Small Things Considered

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 →

Life After CPR (once again...)

by Christoph
As true aficiona­das y afi­cio­na­dos around the world do, Steve Pe­trov­ski's lab at La Trobe Uni­ver­si­ty in Mel­bourne, Aus­tralia went on the hunt for bac­terio­pha­ges in the wild. Which they didn't find, but their booty was a pre­da­to­ry bac­te­ri­um, and... Read more →

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 →