Small Things Considered

Talmudic Question #174

Imagine that the great majority of the microbes on Earth could be cultivated on laboratory media. How do you suggest that, in practice, we handle their humongous number? Read more →

A Little More Than Kin, Less Than Kind

by Daniel | The paradoxes surrounding the concept of 'kin' are not only an aspect of human familial relationships, but also central components of biology through evolution. As far as we know, all of the astounding variety of life we observe on Earth descends from a single cell, a primordial, universal common ancestor that gave rise to all current cells. In metaphor, a seed growing into all of the branches on the Tree of Life. Read more →

Trichoplax & Company II.

by Christoph | When searching the metagenomes ob­tain­ed from single Tri­cho­plax H2 in­di­vi­du­als for 16S and 18S rRNA-spe­ci­fic se­quen­ces, Gru­ber-Vo­dic­ka et al. found, next to the pre­va­lent Tri­cho­plax and Grel­lia se­quen­ces a third se­quen­ce at high fre­quen­cy that mat­ched well with known 16S rRNA se­quen­ces from the Ma­ri­na­mar­gu­lis­bac­te­ria (ZB3), a branch with­in the phy­lum Mar­gu­lis­bac­te­ria... Read more →

Trichoplax & Company I.

by Christoph | Take a few thousand small eu­kar­yo­tic cells, al­low for a few dif­fe­rent cell types, and sea­son the cells ge­ne­rous­ly with en­do­sym­bionts (no, not mi­to­chon­dria, they al­ready have these!). Let the cells self-or­ga­ni­ze into a pat­ty – or a po­ta­to chip, if you're more in­to a ve­gan life­style – with a dia­me­ter of ap­pro­xi­ma­te­ly 0.5–1.0 mm, and a mere 25 µm thick. Read more →

Pictures Considered #49 : C-Reactive Protein

by Elio | Among the blood tests that your doctor may prescribes is the one for C-Reactive Protein (CRP). What is it? CRP is a protein made by the liver in response to inflammation anywhere in the body, so a positive result will alert the physician that something along those lines is going on some place within you. Read more →

TWiM 212: A coronavirus outbreak and IRF4 deficiency in Whipple’s disease

The TWiM team reviews the coronavirus outbreak that began in Wuhan, China, and the finding that an TLR4 deficiency underlies Whipple’s disease. Read more →

Life After CPR

by Mechas Zambrano and Roberto | For most English speakers, CPR would be assumed to stand for cardiopulmonary resuscitation, oftentimes a real life saver. But for many readers of this blog, the acronym has a whole different meaning. For the last few years, CPR, has stood for the "Candidate Phyla Radiation." The discovery of the CPR superphylum was (and remains) one of the most remarkable developments in our growing realization that the genetic diversity of the microbial world is unimaginably vast. Read more →

A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Ocean

by Roberto | Plasmids, autonomously replicating extrachromosomal elements, have long been recognized as important HGT agents. A striking early example of this was the discovery – some sixty years ago – of the very rapid and efficient plasmid-mediated transfer of multiple antibiotic resistance genes in clinical settings. Read more →

Whipple’s Disease and Its Bovine Ilk

by Elio | Whipple’s disease is both uncommon and strange. Among clinicians, it is best known for causing malabsorption, leading to malnutrition and even death. The causative agent is a bacterium but its identity was mysterious, being that it was (and remains) "not-yet-cultured" in laboratory media. It was one of the first bacterial pathogens to be identified using molecular techniques (see this 1992 paper by Relman et al.), and was subsequently named Tropheryma whipplei. Read more →

Pictures Considered #48 : Contributions to the Biology of the Bacilli

by Roberto | It was fifteen or twenty years ago, I can't recall the year any more. But I vividly remember walking into Harvard's Farlow Botany Library, being shown to a seat next to an elegant wooden table, and asked to don a pair of white gloves. The protocol stemmed from the fact that I had requested to see an original of the second volume of the journal Beiträge zur Biologie der Pflanzen (Contributions to the Biology of Plants), from 1876. Read more →