Small Things Considered

Of Terms in Biology: Sympatry and Allopatry

by Elio | Sympatry means that two species coexist in the same physical area, allopatry that they don't. The etymology of the suffix patris, helps. It comes from the Latin for 'fatherland,' as in 'patriot' (or, for those who remember the Marseillaise, "Alons enfants de la Patrie"). Read more →

Putting Life on Earth in Perspective

by Roberto | Last week I was very fortunate. I had the opportunity to focus my attention on putting life on Earth in perspective. It was a welcome respite considering these trying times. Almost one year ago, thanks to Nassos Typas, I received an invitation to speak on microbial diversity at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg... Read more →

Unicellular Capsaspora and animal multicellularity

by Victoria Shabardina | It is common in biolo­gy to look at little things to learn how the big parts work: we study mo­le­cul­es to un­der­stand cells and study or­gans to know how the bo­dy funct­ions. But it is dif­fer­ent with Cap­sa­spo­ra, be­cause it is a whole, a com­plete single-cell or­gan­ism, and it is ac­ti­ve­ly stu­died for elu­ci­dat­ing how... Read more →

Bacterial Genomes, IKEA-Style (Some Assembly Required)

by Janie | Much like “artificial” languages like Esperanto or Tolkien's fifteen (!) Elvish tongues, genomes, too, are subject to manipulation and modulation, by the scientist's hand. There's been a smattering of posts here on the blog that touched on synthetic genomes... Read more →

Three to Tango

by Elio | How many symbioses that involve three partners can you think of? Surely, not many. But here is one, involving a pathogenic fungus, a bacterium, and a fungal virus. Read more →

Proteorhodophytina: Obscure Red Algae Are Keepers of Deep Evolutionary Secrets

by Lukáš Novák | You may be familiar with some red al­gae even with­out rea­liz­ing it, as many spe­cies have pro­found eco­lo­gi­cal, in­dus­tri­al, and cu­li­na­ry im­port­ance! Ma­cro­scopic red al­gae re­pre­sent one third of all sea­weeds grown in aqua­cul­ture world­wide and cre­ate half of the eco­no­mic value ge­ne­ra­ted by this in­dus­try. Among the most com­mon­ly used are spe­cies of the genus Py­ro­pia... Read more →

Life After CPR

by Mechas Zambrano and Roberto | For most English speakers, CPR would be assumed to stand for cardiopulmonary resuscitation, oftentimes a real life saver. But for many readers of this blog, the acronym has a whole different meaning. For the last few years, CPR, has stood for the "Candidate Phyla Radiation." The discovery of the CPR superphylum was (and remains) one of the most remarkable developments in our growing realization that the genetic diversity of the microbial world is unimaginably vast. Read more →

A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Ocean

by Roberto | Plasmids, autonomously replicating extrachromosomal elements, have long been recognized as important HGT agents. A striking early example of this was the discovery – some sixty years ago – of the very rapid and efficient plasmid-mediated transfer of multiple antibiotic resistance genes in clinical settings. Read more →

Where Do Phages of Atypical Bacteria Come From? A Snippet.

by Elio | Some time ago, a piece in this blog dealt with the com­ple­xi­ties of the Gram stain. In brief, it said: "In a simp­ler world, all bac­te­ria with a single mem­brane, the mono­derms, would be Gram-po­si­tive, all those with two (the di­derms), Gram-ne­ga­tive... Hah! Were it that simple! Each of these groups... Read more →

(More than just) a Whiff of Taxonomy – Saltatorellus ferox

by Christoph | Last summer, I stumbled upon the name «Sal­ta­to­rel­lus» when look­ing at a photo from a pos­ter ses­sion of a mi­cro­bio­lo­gy con­gress. I found that name so char­ming! Stage names of jugg­lers and cir­cus ar­tists who perform audacious jumps and da­ring so­mer­saults came to my mind. And in­deed, the name Sal­ta­to­rel­lus fe­rox was gi­ven to a bac­te­rium... Read more →