Small Things Considered

Book Review: The Genesis Quest

by Janie | The Genesis Quest is a tour-de-force recount of the eclectic effort to understand the origins of life on Earth, authored by science writer Michael Marshall. Here is a tale that spans from prebiotic chemistry to protocells, interlaced with tales of the idiosyncrasies of the scientists involved... Read more →

Microbiology for All Ages: More Small Friends Considered

by Daniel | The purpose of this blog is "to share our appreciation for the width and depth of the microbial activities on this planet." Isn’t it fantastic when that sense of microbiological wonder can also be shared with a child? Read more →

Microbes Aren't Mooks: The Abiding Threat of Antibiotic Resistance

by Daniel | The phrase 'mook chivalry' might not be recognized by many of our readers, but the situation it describes will certainly be familiar: A hero faces a crowd of villains who are ready to attack. Read more →

Pandemic Readings Considered

by Daniel | As we all hunker down in quarantine from the global spread of SARS-CoV-2 and associated COVID19, some may have extra time available, perhaps to pick up a good book. We therefore thought we’d help out by offering a list of suggested pandemic-related readings. Read more →

A Little More Than Kin, Less Than Kind

by Daniel | The paradoxes surrounding the concept of 'kin' are not only an aspect of human familial relationships, but also central components of biology through evolution. As far as we know, all of the astounding variety of life we observe on Earth descends from a single cell, a primordial, universal common ancestor that gave rise to all current cells. In metaphor, a seed growing into all of the branches on the Tree of Life. Read more →

Membranes to Molecular Machines: A Mechanical Vision of Life

by Janie | In his new book, Mathias Gro­te delves into our mo­le­cu­lar ma­chines with a fo­cus on mem­branes and their com­po­nents, es­pe­cial­ly pumps. He gives struc­tu­ral bio­lo­gy time in the lime­light – a break from the genetics and ge­no­mics frenzy of the modern era. Read more →

Book Review: The Power of Plagues

by Daniel | Microbiology nonfiction books tend to fall into the acade­mic category, basically as curated collections of review articles that detail a relatively specialized niche of the field. At the other end of the spectrum lie those books written purely for a general audience that might bring in microbiological themes within a larger scope, usually human health. Read more →

On your marks, get set, go!

by Christoph | When did you first hear about the "ge­ne­tic code" ? In high school ? Or in col­lege, in an un­der­gra­du­ate course in mo­le­cu­lar bio­lo­gy and/or ge­ne­tics ? In either case you were cer­tain­ly shown the fa­mous co­don table that spe­ci­fies which of the 64 pos­sible trip­lets in mes­sen­ger RNA (mRNA) are trans­la­ted in­to one of the 20 ca­no­ni­cal... Read more →

The Human Story, as Told by Our Genomes

by Jamie | As one of our wiser bloggers put it, "I doubt that STC readers are fo­cus­ed on­ly on mi­cro­bio­lo­gy. They must have other in­terests too." With that in­sight in mind, we're of­fer­ing up our im­pres­sions of a couple of books on­ly tan­gent­ial­ly re­la­ted to mi­cro­bes. In this case, a book de­scr­ibing the in­crea­sing­ly de­tail­ed pic­ture... Read more →

Ancient Microbial DNA: Paleomicrobiology

by Daniel P. Haeusser | As our readers are likely aware, we are holobionts whose functional genetic makeup goes beyond just the human cells. Not surprisingly, investigation of ancient microbial DNA (paleomicrobiology) can also help scientists understand human history and evolution. Read more →