Noteworthy — Amid the turmoil and uncertainty of our times, one fact is undeniable: microbes continue to evolve. Read more →
Noteworthy — Amid the turmoil and uncertainty of our times, one fact is undeniable: microbes continue to evolve. Read more →
Posted on April 17, 2025 at 03:21 AM in Noteworthy, Physiology & Genetics | Permalink | Comments (0)
by Christoph — Based on their knowledge of the morphology of P. syntrophicum MK-D1 from electron microscopy and their knowledge of its physiology from growth assays and genome analysis, Imachi, Nobu et al. (2020) propose a hypothetical model, the E3 model, of how the first evolutionary steps towards eukaryogenesis might have occurred in an ancestral archaeon living ~2 billion years ago. Read more →
Posted on April 14, 2025 at 01:30 AM in Evolution, Physiology & Genetics, Symbioses | Permalink | Comments (0)
by Christoph — ...is a metaphysical affair across all human cultures. For experimental biologists, it is the more prosaic, physical task of cultivating extant prokaryotic relatives of the ancestors of the eukaryotes in the lab. Or the 'most likely' ancestors of the eukaryotes, to be cautious when leaping back ~2 billion years in time. Now, meet the archaeon Promethearchaeum syntrophicum MK-D1, and its syntrophic companions. Read more →
Posted on April 07, 2025 at 02:59 AM in Evolution, Physiology & Genetics, Symbioses | Permalink | Comments (0)
by Christoph — Among biologists, DNA is a household term, the acronym for desoxyribonucleic acid, which hardly anyone pronounces in full. But can you find your way around the zoo of prefixes that are in use and in most cases are not separated from 'DNA' by a hyphen, as for example in Z-DNA? cccDNA, rcDNA (ocDNA), mtDNA, ecDNA, cDNA, bDNA, gDNA (chrDNA), kDNA, xDNA, rDNA, tDNA, ssDNA,… and eDNA. Read more →
Posted on March 17, 2025 at 02:30 AM in Physiology & Genetics, Teachers Corner | Permalink | Comments (0)
by Lucas Le Nagard — Swimming E. coli typically cover a distance equivalent to the radius of a human hair each second. It might not seem very impressive… But for a 2 µm bacterium, it corresponds to 10 body lengths per second! Much better than the swimming speed of our best athletes, which barely exceeds one body length per second. So, how does E. coli achieve this? Read more →
Posted on March 10, 2025 at 02:30 AM in Physiology & Genetics | Permalink | Comments (0)
Noteworthy — The human microbiome – the collection of microbes associated with our bodies – is variable, adapts to its host, but, most importantly, is increasingly recognized as important for our health and physiology. The sheer number and diversity of microbes, not to mention their interactions and activities, makes the study of the microbiome complex. How, then, can we understand what these microbes are doing? Read more →
Posted on March 06, 2025 at 01:30 AM in Noteworthy, Physiology & Genetics | Permalink | Comments (0)
by Tobias Engl — Beewolves, their larvae, and their Streptomyces symbionts not only use multiple, largely different classes of chemical compounds to protect themselves against detrimental microbial competitors. To be most effective, these compounds are produced and deployed in a precisely timed sequence. Beewolves are solitary digger wasps that hunt on bees, paralyze them and provision single eggs with... Read more →
Posted on February 24, 2025 at 01:30 AM in Physiology & Genetics, Symbioses, Teachers Corner | Permalink | Comments (0)
Noteworthy — Plants interact with a broad range of commensal bacteria and often rely on these microbial partners for proper growth and development. In this study, Haimlich et al. analyzed genomes of the fast-growing plant Arabidopsis thaliana and members of its microbiome. Read more →
Posted on January 23, 2025 at 01:30 AM in Ecology, Noteworthy, Physiology & Genetics | Permalink | Comments (0)
by Christoph — Say, you are a student in a molecular genetics lab course or a more advanced cloning expert, you will inevitably have to deal with E. coli. And to make E. coli bacteria grow quickly, standard protocols almost always suggest using LB medium as a "rich medium". You follow the protocol... Read more →
Posted on December 12, 2024 at 01:30 AM in Methodology, Physiology & Genetics, Teachers Corner | Permalink | Comments (0)
by Christoph — Exactly eight years ago today, we introduced you to the 'Hedgehogs In Your Garden'. No, we had not turned our backs on the Small Things and became gardeners instead. Again today, it is not about gardening activities, namely, 'How to grow shrubs'. Let me explain... Read more →
Posted on November 28, 2024 at 01:22 AM in Ecology, Physiology & Genetics | Permalink | Comments (0)