Small Things Considered

E. O. Wilson (1929−2021)

by Roberto
The world lost one of its premier de­fenders of bio­di­ver­si­ty and a pio­neer­ing eco­lo­gist and evo­lu­tio­na­ry bio­lo­gist when E. O. Wil­son died on De­cem­ber 26, 2021, at the age of 92. We start the year ho­nor­ing the me­mory... Read more →

First the Fire, Then the Fungus

by Roberto | Fire is a fun­da­men­tal eco­lo­gi­cal pro­cess. Through­out the his­tor­y of life on Earth, fire has been a re­gu­latory force that great­ly in­flu­en­ces eco­sys­tem func­tion and evo­lu­tion. Its ef­fects are not felt gra­du­al­ly but rather through pe­ri­od­ic, sud­den, and ca­tas­troph­ic ef­fects on po­pu­la­tion siz­es, com­mu­ni­ty com­po­si­tion, and nu­trient cyc­ling... Read more →

Lost in the Pacific Mangrove Forest Microbiomes

by Mechas Zambrano | One of the perks of being a mi­cro­bio­lo­gist is par­ti­ci­pat­ing in ex­pe­di­tions at re­mote lo­ca­tions to col­lect samp­les for our proj­ects. My most re­cent ex­cur­sion was to the south­ern Pa­ci­fic coast of Co­lom­bia, a far-off re­gion re­plete with man­grove for­ests. The pur­pose was to ob­tain samp­les of the bi­valve Ana­da­ra tu­ber­cu­lo­sa, lo­cal­ly... Read more →

The Hunger Games

by Elio |I am not usually drawn to start out an ar­ticle by con­si­der­ing a bac­te­ri­um's name, but when con­front­ed with Ag­gre­ga­ti­bac­ter ac­ti­no­my­ce­tem­co­mit­ans, I had to take a pause. A well-tra­vel­ed Gram-negative coc­co­ba­cil­lus, this car­rier of such a con­vo­lut­ed mo­ni­ker start­ed life simp­ly as an Ac­ti­no­ba­cil­lus... Read more →

Why Calcify?

by Roberto | Janie's re­cent Bio-Brick post, where she in­tro­duces mi­cro­bi­al­ly in­duced cal­cite pre­ci­pi­ta­tion, prompt­ed me to con­tinue on the to­pic. In con­trast to the amor­phous chalk Janie de­scribed, which is pro­duced by bac­te­ria from lime­stone, I'll be de­scrib­ing a ve­ry dif­ferent sort of chalk. Still cal­cium car­bo­nate, but with a com­ple­te­ly dif­fer­ent ge­ne­sis. Read more →

Transient Thoughts on Transduction

by Roberto | What with the all the talk about CRISPR, the renewed interest in phage therapy, the widespread occurrence of huge phages (to mention but a few of the reasons phage are constantly in the news these days), it's no exaggeration to say that once again in biology "phage are all the rage"... Read more →

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 →