Small Things Considered

Fine Reading: Evolution of Pathogen Tolerance

by Roberto | While reading a review yesterday, I recalled a conversation I had with a student nearly forty years ago. He did not appear interested in the subject of my lectures – bacterial genetics and physiology – so I was curious to know the reasons why. Read more →

Farewell San Francisco Sourdough?

by Roberto | Back in 1980, when I was a post-doc in the San Francisco Bay Area, I began to develop a taste for what I considered a truly unique bread: San Francisco sourdough. There was a certain mystique to it, everyone familiar with it claimed there was nothing like it anywhere else... Read more →

Rainfall and a Phyllosphere's Microbiota

by Mechas Zambrano and Roberto | Where do the microbes that colonize newly emerging ecosystems come from? Plants are ideal systems to address this fundamental question in microbial ecology. When a seed germinates, new ecosystems emerge as the plant grows and acquires its microbiota... Read more →

Extreme Living in the Atacama

by Roberto | This photograph resembles some of the images captured by the rover Perseverance and sent back to Earth from Mars. Instead, it was taken by a human at one the driest and most inhospitable places on Earth, the hyperarid Atacama Desert in northern Chile... Read more →

A Whiff of Taxonomy – Radiolaria

by Roberto | The men­tion of Radiolaria al­ways brings to mind Ernst Haeckel's as­ton­ish­ing hand-drawn ima­ges, com­piled in his clas­sic plate col­lect­ion Art Forms in Na­ture. I'm always mes­mer­ized by the sym­metry and de­tail of his draw­ings of mi­cros­cop­ic ske­le­tons. Haec­kel's abi­li­ty to com­bine science and art is one as­pect of his re­mark­able career. His life pre­sents... Read more →

Of Terms in Biology: The Biological Pump

by Roberto | Quick, without much think­ing, what image came to mind when you read "bio­lo­gi­cal pump" in to­day's title? If you are like me, pre­dis­posed to think in cel­lu­lar and mo­le­cu­lar terms, you might have thought of an in­te­gral mem­brane pro­tein that pumps mo­le­cules in­to or out the cell. Per­haps any of... Read more →

Of Terms in Biology: Alpha, Beta, Gamma Diversities

by Elio
In ecology, these terms refer to various le­vels of species diversities... Read more →

Fungomania III. A Yeast Messes with the Gut Microbiome

by Elio | The microbiome of the large in­test­ine of mam­mals, mainly com­posed of bac­te­ria, is the sub­ject of in­numer­able cur­rent stu­dies. And for good rea­sons. Of all the body's mi­cro­biomes, it is the lar­gest in num­bers, varie­ty, and of like­ly im­port­ance in health and dis­ease. De­fy­ing ex­pect­ations, it is re­mark­ably stable... Read more →

Fungomania I. Fungi Make Flowers

by Elio | Nature seems to be in­tent in fool­ing every­one, ex­per­ienced bo­tan­ists included. An ex­ample is seen in the abi­li­ty of some fungi to change the ter­mi­nal leaves of cer­tain must­ard plants into what look like flo­ral pe­tals, mak­ing them look like real flowers. Polli­nat­ing in­sects are at­tracted to them and land on these struc­tures... Read more →

Antibiotics and the Foods We Eat

by Roberto | When it comes to the ani­mals that hu­mans raise to eat, a quick look at their num­bers proves sober­ing. World­wide, there are some 650 mill­ion pigs, 1 bill­ion heads of cattle and 26 bill­ion chickens. Such numbers ca­not be achieved by tra­di­tio­nal ani­mal rear­ing pract­ices that use ex­ten­sive surface areas. Rather, most of these ani­mals are grown... Read more →