Small Things Considered

Of Mountains and Microbes…

by David Lipson | Thanks, Elio – this is a fascinating post. The silica cycle indeed deserves respect, and it is probably responsible for major planetary events, such as driving the evolution of C4 photosynthesis in land plants since the formation of the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau helped drive down CO₂ levels to their low, pre-industrial levels. Some... Read more →

Snacking on thistles (second bite)

by Christoph | For the thistle tortoise beet­le, Cas­si­da ru­bi­gi­no­sa, bit­ing once into its pre­fer­red food is not enough, it tak­es a se­cond bite. So, 80 years af­ter the first de­scrip­tion of a bac­te­ri­al sym­biont in C. ru­bi­gi­no­sa by H.-J. Stam­mer, Hassan Salem and his col­lea­gues took up the thread and stu­di­ed the sym­biont to more... Read more →

Snacking on thistles (first bite)

by Christoph | Way back in 1936, the zoologist H.-J. Stammer published a study of various beetles of the Cassidinae family (order Co­le­o­ptera) and their microbial symbionts. Among them was the thistle tortoise beetle, Cas­sida rubiginosa, an obligate foliovore, or put another way, a dedicated ve­gan with a penchant for thistles (Cirsium sp.). Thistles were a pest for far­mers in the pre-Roundup™ age, and some... Read more →

More Respect For the Silicon Cycle, Please

by Elio | Silicon is the second most abundant element within Earth’s crust and is necessary for the livelihood of protists, plants, and animals. Maybe best known, silica (SiO₂ or opal) is used by marine organisms such as diatoms and rhizarians to build their glassy and often beautiful shells. Read more →

Occasionally, Microbiologists use Macroscopes...

by Christoph | If you'd ask people around you which hand tool cha­rac­te­ri­zes a pro­fes­sio­nal mi­cro­bio­lo­gist, they would pro­bab­ly come up with the m­icro­sco­pe. Much like ham­mer and saw would be named as ty­pi­cal car­pen­ter tools, or the plough as ty­pi­cal for far­mers ('ham­mer and sickle' is a si­mi­lar case, yet not the point here). The light mi­cro­scope... Read more →

How to Build a Giant Winogradsky Column

by Scott Chimileski | In part one of my tour of the Microbial Life exhibition at the Harvard Museum of Natural History (HMNH), I wrote that the microscopy station and the live bacterial colonies are my personal favorites. Actually, those are my second and third favorites. I was saving my "most favorite" exhibit for its very own post: a giant-sized, living and changing Winogradsky column. Read more →

How Much Does Biology Weigh?

by Elio | The very last thing that happened to me at the June 2018 ASM's Atlanta meeting (Microbe 2018) was a particularly rewarding coincidence. As I was ready to step on an escalator at the convention center, ready to go to the airport, a young man stopped me and asked to talk to me. It was... Read more →

Friend & Foe

by Christoph | In a post two month ago, I referred to 'defensive symbioses'. In a nutshell: one or more symbiotic bacteria produce a cocktail of antibiotics that provide protection of a eukaryotic host against an array of opportunistic bacterial and fungal pathogens. I introduced the term not in contrast but... Read more →

The Microbial Ecology of Chocolate

by Roberto | Being retired, I no longer get the opportunity to brainstorm with post-doctoral candidates hoping to join the lab about possible projects to pursue (an activity that I greatly enjoyed for many years). But ideas of interesting research areas in the microbial sciences still arise often in my mind. So I will, on occasion, use... Read more →

Biofilms Utilize Competition For Maximum Growth

Aaron Angerstein, Maria Isabel Rojas, and Yao Yao | Not long ago, perhaps while we were still in grade school, bacteria were thought to be lonely, independent and utterly unicellular organisms. Bacteria were seen as mere clones of their "mother" bacterium from which all fellow colony-inhabitants originated, perpetually competing for food and space. This, of course, was a gross... Read more →