Small Things Considered

Of Terms in Biology: The Polony Method

by Christoph
If there is one venerable la­bo­ra­to­ry tech­nique in vi­ro­lo­gy, it is the plaque assay for the de­tect­ion and quan­ti­fi­ca­tion of bac­te­rio­pha­ges. It was pio­neer­ed by Fe­lix d'He­rel­le al­ready around 1917, and in the ear­ly 1950s, plaque as­says were also es­tab­lish­ed for eu­kar­yot­ic vi­rus­es... Read more →

Grant's Anatomy

by Christoph | At an EMBO workshop in Copen­ha­gen in 2006 on 'Cell cycle and cy­to­ske­le­tal ele­ments in bac­te­ria,' I was al­most un­able to stay put in my seat dur­ing one pre­sen­ta­tion: Grant Jen­sen showed the 3D-mon­tage of cryoET ima­ges of mag­ne­to­somes in Mag­ne­to­spi­ril­lum mag­ne­to­tac­ti­cum. It was a vi­su­al jour­ney in­to and through the in­ter­ior of a cell,... Read more →

Getting to grips with the intangible

by Christoph | Imagine the E. coli nucleoid as a swig but of of a high­ly vis­cous tan­gle of a 2 nm thin and ~1.5 mm long DNA poly­mer, de­co­rat­ed with and high­ly com­pact­ed by a ple­tho­ra of pro­teins, and some­how sus­pend­ed in the cy­to­plasm of a cell with a vol­ume of ~1.3 µm³. It's vir­tu­al­ly im­pos­si­ble to "grip" the nu­cleoid, to mea­sure... Read more →

Of Terms in Biology: Phylogeny, Phylogenetics, Phylogenomics

by Elio | You may remember the solemn proclamation that "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny," meaning that during our embryological development we (and everybody else) go through the steps in our evolution. This turns out to be quite wrong, but I bring it up because because it illustrates that phylogeny denotes the history... Read more →

Streptomyces spores taking a ride...

by Christoph | Streptomycetes, these non-mo­tile Ac­ti­no­bac­te­ria that are cap­able of my­cel­ial growth much like fungi, are quite in­vent­ive when it comes to the dis­tri­bu­tion of their spores. They don't just re­ly on en­chant­ing scents like geos­min that they emit to at­tract spring­tails, which trans­port their spores over long dis­tan­ces (see Ro­berto's re­cent post). They also rou­tine­ly em­ploy bac­te­rial trans­port wor­kers. Read more →

Mueller-Hinton Medium

by the STC team | On June 11th, we were addressed in a tweet by microbiologist Joe Harrison (@JoeHarrison1):"This seems like a timely topic for a blog or an article @ASMicrobiology @STCmicrobeblog. Mueller-Hinton agar is used globally and has standardized the study of #AMR. Before today, I'd never read the story of Jane Hinton @citeblackwomen"... Read more →

Fine Reading: Guts and Glory, Microbiome Edition

by Janie
Research on the microbiome, particularly the gut microbiome, garners ever-increasing attention from both the scientific and public eye (and the press). But as with most other fads, there’s a need to parse out fact from fiction... Read more →

Of Terms in Biology: The Exome

by Elio | An exome is the collection of exons, the sequences within the primary mRNA transcripts of an organism that are eventually used for making proteins. The rest, non-coding sequences, called introns, are removed by RNA splicing. (Note that there is no ‘introme,’ at least not yet.)   Read more →

Space-tolerant Micronauts

by Alise Muok and Ariane Briegel
Try to imagine a crea­ture that can sur­vive from the heat of 150°C (300°F) to the cold of –270°C (–454°F), in the ab­sence of oxy­gen, af­ter com­plete de­hy­dra­tion, at 1,000× at­mo­sphe­ric pres­sure, and af­ter the ra­di­a­tion and va­cuum of space. Who might such space travelers be? Read more →

«let not Vanity ſeduce you...»

by Christoph | «let not Vanity ſeduce you to per­ſiſt in your Miſ­take». No, it's not a spel­ling mis­take that you see here. It's the 'long ſ', which was used in print well into the 18th cen­tu­ry. And also the ca­pi­ta­li­za­tion of nouns, un­usual to­day, was com­mon in 1743 when Hen­ry Ba­ker's trea­tise The Mi­cro­sco­pe Made Ea­sy was pub­lished... Read more →