by the STC team β Did you miss some of our posts from the past six months? Do you want to re-read your favorites? Just scroll to quickly scan through the list of our posts from the last half year, arranged by categories. Read more →
Lost & Found #2
by Christoph β On our way out of π (formerly Twitter), we look through our soon-to-be-obsolete "bookmarks" and show you what shouldn't just end up in the bin. Here are three more salvaged bookmarks in 'Lost & Found #2'. Read more →
Genomes by AI
by Roberto β Two years ago I played, simultaneously amused and bemused, with ChatGPT. It was clear artificial intelligence (AI) had taken a quantum leap. While I did not get to play with it, reading about Evo last week evoked similar feelings; it left me both in awe and slightly unnerved. In case you missed it, Evo does with genome sequences what ChatGPT does with words, i.e., almost everything. Read more →
Lost & Found #1
by Christoph β STC will be leaving π (formerly Twitter) in the near future. Over the coming months, at irregular intervals, I'll be sifting through my bookmarks on π and share with you what I found, two or three tweets at a time. This is 'Lost & Found #1'. Read more →
Pictures Considered #64: Emergent Properties
by Roberto β Some years ago, when Scott Chimileski wrote 'Life at the Edge of Sight', we wanted to present two images that displayed emergent properties of organisms expressing collective behavior. We came up with this pair of photographs, whose scales differ by seven orders of magnitude. Read more →
How E.Β coli Rose to Prominence β Again, One More Addendum (2|2)
by Christoph β In the fourth and, for the time being, last episode of this 'Ecolimania' in STC, I take a look around: Do we know the diversity of the species E.Β coliΒ ? And what can we learn from analyses of its pangenomeΒ ? Read more →
The Dawn of Molecular Ecology
by Roberto β Almost exactly one year ago, I wrote a post on the key role played by a group of Spanish scientists in the early development of microbial molecular ecology. My main point was to drive home how the work they carried out in the early 1970s on species successions in the human gut... Read more →
On Forgetting
by Mechas β A recent essay by Melissa Kirsch of the New York Times highlights what seems to be a prevalent concern: forgetfulness. The constant exposure to an ever-growing barrage of media, especially as we grow old(er), has its toll. Even though remembering and forgetting are essential to processing information and learning as we meander through life, an excess of data can result in overflow and storage problems. Read more →
A lesson from the comb jelly, deep-sea bacteria, and some obliging E. coli on how to thrive under pressure
by Janie β I sometimes google "Small Things Considered + a biological term of choice" looking for older articles, to see if any paradigms have changed in the span of a decade or so. In doing so, I came across this post from 2010 on plasmalogens, membrane lipids with an ether bond linking the glycerol... Read more →
The Deep Biosphere β A Video
by Roberto β It may be because it carries on so very slowly or because it is so deeply buried. Who knows, but I find the abundant microbial life of the deep biosphere thoroughly mesmerizing. That's why I was thrilled by a video on the subject that Memo Berkmen β long-time friend and STC fan β brought to my attention. It's only natural that I now share it with you. Read more →