by Roberto
Our knowledge of the structure of microbial cells just keeps getting better as the resolution of imaging techniques continues to increase. A key player in this rapidly evolving technological field is cryo-electron tomography (cryoET) which, aided by powerful computational tools, allows for the generation of three-dimensional images of whole microbial cells...
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The Atlas of Cell Structure
Book Review: Transformer
by Janie
Here is a quote from the Hungarian biochemist Albert Szent-Györgyi: "Life is nothing but an electron looking for a place to rest." Bold statement with a good point, encapsulating the energetics and chemistry that underlies all life... This is the angle of viewing life on Earth that...
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Primo Levi's periodic table, and when scientists write fiction
by Janie
There are lots of fantastic books that convey love of a science, depict the braided lines of logic and intuition and luck in experimentation, and depict scientists' lives both in and beyond the lab. Memoir, fiction, biography. Science as metaphor for life, these books will frequently allude to...
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A Revisionist History of Science
by Janie
Whether read or listened to, a story is essentially a colorless armature made of words, and it's up to each reader/listener to interpret it, imagine it, and people it with appearances, colors, movements, emotions. The process depends upon the individual's own experiences, since all things present...
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A Microbiology Picture Book
by Janie
Here's a fun way to get little ones interested in microbiology. In Wonderful World of the Small: A First Book of Microbiology, Lindsey Millar and Vivien Sárkány introduce the diversity of microbes on Earth. They present an anthropomorphized cast of different types of microbes...
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The Lives of Fungi
by Elio
In the beginning of this gorgeous and intellectually fulfilling book, Britt tells us that, due to modern technology, fungi are now known to be "more ubiquitous than we thought" and are "much more important to the environment and, by extension, to ourselves." He proceeds to justify these statements...
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Otherlands' Tour of Microbes Through Prehistory
by Janie
"It is the crucial paradox at the heart of paleontology that practically all our information about life comes only from death." This line from Thomas Halliday's Otherlands, of course, refers to the fossil record. So, it stands to reason that the entire field of paleontology is contingent upon microbes...
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A Women's-History-Month Read: Her Hidden Genius (Book Review)
by Janie
March is Women's History Month. So, it was perfect timing to read a new historical fiction book on the life and work of a preeminent woman in scientific history, Rosalind Franklin. In Her Hidden Genius, author Marie Benedict sculpts a snapshot rendering of Rosalind Franklin from 1947 to 1958...
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Book Review: Finding the Mother Tree
by Janie
Behind the scenes, underground, fungal networks are essential to the wellbeing of forests. Trees symbiotically associate with mycorrhizal fungi, exchanging plant-produced sugars for fungus-gathered soil nutrients and water. It's an intimate arrangement: the fungal cells thread between...
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Book Review: Life's Edge
by Janie
Ask biologists what they study and the answers will quickly home in on living things, on particular lifeforms that they've spent countless hours thinking, scrutinizing, analyzing, and toiling over. Yet one further question – what exactly is a living thing? – is a sure-fire ticket to hesitation...
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