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 →
A Bacterial Aphrodisiac
by Elio — Sex is kindled by many factors, not all anticipated. Here is an unexpected one: bacteria make an aphrodisiac. But hold on, we know that bacteria engage in untold interactions with eukaryotes whose environment they share, so this should not be surprising. Fact is, the default mode of microbial existence is social, so why not sex? Read more →
Snippet ‒ The Fluke of the Eye
by Elio — The wide-ranging stories of how parasites alter their host's behavior rank among the most fascinating in all of biology. I, for one, am enthralled by the convolutions of these interactions, all involving a high level of communication between disparate organism. Read more →
If You Were a Carpenter Ant
by Roberto — If you were a Carpenter ant (Camponotus leonardi) in a rainforest in Thailand, your nest would be built high atop the canopy and, as a worker, you would seldom venture down to the ground during your foraging trips. Somehow, perhaps for the presence of eerie-looking ant graveyards, you are hesitant to go along the path on the forest floor... Read more →
Fine Reading: Killing by Type VI Secretion...
by Elio — A recent paper by McNally et al. entitled: 'Killing by Type VI secretion drives genetic phase separation and correlates with increased cooperation' begins with the felicitous paragraph below. I think that it encapsulates the main features of the paradigm shift that has occurred recently, from bacteria as lone... Read more →
Bottoms up: Nefarious Nematodes and Red Rumps
by Michael Haar — Deep in the Amazon, a supervillain of microscopic proportions strikes fear into the ganglion of honest tree-dwelling ants in every canopy. Myrmeconema neotropicum is a parasitic nematode, one of the countless species in the phylum Nematoda that exist in nearly every location on Earth. For many, parasitism is a topic that can... Read more →
Let's eat! Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus couples predation with replication
by Jacky Lu — Predation in the animal world revolves around the senses. Anglerfish use light to lure in prey, sharks can smell the tiniest drop of blood in the ocean, bats rely on their keen sense of hearing to catch a passing insect. Predators not only have to find their prey, but they must also make the decision to pursue and capture them. Such dynamics between predator and prey exist in the macroscopic world of animals, but do they exist... Read more →
A Snippet: Who Invented Agriculture, the Ants or the Bees?
by Elio — Agriculture was invented at the time of the dinosaurs, long before there was anything resembling a primate on earth. Take the example of the leaf cutting ants. For about 50 million years, they have been harvesting plant material, bringing it to their nest, chewing it up, and using the chewate to grow fungi, which is what they eat... Read more →
Kiss and Make Up: Myxococcus xanthus demonstrates bacterial cooperation
by Ada Hagan — If there's a hot topic in microbiology, it's bacterial interaction and communication. Bacteria "talk" to each other using a complex chemical language we are only just beginning to understand. Quorum sensing allows communication between spatially separated cells of similar species. Functioning similarly, bacteriocins warn non-immune bacteria... Read more →
The Attraction of Magnetotactic Bacteria
by Daniel P. Haeusser — Regular readers of Small Things Considered may recall our mention of the magnetotactic bacteria, organisms that can sense the Earth's magnetic field to orient themselves and distinguish up from down. The magnetotactic bacteria vary greatly in morphology, metabolism, and phylogeny, but they all share a little tool that permits the magnetic sensing underlying their coordinated movement (magnetotaxis). Read more →