Small Things Considered

Green Sloths and Robots

by Roberto
... in the case of red par­rot feath­ers the pig­ment has the ad­ded be­ne­fit of pro­tect­ing the plu­mage from bac­te­ri­al de­gra­da­tion. To­day I stay on the to­pic of ani­mal co­lor­a­tion by de­scrib­ing the pe­culi­ar pe­lage pig­ment of sloths. Exact­ly what con­sti­tutes an eye-catch­ing color is, of course, in the eye of the be­holder. Read more →

Thinking outside the rod (or coccus)

by Roberto
With kind per­mis­sion by the or­gan­i­zers, we re­pro­duce here an edit­ed tran­script of Ro­ber­to's talk (via live vi­deo) at the meet­ing on 'Ma­jor ideas in quan­ti­ta­tive mi­cro­bi­al phy­sio­lo­gy: Past, Pre­sent and Fu­ture', held in June this year in Køben­havn, Den­mark. 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 →

In one step from commensal to mutualist (almost), part 2|2

by Christoph
I had concluded the first part by say­ing that I would now dis­cuss what mu­ta­tions Ko­ga et al. (2022) found in two mu­ta­tor E. coli line­ages that al­lowed the bac­te­ria to suc­cess­ful­ly "take over" from Pan­toea sp. as sym­bionts in Plau­tia sta­li stink­bugs (termed "im­prov­ed" line­ages.) Here we go... Read more →

In one step from commensal to mutualist (almost), part 1|2

by Christoph
It is as true as it is, well, bor­ing to keep say­ing that Esch­eri­chia co­li is the best un­der­stood uni­cel­lu­lar or­gan­ism, and the most-stud­ied with ~41,000 tag­ged en­tries in Pub­Med since 1932. But then, every five years or so, comes a sur­prise of what un­ex­pec­ted feats this un­as­sum­ing bac­te­ri­um is cap­able of. Read more →

Evolution-Proofing Antibiotics

by Vilhelmiina Haavisto | Since the dis­co­ve­ry of pe­ni­cil­lin and its de­vel­op­ment in­to a the­ra­peu­tic agent, an­ti­bio­tics have re­vo­lu­tion­ized me­di­cine and saved count­less lives. How­ever, the way we use these life-sav­ing me­di­cat­ions is fun­da­men­tal­ly un­sus­tain­able as pa­tho­gens ra­pid­ly evolve re­sist­ance, ren­der­ing ma­ny se­ri­ous in­fect­ions ef­fect­ive­ly un­treat­able. 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 →

Prokaryotic Organelles. Yes, There Are Such Things.

by Elio | One of the venerable distinctions between eukaryotes and prokaryotes used to be that prokaryotes do not have organelles. This distinction has now gone by the wayside because bacteria and archaea have been shown to possess protein bound structures that can appropriately be called organelles. Read more →