Small Things Considered

An Illustrated Tree

by Roberto  
From the fun­da­men­tal con­cepts of bio­lo­gy, the fact that all or­gan­isms now alive share a com­mon an­ces­tor (LUCA) ranks as one of my fa­vo­rites. When I pause to con­si­der that, des­pite four bil­lion years of evo­lu­tion and di­ver­gence, my ri­bo­so­mal RNA shares some stret­ches of se­quence iden­ti­ty with all other au­to­no­mous or­gan­isms, I still get goose bumps... Read more →

Women in Microbiology Who Fought for Equality, Science, and our World!

by Microbigals  
International Women's day is all about embracing equity! So, we'd love to share some of the amazing women throughout history and around the world that overcame hardships, fought for their rights to be scientists, and embraced equity! Their contributions to other microbiologists, to their communities, to women in STEM, have helped pave the way... Read more →

The van Leeuwenhoek Medal

by Roberto  
When it comes to awards recognizing major contributions to microbiology, my personal favorite is the van Leeuwenhoek Medal given by the Royal Dutch Society for Microbiology. Unlike most such accolades that are presented year after year, this honor has a long tradition of being awarded every ten years (more or less). I believe... Read more →

Fine Reading: The Life and Times of Paul Buchner

by Roberto  
In preparing our recent post on ectosymbionts, I discovered Jan Sapp's 2002 perspective: "Paul Buchner (1886 –1978) and hereditary symbiosis in insects." I suspect that many STC readers will immediately recognize the name of Paul Buchner, after whom Paul Baumann named the now well-known aphid endosymbiont Buchnera. But I also suspect most will not know too much about Buchner's seminal contributions... Read more →

Infectious Enthusiasm for Preserving Our Microbes

by Mechas and Roberto  
When it comes to microbes, the public still perceives them largely as the cause of infections. This worldview goes back to the latter half of the nineteenth century with the seminal findings of Pasteur and Koch. During the past few decades this predominant view changed towards a recognition of microbes' largely beneficial roles, but the pandemic appears to have slowed down this learning process. Read more →

A New Look and Other Changes

by Roberto  
What were you doing seventeen years ago, in 2006? I have a tough time recalling my own actions then, but I sure can tell you what Elio did that year. With his energy, enthusiasm, and relentless itch for writing (along with support from ASM, namely Chris Condayan) he gave birth to this blog. Read more →

Christopher T. Walsh (1944–2023)

by Roberto  
Last week, my enthusiastic feelings for the beginning of the new year were greatly dampened when I received the news of Chris Walsh's untimely death, the consequence of a fall. Many of us fortunate enough to have known and interacted with him for many years are still processing... Read more →

Winter Vacation

We take advantage of this being the season for re­joic­ing, and em­bark on a three-week win­ter vaca­tion. When we re­turn in 2023, on Ja­nua­ry 16th, we will en­ter the 17th year of Small Things Con­sider­ed. Read more →

Retrospective, July to December 2022

by the STC team 
Keeping with tradition, here is a lightly annotated list of our forty-seven posts from the last half year. Read more →

Applied Molecular Microbiology at Dubrovnik

by Roberto 
If you are interest­ed in any sub­ject re­lated to small mo­le­cule na­tur­al pro­ducts of mi­cro­bi­al ori­gin, the "John In­nes/Rud­jer Boš­ko­vić Sum­mer School in Ap­plied Mo­le­cu­lar Mi­cro­bio­lo­gy" is for you. I know that course name is a mouth­ful so when I am de­scrib­ing the school to mi­cro­bio­lo­gists, I re­fer to it simp­ly as... Read more →