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A blog for sharing appreciation of the width and depth of microbes and microbial activities on this planet.

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Pseudouridine Stabilizes tRNA

Noteworthy — The modified nucleoside pseudouridine has many reasons to be considered a star among post-transcriptional RNA modifications. It was the first to be identified, in 1960. Incorporating it into mRNA vaccines was a big reason for their success. And it also shows up in numerous antibiotics. Now there's more. Read more →

Posted on May 08, 2025 at 01:30 AM in Noteworthy, Physiology & Genetics | Permalink | Comments (0)

Cultivating the Ancestors (4|4)

by Christoph — Having one or two 'Asgard' archaea under the microscope – after having cultivated them with great effort and even more patience – and looking them in the face is exciting, but a bit unsatisfying if they are cousins. Are they mavericks or rather typical for "Lokis"? Here are the portraits of two more distant re­la­tives, both also cousins: Margulisarchaeum peptidophila HC1 and Flexarchae­um multipro­tru­sionis SC1. Read more →

Posted on April 28, 2025 at 01:30 AM in Evolution, Physiology & Genetics, Symbioses | Permalink | Comments (0)

Of Aerobes and Anaerobes

Noteworthy — When first introduced to microbes, we quickly learn to divide them into aerobes and anaerobes. Then we qualify those titles with modifiers to yield such classes as facultative anaerobes, obligate aerobes and strict anaerobes. Read more →

Posted on April 24, 2025 at 01:30 AM in Ecology, Evolution, Noteworthy, Physiology & Genetics, Teachers Corner | Permalink | Comments (0)

Cultivating the Ancestors (3|4)

by Christoph — There was joy, even excitement among archaeologists when the first images of Promethearchaeum syntrophicum MK‑D1 made the rounds. This sense of joy deepend still when images of its cousin Lokiarchaeon ossiferum Loki-B35 were added a little later. The ancestors suddenly got their own faces, literally, and were no longer only vaguely recognizable from genome sequences! Read more →

Posted on April 21, 2025 at 01:30 AM in Evolution, Physiology & Genetics, Symbioses | Permalink | Comments (0)

Promising New Antimicrobials

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)

Cultivating the Ancestors… (2|4)

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)

Cultivating the Ancestors… (1|4)

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)

Wait, What? extracurricular DNA (eDNA)

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)

Watching the flagellar motor at work

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)

Bacterium Linked to Depression

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)

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