Small Things Considered

Rounding up the Honey Bees (1)

by Christoph | Why would I deviate here from STC's habit to rather not  feature the new­est re­sults of tren­dy re­search to­pics? The rea­son comes hid­den in a short no­tice in Science  by War­ren Corn­wall: "...The new re­search is cer­tain to make a con­tro­ver­sial her­bi­ci­de even more of a flash­point." He re­fer­red, of course, to a re­cent pa­per pub­lish­ed in PNAS... Read more →

Needles in a Metagenomic Haystack:Hunting for Molecular Plastic-Chewers

by Janie Kim | Science and speculative fiction works may warn of im­mi­nent threats like hostile extraterrestrial beings or the artificial general intelligence of the technological singularity. But the more humdrum overabundance of plastic waste, an issue closer to home and our every­day lives, is just as deserving of fear. Read more →

Take a Deep Breath of... Methane

by Christoph | If you were faced with the task of pre­par­ing a lec­ture se­ri­es on "ge­ne­ral bac­te­ri­al phy­si­o­lo­gy", you could ea­si­ly choose Pseu­do­mo­nas ae­ru­gi­no­sa  as your com­pan­ion, your mo­del or­gan­ism, to co­ver (al­most) eve­ry to­pic. Yet, when it comes to me­ta­bo­lic ver­sa­ti­li­ty, you could also think of Rho­do­pseu­do­mo­nas pal­us­tris  as an al­ter­na­ti­ve. This Al­pha­pro­teo­bac­te­ri­um of the... Read more →

Shining a light on Vibrio DNA uptake

by Rachel Diner | Vibrio cholerae  is "kind of a big deal" in the bac­te­ri­al world and a po­pu­lar to­pic here on STC. Be­yond be­ing the cau­sa­ti­ve agent for the dis­ease cho­le­ra, it's a mo­del bac­te­ri­um for stu­dy­ing ho­ri­zon­tal gene trans­fer and in­ter­bac­te­ri­al com­pe­ti­tion. A re­cent stu­dy in Na­tu­re Mi­cro­bio­lo­gy sheds new light (li­te­ral­ly) on how this hap­pens. Read more →

On your marks, get set, go!

by Christoph | When did you first hear about the "ge­ne­tic code" ? In high school ? Or in col­lege, in an un­der­gra­du­ate course in mo­le­cu­lar bio­lo­gy and/or ge­ne­tics ? In either case you were cer­tain­ly shown the fa­mous co­don table that spe­ci­fies which of the 64 pos­sible trip­lets in mes­sen­ger RNA (mRNA) are trans­la­ted in­to one of the 20 ca­no­ni­cal... Read more →

To The Bottom of the Sea

by Elio | Are there instances of water-containing sites on Earth that (pardon the expression) have not yet been metagenomicized? Surely many remain, but their numbers must be dwindling quite rapidly. Read more →

Of Mountains and Microbes…

by David Lipson | Thanks, Elio – this is a fascinating post. The silica cycle indeed deserves respect, and it is probably responsible for major planetary events, such as driving the evolution of C4 photosynthesis in land plants since the formation of the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau helped drive down CO₂ levels to their low, pre-industrial levels. Some... Read more →

Tainted

by Vivienne Baillie Gerritsen | It has happened to all of us. You are seated in a good restaurant and the waiter has just brought you the wine you ordered. He solemnly shows you the label. You nod, and he proceeds to slit open the lead seal with the tip of his corkscrew. Pealing the seal off the bottle neck, he then... Read more →

Why, oh, why, can't life be less complicated ?

by Christoph | It could all be so easy! Take a bacterial cell, say, a single E. coli  cell with all its ~4,300 genes nicely strung like pearls on the neck­lace of its single circular chromosome. Present this E. coli  cell with so­mething to eat and it starts growing and, while growing, replicates its chromosome starting at oriC, the unique replication origin. When the cell has reached twice its original size and now con­tains two chro­mo­so­mes, the cell divides... Read more →

How To Turn An E. coli Into An Archaeon (Sort Of)

by Elio | Things pop up in microbiology that are truly astounding. The claim that one can partially turn a bacterium into an archaeon rates high on this list. Archaea and Bacteria belong to different main branches of the tree of life and have many distinctive biochemical and structural differences. Read more →