Small Things Considered

Outer Membrane Vesicles and Biopearling – A Snippet

by Elio | When I started out in microbiology some 70 years ago, bacte­ria were just little balls or sausage-shaped rods, and, if you were of a fancy mindset, corkscrew-like structures. Some were endowed with flagella or capsules, but not much else. Their surface area was limited to what you could see under an optical microscope. Read more →

A Shuttle Service for Phosphate

by Christoph | It's amazing, again and again, to see elec­tron mi­cro­scop­ic ima­ges of or­der­ly chains of elec­tron-dense, mem­bra­ne-en­closed mag­ne­ti­te crys­tals with­in bac­te­ri­al cells that turn their car­riers in­to ti­ny com­pass need­les. So, it's no sur­prise that here at STC, Elio, Gem­ma, and Da­niel had been at­trac­ted by mag­ne­to­tac­tic bac­te­ria (MTBs) ear­lier. Now we team­ed up with Vi­vien­ne Bail­lie Ger­rit­sen from Pro­tein Spot­light,... Read more →

How Do Tardigrades Withstand Drying?

by Elio | Recently, tardigrades or wa­ter bears made the news be­cause they had been loa­ded on a space cap­sule hea­ded for the moon. Alas, the space­craft crashed on its way down and the fate of the ti­ny pas­sen­gers is un­known. This gives us a rea­son for re­vi­si­ting these fas­ci­na­ting crea­tures and to bring the topic up to date. Read more →

A Microbial Liver

by Elio
Best I can tell, the marine flatworms Paracatenula suggest a novel twist on symbiosis. Here, symbiotic bacteria do not just provide carbon compounds for their host but actually store them. And they do that also for energy... Read more →

Making Mycorrhrizae. A Snippet.

by Elio | Very high on the list of this world's vital sym­bio­ses are the my­cor­rhi­zae, the as­so­ci­a­tion of fun­gal fi­la­ments with plant root­lets. About 90% of all vas­cu­lar plants (from ferns on up) pos­sess them. They con­tri­bute great­ly to the health of the plants, being a ma­jor source of ni­tro­gen, salts, and water... Read more →

The Complex Anatomy and Physiology of the Gut of Wood-feeding Beetles. A Snippet.

by Elio | The digestive system of animals can be wondrously complex. Think of our own, which consists of such diverse organs as the mouth, the esophagus, stomach, the small and large intestines, and the anus. Each one is responsible for a particular set of functions. Is such a division of labor also seen in "simpler" animals? This question was asked recently of wood-feeding beetles by a group of no less than 18 investigators from all over the US. Read more →

Genome with the Wind...

by Jaime E. Zlamal | When there is geogra­phi­cal se­pa­ra­tion, we can an­ti­ci­pate ge­ne­tic dif­fe­ren­ces. That's ex­act­ly what a team led by Kon­stan­tin Se­ve­ri­nov ex­pec­ted to find when they set out to stu­dy geo­gra­phi­cal­ly dist­ant po­pu­la­tions of Ther­mus bac­te­ria. Af­ter all, these mi­cro­bes ge­ne­ral­ly live in hot springs at tem­pe­ra­tures around 160 de­grees Fah­ren­heit (~70° C). How­ever, despite... Read more →

Turdopoiesis

by Elio | When it comes to consistency, we are somewhere between cows and goats. I am talking of course about the texture of our feces, which in health are neither runny nor very hard. When it comes to the speed of evacuation, we are also in-between: we poop at about 2 centimeters per second, elephants at 6 cm/sec and dogs at 1 cm/sec. Read more →

Prokaryotic Pointillism: When a Sea Sponge Endosymbiont Paints the Bigger Picture

by Janie
A while ago, I read a piece from Catapult Magazine that mused about the strangeness of eating fish. The article asked, why do we so willingly eat creatures that come from a place so poorly understood? Read more →

Geography and Geology

by Elio | When Biology emerged as a mo­dern sci­ence du­ring the Re­nais­san­ce, there was only one kind. By and large, the same people car­ried out field ob­ser­va­tions and ex­pe­ri­ments. In time, this uni­ty of ap­proach got lost, with the "na­tu­ra­lists" and the "ex­pe­ri­men­ta­lists" go­ing their se­pa­ra­te ways. Some­time du­ring the 20th cen­tu­ry,... Read more →