Small Things Considered

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 Sanchez
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 →

The Human Circadian Rhythm is a Microbial Business

by Elio
Nice of the Nobel Committee to award the 2017 prize for Medicine for work on the circadian rhythm of fruit flies. This gives us an entry into a paper that helps explain how this cycle actually works. It won't surprise readers of this blog that the answer is microbial and concerns, not unexpectedly, the intestinal microbiota Read more →