Small Things Considered

Shepherding bacteria with specks of light

by Helena Massana-Cid
The celebrity among bacteria Escherichia coli, as many other swimming cells, inspects its surroundings by moving in zigzag motion while searching for "greener pastures." Thus, if a group is swimming in a homogeneous area they will fill all available space uniformly... Read more →

"Off with Their (tRNA) Heads"

by Janie
Some bacterial molecules have the social graces of certain 1700s French revolutionaries, or Shakespeare's Richard III, or the Queen of Hearts from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – in that all share a penchant for beheading those they encounter! In the microbial case... Read more →

Heavy-duty Traffic, Microscale

by Christoph
Men­tion "fla­gel­la" and we mi­cro­bio­lo­gists in­stant­ly think of these in­gen­ious ap­pe­nda­ges that bac­te­ri­al cells use to pro­pel them­selves through fluids of va­ry­ing vis­co­si­ties (ar­chaea do this, too, with their ar­cha­el­la). We ra­re­ly think of them as an ac­ces­sory to trans­port car­go. Yes "car­go," you read cor­rect­ly, but may­be you re­mem­ber... Read more →

Thinking outside the rod (or coccus)

by Roberto
With kind per­mis­sion by the or­gan­i­zers, we re­pro­duce here an edit­ed tran­script of Ro­ber­to's talk (via live vi­deo) at the meet­ing on 'Ma­jor ideas in quan­ti­ta­tive mi­cro­bi­al phy­sio­lo­gy: Past, Pre­sent and Fu­ture', held in June this year in Køben­havn, Den­mark. Read more →

Retrons Resolved

by Mechas Zambrano
Just like solving a crossword puzzle or a sudoku, it is also greatly gratifying when apparently obscure scientific obser­vations are figured out. There are many examples in microbiology of obser­vations that, though they hint at some biological... Read more →

On drums: Escherichia coli

by Christoph
"Light funky groove with a rol­ling snare pat­tern and oc­ca­sion­al fills, syn­co­pat­ed wood block and per­cus­sive hand‑drum and rol­ling con­ga pat­tern" de­scrib­es a par­ti­cu­lar drum pat­tern (#15) by ac­claimed Ni­ge­ri­an mas­ter drum­mer Tony Allen. But don't wor­ry, you didn't stumble in­to the drums sect­ion... Read more →

Magnificently long : Thiomargarita magnifica

by Christoph
Microbiologists study mi­crobes with mi­cro­scopes be­cause they are not vis­ible to the na­ked eye. Un­less they are. This was ex­act­ly the case for "Can­di­da­tus Thio­mar­ga­ri­ta mag­ni­fi­ca", de­scribed in a re­cent Bio­Rχiv pre­print by Vol­lard et al. (2022): "A cen­ti­me­ter-long bac­te­ri­um with DNA com­part..." (more about the se­cond part of the title... Read more →

Nailing the twists of a twisted nails puzzle, part 2|2

by Christoph
I had almost solved the twisted nails puzzle in the first part. I had untwisted the function of the first nail, spot 42 RNA, as well as the function of the second nail, the open reading frame contained within this 'dual‑function RNA' that is translated as the SpfP protein. Here now are two more twists… Read more →

Nailing the twists of a twisted nails puzzle, part 1|2

by Christoph
I recently mentioned in passing that "...one is poking a wasps' nest when studying cAMP·CRP re­gu­lat­ed genes." Are you ready to do some poking with me? Well, in a back corner of said wasp's nest lies a twisted nails puzzle, the solution to which I will reveal here. You would be right... Read more →

Fine Reading: A Brief History of Plasmids

by Roberto
That plasmids are autonomous replicating elements and that they can serve as excellent cloning vectors are facts most certainly well-known to STC readers. However, I venture to guess that the same cannot be said about the historical details of the when, how, and why... Read more →