by Christoph — Mention "flagella" and we microbiologists instantly think of these ingenious appendages that bacterial cells use to propel themselves through fluids of varying viscosities (archaea do this, too, with their archaella). We rarely think of them as an accessory to transport cargo. Yes "cargo," you read correctly, but maybe you remember... Read more →
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 →