by Mechas — News media are packed with warnings about climate change – those long–term shifts in temperature and weather patterns that today are largely attributed to human activities. Microbes, inextricably linked and key to planetary health, offer sustainable solutions. Read more →
How to grow shrubs
by Christoph — Exactly eight years ago today, we introduced you to the 'Hedgehogs In Your Garden'. No, we had not turned our backs on the Small Things and became gardeners instead. Again today, it is not about gardening activities, namely, 'How to grow shrubs'. Let me explain... Read more →
Of Terms in Biology: Edaphon
by Roberto — Soil, the material on the surface of the ground on which plants grow, is itself teeming with life. And there's a term that unifies all that life as an interconnected whole: edaphon. Though it is seldom found in the scientific literature, I will argue that it should be more widely taught and used. Read more →
Endophytic Streptomyces & Plant Growth
by Roberto — Because of the deleterious effects on soil due to the prolonged use and overuse of synthetic fertilizers, the quest for bacteria able to promote plant growth is an ongoing pursuit. Yet, these searches are usually focused on members of a few genera, prime amongst these Bacillus and Pseudomonas. What about the Streptomyces? Read more →
The Dawn of Molecular Ecology
by Roberto — Almost exactly one year ago, I wrote a post on the key role played by a group of Spanish scientists in the early development of microbial molecular ecology. My main point was to drive home how the work they carried out in the early 1970s on species successions in the human gut... Read more →
Thoughts on O-Antigen Variation
by Roberto — The O-side chains of lipopolysaccharides (LPS), the outer most feature of most Gram-negative's outer membrane, are highly variable in terms of their chain length and chemical composition. In my last post, I described how the O-side chain of some bacterial strains serve as a settlement and metamorphosis cue for a marine invertebrate. My thoughts immediately took me to this question: What was the early evolutionary history of O-side chain variability? Read more →
Larval Settlement
by Roberto — Animals originate, evolve, and undergo development in a microbial world. A beautiful example of how animal development is guided by bacterial chemical cues is the metamorphosis of the bottom dwelling marine worm Hydroides elegans. Read more →
The Nitroplast, a Nitrogen-Fixing Organelle
by Mechas — The ability to fix nitrogen is usually regarded as a property of only a few diazotrophic bacteria and archaea. A new study now shows that some eukaryotes may be capable of fixing nitrogen via the newly described nitroplast, an organelle that has evolved from an endosymbiont. Read more →
Sequencing en Masse
by Roberto — For someone who learned how to determine a short DNA sequence, say 50 bases, by first transcribing a DNA fragment into RNA and then sequencing the RNA using the laborious fingerprinting approach (that was 1975), current DNA sequencing is nothing short of miraculous. Read more →
Oscillibacter and Cholesterol
by Roberto — From its humble beginnings as an inhabitant of the Japanese corbicula clam alimentary canal to center stage attention-getter as a cholesterol-lowering resident of the human gut, Oscillibacter has experienced a meteoric rise to stardom... Read more →