Small Things Considered

Strictly Intracellular Parasite No More

by Elio | We learn with mother's milk (or at least in a beginning micro­bio­logy course) that certain bacteria, notably rickettsiae, chlamydiae, and anaplasmas, cannot grow outside of host cells. Thus, they are de­fined as being strictly intracellular parasites. Ha! A member of the ric­kettsiae has now been found to grow freely outside of host cells. Read more →

A Wormful of Bugs, Again...

by Christoph | When you've followed our posts on symbioses between ani­mals and bac­te­ria over the last two years or so, you could have ea­si­ly got the im­pres­sion that they oc­cur main­ly be­tween in­sects and Gamma­pro­teo­bac­te­ria from the or­der En­te­ro­bac­te­ra­les of this large and di­verse phy­lum. This im­pression would be skewed but only because our choice of topics was! Read more →

Who runs the world?

by Sumedha Ravishankar and Ian Robbins | Microbes facilitate untold biological processes, from digestion in the tiny gut of an insect to running our planet’s biogeochemical cycles. These microscopic beings truly are the quiet puppeteers of our lives. And it makes sense that they would be, since unicellular life has been on Earth for about 3.5 billion years, Read more →

Secondary Metabolites

by Andy Bodnar, Michelle Prieto, and Carleen Villarreal | The war between bac­te­ria and pha­ges has been wa­ging for eons lon­ger than hu­mans have ex­ist­ed. Con­sequent­ly, ma­ny bacte­ria have de­ve­loped no­vel and unique ways for de­fen­ding them­selves against these fo­reign in­va­ders. Some change their sur­face pro­teins to pre­vent de­tec­tion, like chang­ing a lock on a door. Others give their own lives, ini­tia­ting... Read more →

Fungomania 1. Who's The Biggest?

by Elio
Anyone can freely claim bragging rights for their favorite topic, but with caution. In this light, the assertion that a mushroom growing in either Michigan or Oregon is both the largest and oldest living thing is questionable. Read more →

Happy Birthday LTEE!

by Roberto | Come this Sunday, February 24, 2019, all of us at STC will be raising a celebratory glass in honor of the remarkable LTEE, the E. coli long-term evolution experiment, which will be reveling in its 31st birthday. Read more →

Inside Earth, Microbes Approach Immortality

by Jennifer Frazer | Last December, the Deep Carbon Observatory an­nounced an astounding fact: the mass of the mi­crobes living beneath Earth's surface amounts to 15 to 23 billion tons of carbon, a sum some 245 to 385 times greater than the carbon mass of all humans. That's amazing. It wasn't so long ago we weren't even sure life at depth was possible. Read more →

Go Ahead, Prove that Eukaryotic Cells AroseVia Endosymbiosis

by Elio | Say you want to prove once and for all the endosymbiotic theory of the origin of eukaryotic cells, substantiating that a cell (according to many, an archaeon) acquired a bacterium that eventually morphed into a mitochondrion. Read more →

State of the World's Fungi

by Roberto | We want to bring to your attention an outstanding new report on fungi from the Kew Royal Botanic Garden. It makes for great reading and clearly points out the many roles that fungi play on the functioning of Earth's biosphere. Read more →

Mono Lake (a Snippet)

by Elio | Travel down the eastern slope of California's Sierra Nevada and you will run into a number of breathtaking sights. Ranking high among them is Mono Lake, a large shallow lake that sports a collection of strange limestone columns. Protruding some 30 feet above the water surface, these structures, known as chimneys, consist of calcium carbonate... Read more →