and meso­pe­lagic zone sizes are cor­rect, but do not even ap­pro­xi­ma­te­ly co­re­late with their ver­ti­cal re­pre­sen­ta­tion in the dia­gram. Why is this a point... Read more →

Bacterial Symbionts Halt The Disease Burden of Dengue Virus

by Rupinder Kaur, Sarah R. Bordenstein, and Seth R. Bordenstein | Amidst a global surge and focus on COVID-19 infections, other diseases that have had and will continue to have impact on hu­man health cannot be forgotten. Dengue, for example, continues to be a major mosquito-borne viral infection, impacting more than 100 million people per year. Dengue can inflict... Read more →