Small Things Considered

Mind the Frame (also on April 1st)

by Christoph
As you may know, STC has been on Twitter since August 2018. Most­ly, we use this plat­form to announce our Mon­day and Thurs­day posts. Oc­ca­sio­nal­ly, we com­ment on tweets that we find inter­est­ing, some­times di­rect­ly or by re-tweet­ing them. Twitter being Twit­ter, not every­thing we re-tweet is... Read more →

How to Fine-Tune a Riboswitch

by Janie
It has the inklings of a lame biology joke, but in actuality has profound implications among microbial communities: What's the similarity between male moths and RNA? The answer is the ability to detect extremely specific compounds. Like male moths that can detect a single pheromone molecule... Read more →

A Lasting Memory

by Roberto
Almost forty years ago, I arrived in Boston to begin my job as an assistant professor in the micro department at Harvard Medical School. During my post-doc at Stanford, I had very much hoped to get a call from bacteriology at UC Davis. Instead, I got the call from... Read more →

In one step from commensal to mutualist (almost), part 2|2

by Christoph
I had concluded the first part by say­ing that I would now dis­cuss what mu­ta­tions Ko­ga et al. (2022) found in two mu­ta­tor E. coli line­ages that al­lowed the bac­te­ria to suc­cess­ful­ly "take over" from Pan­toea sp. as sym­bionts in Plau­tia sta­li stink­bugs (termed "im­prov­ed" line­ages.) Here we go... Read more →

Silly Poem

by Elio
No matter how hard I try, / I have little use for poetray. / I cannot produce a decent rhyme / At this or any other time. // I do not think it's swell / To say that a tortoise' shell / Has its own eccentric smell. // Or that a graceful otter / of clams is a great spotter... Read more →

In one step from commensal to mutualist (almost), part 1|2

by Christoph
It is as true as it is, well, bor­ing to keep say­ing that Esch­eri­chia co­li is the best un­der­stood uni­cel­lu­lar or­gan­ism, and the most-stud­ied with ~41,000 tag­ged en­tries in Pub­Med since 1932. But then, every five years or so, comes a sur­prise of what un­ex­pec­ted feats this un­as­sum­ing bac­te­ri­um is cap­able of. Read more →

Talmudic Question #195

Can you imagine if Schrödinger's cat is hiding somewhere – and if yes: where – in microbiology? Read more →

A Women's-History-Month Read: Her Hidden Genius (Book Review)

by Janie
March is Women's History Month. So, it was perfect timing to read a new historical fiction book on the life and work of a preeminent woman in scientific history, Rosalind Franklin. In Her Hidden Genius, author Marie Benedict sculpts a snapshot rendering of Rosalind Franklin from 1947 to 1958... Read more →

The Phage Treaty

by Roberto
In 1938, after developing a keen in­ter­est in genes, Max Del­brück ar­rived at Cal­tech set to work on Dro­so­phi­la ge­net­ics with Tho­mas Mor­gan. But, as some­one trained in theo­re­ti­cal phys­ics, the pace of work­ing with fruit flies pro­ved too slow. For­tu­na­te­ly for the his­tory of mo­le­cu­lar bio­logy, Del­brück met... Read more →

The Ugliest of Mushrooms

by Elio
If beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, then, faith and begorra as the Irishmen may say, so does ugliness. It is widely stated in the mycophile literature that the ugliest of mushrooms is one called Pisolithus arhizus (once tinctorius, for reasons I'll explain soon)... Read more →