by Roberto — I was recently made aware of one of Earth's "most interesting living beings owing primarily to its power of elongation, its wonderful elasticity and its great freedom of movement." Thus begins a captivating 1911 article by S. O. Mast, describing the amazing features of the ciliate Lacrymaria olor. Read more →
Chemotaxis Praxis
by Janie — In storytelling, there is a famous principle called Chekhov's gun. "If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise, don't put it there." This pithy (and very debatable) directive, attributed to the eponymous playwright, smells a whole lot like the (similarly very debatable) viewpoint of adaptationism... Read more →
Luciferin in Scintillons at Sea
by Janie — Summer through autumn is the time of year for marine dinoflagellates' famed light festivals. If the conditions are just right, the roll of an ocean wave or the push of a kayak paddle or the sway of your legs as you wade in deeper is enough to set the waters... Read more →
Stay Away, Stay Away – There Is Danger Ahead
by Elio — In ancient times, persons suffering from a dreaded disease believed to be contagious, such as leprosy, were given a bell to ring and thus noisily announce their presence. Healthy people could then move away and try to avoid contact. Amazingly, bacteria use an analogous strategy. Read more →
A Simple Decision
by Manuel Sánchez — The story to be told here is about how a 'data' biologist had to 'put on his lab coat' to solve a problem of a 'boot biologist.' In 1906 the American zoologist Herbert Spencer Jennings conducted an experiment with the protozoan Stentor roeseli to determine how it reacted to an irritant stimulus. S. roeseli is a sessile, trumpet-shaped protozoan... Read more →
How to Swim Through Goo: Lessons from a Microbial Menagerie
by Janie — One of my favorite childhood book/TV series was 'The Magic School Bus', which follows quirky science teacher Ms. Frizzle and her class in their magic school bus as they go on field trips to outer space, through the food chain, or inside the human body. I especially liked the episode in which the class shrinks down to the microscopic level... Read more →
More on "How to Tell Up And Down"
by Alexander Weitzel — The process I will be discussing is plant gravitropism, the ability of higher plants to sense the vector in which gravity is acting and grow parallel to that vector, either in the positive direction (shoots and leaves) or in the negative direction (roots). Read more →
The Way Up and The Way Down
by Elio — I admit to not having paid much attention to the mechanisms that plants and animals use to stand up straight, or, in the case of plants, also to descend into the soil. Yet, on reflection, the skill in detecting the effect of gravity, now called gravitropism, the older term being geotropism, is essential for life. Read more →
Flagellar Motors: How a Bacterium Shakes its Groove Thing
by Mike Delmont — Many things in our lives are so common that we take them for granted, forgetting their remarkable complexity. These can range from the social microbiology involved in cheese making, to the physics behind the internal combustion engine, or the anatomy/physiology behind taking a couple of steps... Read more →
Dial "V" for Murder
by Christoph — If you read this blog frequently and, perhaps, because we "emphasize the unusual and the unexpected phenomena", you may feel a little, Um.., bored to see yet another post on horizontal gene transfer (HGT). But wait, we've actually touched this topic in fewer than 30 of our 1,200+ posts. That's less than the... Read more →