Small Things Considered

Borrelia and it's not-so-loose ends(part 2)

by Christoph
I wrote in the first part that "in the the se­cond part I will con­si­der their ex­tra­va­gant pe­ri­plas­mic(!) fla­gel­la. There will be no "loose ends" left in ei­ther part, I pro­mise." Spoi­ler: no "loose ends" but a (know­ledge) gap in the middle, that is, when it comes to cell di­vis­ion in Bor­re­lia. Here it goes... Read more →

Borrelia and it's not-so-loose ends(part 1)

by Christoph | Christina Savage, postdoc in Kumaran Ramamurthi's lab at the NIH, re­cent­ly post­ed on Twit­ter the mo­vie you see on the right with the re­mark:"And we just got our dark­field ob­jec­tiv­es in to­day! This was tak­en with my ca­me­ra look­ing down the eye-piece, so not great qua­li­ty. But I just love watch­ing them!" I re­plied:"eve­ry­time I have the rare plea­sure... Read more →

A Paramecium, a Purple Bacterium, and a Green Alga Walk into a Bar…

by Janie | "Three to tango" makes yet another appearance in endosymbioses, this time in the form of a purple-green ciliate that is home to both purple bacteria and green algae. At first glance, this seems like a paradox... Read more →

For Bacteria, Mating can be a Stressful Business

by Anna Dragoš | Bacteria live in microbial jungles where they constantly must cope with siblings exploiting their food, predators trying to eat them, or hostile strains shooting at them with antibacterial weapons. Through billions of years of evolution... Read more →

The Life of an RNA Molecule, Through a Phase-Separation Lens

by Janie | Inside of a cell, some biomolecules cluster together to behave as a liquid. These liquids can reversibly form distinct phases, like the classic example of lava lamps, where mineral oil blobs slip and slide off the water-and-alcohol mix. This is liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS)... Read more →

Cell Division in Bacteria: Themes & Variations

by Elio | From bacteria on up, all the way to the cells of our bo­dies, most cells di­vide by bi­na­ry fis­sion. That is, the pro­cess ini­tiat­es at mid­cell, usu­al­ly by con­strict­ion, and pro­ceeds un­til the two re­sult­ant daugh­ter cells be­come se­pa­rat­ed. Most of­ten, these two sis­ter cells are iden­ti­cal in size and shape. Boring. En­ter Ba­cil­lus sub­tilis... Read more →

Color is in the Eye of the Bacteria-Beholder

by Janie | Pigmentation is a straightforward colora­tion: the color is the same from every viewing angle. In contrast, structural col­oration is in the eye of the beholder: the colors are dependent on the viewing angle... Read more →

Prokaryotic Organelles. Yes, There Are Such Things.

by Elio | One of the venerable distinctions between eukaryotes and prokaryotes used to be that prokaryotes do not have organelles. This distinction has now gone by the wayside because bacteria and archaea have been shown to possess protein bound structures that can appropriately be called organelles. Read more →

All the World Is Not E. coli

by Elio | Like most people interested in bacterial physiology, I spent much of my life with the nearly religious persuasion that the starting condition for studying growth is when cells and their constituents all increase in unison. In practice, such "balance growth" is achieved when bacteria grow exponentially at low concentrations... Read more →

Cyanobacteria fly kites? Come on...

by Christoph | You've probably heard of spiders that fly with­tout wings. They climb on­to flow­ers or leaves, stand on their tip­toes, and push gos­sam­er threads of silk from their spin­nerets, glands in their ab­domen, and take off. They do that to reach a near­by twig when weav­ing their webs or to make long-dist­ance flights, some­times over... Read more →