Small Things Considered

An Interlude in Microbiology

by Elio  
If before 1950 you had asked "are bacteria cells?" the chances are that you would be told "it depends…" In other words, no one knew for sure. It took Joshua Lederberg, who, upon discovering mating in E. coli, proposed that bacteria were indeed cells. Read more →

In the Company of Elio

by Roberto  
It's the last week of April and once again there's reason to celebrate. This time of the year we tend to pause and ponder over some eccentric subjects. We've discovered that rare and very special bacterium Eliobacter woosyi, partaken in an exceptional vintage, and discussed the hidden meaning of prime numbers, among others. Read more →

Visualizing DNA Replication

by Roberto  
Christoph's recent post on visualizing introns brought back wonderful memories. In mid-1976, I spent the first several months of my PhD visualizing replicating plasmid DNA. I loved it! Here's why... Read more →

Pictures Considered #58: Visualizing Introns

by Christoph  
When we talk about genes and genomes today, we al­most re­flex­i­ve­ly thinks of long strings of the let­ters G, A, T, and C. And by read­ing se­quen­ces, we ea­si­ly de­tect stret­ches that code for pro­teins. We de­tect pro­mo­ters, tran­script­ion fac­tor bind­ing mo­tifs, start/stop sig­nals for tran­scrip­tion, sig­nals where in­trons are re­moved by splic­ing from pri­ma­ry tran­scripts...  Read more →

What is a Biomarker? A Snippet

by Elio
Most likely, we have all run into the term "bio­mar­ker," no? So, what is a bio­mar­ker? In 1998, the NIH Bio­mar­kers De­fi­ni­tions Work­ing Group de­fined a bio­mar­ker as "a cha­rac­ter­is­tic that is ob­ject­ive­ly mea­sured and eval­uat­ed as an in­di­ca­tor of nor­mal bio­lo­gi­cal pro­cesses,... Read more →

TWiM 284: Flies, Pigs, and Squid

Housefly dispersal of antimicrobial resistant bacteria, and a reproductive organ in squid linked to symbiotic bacteria.
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Sensing Blue Light: From Bacteria to Birds

by Mechas  
That many birds migrate over long distances is a well-known fact. But reading the book "World on the Wing: The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds" by Scott Weidensaul proved to be a true eye-opener. I also learned a fact that really stuck with me. Read more →

A two-part resurrection tale (2|2)

by Christoph  
In continuation of the first part of the tale: what is the "re­sur­rec­tion" in the title about? A bit of nos­tal­gia, as I will "re­sur­rect" a sto­ry that is based on re­search from ~30 years ago (and to­day main­ly known by de­di­cat­ed plas­mid spe­cial­ists, if at all). A simple but vex­ing quest­ion bothered... Read more →

A two-part resurrection tale (1|2)

by Christoph  
Besides a resurrection tale that I'll re­late to in the se­cond part, this post will be about an­ti-de­fense sys­tems of plas­mids as an in­trin­sic part of the seem­ing­ly end­less arms race bet­ween con­ju­ga­tive ele­ments and their hosts. Still, I am not in­clined to act as war cor­res­pon­dent, and cer­tain­ly not at a time... Read more →