Small Things Considered

Stay Away, Stay Away – There Is Danger Ahead

by Elio | In ancient times, persons suffering from a dreaded disease believed to be contagious, such as leprosy, were given a bell to ring and thus noisily announce their presence. Healthy people could then move away and try to avoid contact.  Amazingly, bacteria use an analogous strategy. Read more →

Of Terms in Biology: The Exome

by Elio | An exome is the collection of exons, the sequences within the primary mRNA transcripts of an organism that are eventually used for making proteins. The rest, non-coding sequences, called introns, are removed by RNA splicing. (Note that there is no ‘introme,’ at least not yet.)   Read more →

How to Swim Through Goo: Lessons from a Microbial Menagerie

by Janie | One of my favorite childhood book/TV se­ries was The Ma­gic School Bus, which fol­lows quir­ky sci­ence tea­cher Ms. Frizzle and her class in their ma­gic school bus as they go on field trips to outer space, through the food chain, or in­side the hu­man bo­dy. I espe­cial­ly liked the epi­sode in which the class shrinks down to the mi­cro­sco­pic le­vel... Read more →

A Whiff of Taxonomy – Saltatorellus ferox, again...

by Christoph | In a follow-up of the pre­vi­ous post on Sal­ta­to­rel­lus fe­rox, and its un­usual way of cell di­vi­sion and cel­lu­lar move­ment, I'm going to take a clo­ser look here at its chro­mo­so­me rep­li­ca­tion and se­gre­ga­tion. Read more →

(More than just) a Whiff of Taxonomy – Saltatorellus ferox

by Christoph | Last summer, I stumbled upon the name «Sal­ta­to­rel­lus» when look­ing at a photo from a pos­ter ses­sion of a mi­cro­bio­lo­gy con­gress. I found that name so char­ming! Stage names of jugg­lers and cir­cus ar­tists who perform audacious jumps and da­ring so­mer­saults came to my mind. And in­deed, the name Sal­ta­to­rel­lus fe­rox was gi­ven to a bac­te­rium... Read more →

From Talmudic Question Musings to Good Reading on the Code

by Roberto | "There are twenty amino acids that oc­cur na­tu­ra­l­ly in pro­teins. Con­si­de­ring the di­ver­si­ty of pro­tein struc­tures and func­tion, do you think that is small or large?" Thus star­ted my most re­cent mu­sings on craf­ting a pos­sible Tal­mu­dic quest­ion... Read more →

mRNA in E. coli : Not Lost Without Translation

by Roberto | Every now and then, a new fin­ding seems to come out of no­where, great­ly chal­len­ging pri­or ideas. Such might be the case on how we came to gain new know­ledge re­gar­ding the struc­tu­ral or­ga­ni­za­tion of the ba­sic pro­ces­ses of tran­scrip­tion and trans­la­tion in Esche­ri­chia coli. Read more →

Forbearance with the Escherichia coli Nucleoid

by Conrad Woldringh | Adding to the enormous existing literature, the Dekker group recently produced two articles using their ability to visualize a ring-like nucleoid and to study its properties and dynamics during rest and replication. How did they obtain such a ring-like structures? They reasoned that the normal rod-shaped E. coli cell was too thin to allow direct clear visualization of its nucleoid. Read more →

To grow or not to grow? That is the question!

by Roberto | What happens to bacterial populations as they transition from a state of rapid growth to little or no growth as a consequence of diminishing amounts of nutrients? It seems that every time this quest­ion is addressed in a new setting and/or a different species, some fas­cinating new features of bacterial adaptability are discovered. Read more →

A Whiff of Taxonomy – Zymomonas

by Elio | Zymomonas is a Gram-negative alphaproteobacterial genus with a single known species, Zymomonas mobilis that promise much but do not quite deliver, at least not yet. Read more →