Small Things Considered

TWiM #200: In the company of Elio

Vincent, Michele, and Michael travel to San Diego to reminisce with Elio about his career, his work in microbiology, and his love for microbes and mushrooms. Read more →

Of Terms in Biology: Trophosome

by Elio | A rather specific term, trophosome refers – as per the Wikipedia – to 'an organ found in some animals that houses symbiotic bacteria that provide food for their host.' Trophé (τροφή) denotes nourishment, soma (σῶμα), body, denoting that trophosomes are intimately involved in their host's nutrition. Read more →

A Sulfur For An Oxygen

by Elio | Tampering with the chem­is­try of our ho­liest of mo­le­cules may seem sa­cri­le­gious, but it is wide­spread and con­spi­cuous. In fact, DNA mo­di­fi­ca­tions abound. Think, for star­ters of DNA me­thyl­a­tion, which is the main tool of epi­ge­ne­tics, or an even lon­ger known mo­di­fi­ca­tion, the DNA gly­co­sy­la­tion that in some phages pro­tects their DNA from... Read more →

Summer Vacation

by the STC team
We are taking our customary two week vacation. Do you think we deserve it ? Looking forward to seeing you again on July 8th ! Read more →

Talmudic Question #166

Why haven’t eukaryotes developed a CRISPR system? (the immune system doesn’t count) Read more →

Retrospective, June 2019

by Elio
We resume our custom to list the posts from the last half year, lightly annotated. Read more →

Good Readings

by Elio | Here are books that cry out to be read. I start out with a list that appeared in a website called Five Books under The best books on Microbes. Read more →

Genome with the Wind...

by Jaime E. Zlamal | When there is geogra­phi­cal se­pa­ra­tion, we can an­ti­ci­pate ge­ne­tic dif­fe­ren­ces. That's ex­act­ly what a team led by Kon­stan­tin Se­ve­ri­nov ex­pec­ted to find when they set out to stu­dy geo­gra­phi­cal­ly dist­ant po­pu­la­tions of Ther­mus bac­te­ria. Af­ter all, these mi­cro­bes ge­ne­ral­ly live in hot springs at tem­pe­ra­tures around 160 de­grees Fah­ren­heit (~70° C). How­ever, despite... Read more →

Of Terms in Biology: Colicins, Bacteriocins, Pyocins and Tailocins

by Roberto | This is the tale of the tail, of a phage. Years before Alexander Fleming's chance discovery of penicillin, many scientists were already interested in bacteriolytic activities. Bacteriophages played a big role in the early days of searches for bacterial killers. Read more →

A "Cultural" Renaissance

by Paul Carini | Sometimes, to move ahead, you must take a look at where you have been. Cul­tur­ing mi­cro­bes is a foun­da­tio­nal un­der­pin­ning of mi­cro­bio­lo­gy. Be­fore ge­nome se­quenc­ing, re­searchers spent count­less hours te­dious­ly de­duc­ing the nu­tri­tion­al re­quire­ments of bac­te­ri­al iso­la­tes and tin­ker­ing with me­dium for­mu­la­tions to en­ti­ce new mi­cro­bes in­to cul­ture. This art of cul­ti­va­tion took a back seat to the pow­er­ful mo­le­cu­lar tools of the last 25 years, and as a re­sult, ma­ny re­search­ers have for­got­ten the uti­li­ty of hav­ing a cul­ture in hand. This per­cept­ion is chang­ing, as there is clear­ly a re­newed in­ter­est in iso­la­ting mi­crobes from va­rious en­vi­ron­ments. Here, I sug­gest three focus areas to en­sure con­tin­ued growth and suc­cess of this "cul­tu­ral" re­nais­sance, in­clu­ding (i) set­ting clear cul­ti­va­tion goals, (ii) fund­ing ex­plo­ra­to­ry cul­ti­va­tion, and (iii) cul­tur­ing and stu­dy­ing un­usu­al or­gan­isms. "Un­cul­tur­able" is a frame of mind, not a state of micro­bio­lo­gy; it is time to dust off the bottle of yeast ex­tract. Read more →