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A blog for sharing appreciation of the width and depth of microbes and microbial activities on this planet.

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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 →

Posted on September 23, 2021 at 04:00 AM in Ecology, Evolution, Pathogens | Permalink | Comments (0)

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 →

Posted on May 10, 2021 at 04:00 AM in Evolution, Physiology & Genetics | Permalink | Comments (0)

All the World Is Not E. coli

by Elio  
Like most people interested in bacterial physiology, I spent much of my life with the nearly religious persuasion that the starting condition for studying growth is when cells and their constituents all increase in unison. In practice, such "balanced growth" is achieved when bacteria grow exponentially at low concentrations... Read more →

Posted on May 03, 2021 at 03:19 AM in Evolution, Physiology & Genetics | Permalink | Comments (0)

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 →

Posted on March 04, 2021 at 04:00 AM in Ecology, Evolution, Teachers Corner | Permalink | Comments (0)

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 →

Posted on November 09, 2020 at 01:30 AM in Ecology, Evolution, Odds & Ends | Permalink | Comments (0)

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 →

Posted on May 25, 2020 at 01:13 AM in Evolution, Protists | Permalink | Comments (0)

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 →

Posted on May 11, 2020 at 01:00 AM in Evolution, Physiology & Genetics | Permalink | Comments (0)

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 →

Posted on April 20, 2020 at 04:00 AM in Ecology, Evolution, Fungi, Pathogens, Symbioses, Viruses | Permalink | Comments (0)

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 →

Posted on April 06, 2020 at 01:49 AM in Evolution, Protists | Permalink | Comments (0)

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 →

Posted on February 10, 2020 at 03:01 AM in Ecology, Evolution, Symbioses | Permalink | Comments (0)

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