Small Things Considered

Magnificently long : Thiomargarita magnifica

by Christoph
Microbiologists study mi­crobes with mi­cro­scopes be­cause they are not vis­ible to the na­ked eye. Un­less they are. This was ex­act­ly the case for "Can­di­da­tus Thio­mar­ga­ri­ta mag­ni­fi­ca", de­scribed in a re­cent Bio­Rχiv pre­print by Vol­lard et al. (2022): "A cen­ti­me­ter-long bac­te­ri­um with DNA com­part..." (more about the se­cond part of the title... Read more →

Bacterial Range Expansion

by Davide Ciccarese
This image I cap­tured of a re­sult of mine re­minds me of how im­port­ant it is to keep one's mind open and let the re­sults speak for them­selves, even after mak­ing a mis­take. As part of my re­search I was con­duct­ing du­ring my PhD with Da­vid John­son and Dani Or, I was in­ter­est­ed in study­ing... Read more →

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... Read more →

How to Fine-Tune a Riboswitch

by Janie
It has the inklings of a lame biology joke, but in actuality has profound implications among microbial communities: What's the similarity between male moths and RNA? The answer is the ability to detect extremely specific compounds. Like male moths that can detect a single pheromone molecule... Read more →

The Ugliest of Mushrooms

by Elio
If beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, then, faith and begorra as the Irishmen may say, so does ugliness. It is widely stated in the mycophile literature that the ugliest of mushrooms is one called Pisolithus arhizus (once tinctorius, for reasons I'll explain soon)... Read more →

C. elegans' Microbiome

by Roberto
Not long after participating in the discovery of mRNA and the triplet code, Sydney Brenner set out to study "how genes might specify the complex structures found in higher organisms." Those are the words in the opening sentence of his 1974 foundational paper, which established the nematode C. elegans... Read more →

Diazomania III ─ Nitrous Oxide, Please Don't Laugh About It

by Roberto
If you bike a lot, particularly if you race, you learn to always carry along a spare in­ner tube and a CO₂ can­is­ter to help you ra­pid­ly change a flat. So, when I start­ed no­tic­ing emp­ty gas can­ist­ers while rid­ing along a few of the ubi­quit­ous Co­pen­ha­gen bike lanes, the first thing... Read more →

Diazomania II ─ Trichodesmium

by Roberto
When it comes to ex­pan­sive oli­go­tro­phic en­vi­ron­ments re­plete with mi­cro­bi­al life, the sur­faces of Earth's oceans are hard to beat. There­in, most of the pri­ma­ry pro­duct­ion comes from a rich di­ver­si­ty of pho­to­syn­the­tic mi­crobes. There's plen­ty of light and CO2, so growth is there­fore li­mit­ed by some­thing else. Read more →

Diazomania I ─ A Bird's-Eye View of the Nitrogen Cycle

by Roberto
Here's a good way to get friends or re­la­tiv­es in­ter­est­ed in mi­cro­bio­lo­gy – if they aren't al­ready. Tell them to take a deep breath and to let it out. Then ask them these ques­tions: "Mostly, what went into your lungs?", and "What hap­pened to it while in your lungs?" Re­gard­less of... Read more →

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... Read more →