Small Things Considered

First the Fire, Then the Fungus

by Roberto | Fire is a fun­da­men­tal eco­lo­gi­cal pro­cess. Through­out the his­tor­y of life on Earth, fire has been a re­gu­latory force that great­ly in­flu­en­ces eco­sys­tem func­tion and evo­lu­tion. Its ef­fects are not felt gra­du­al­ly but rather through pe­ri­od­ic, sud­den, and ca­tas­troph­ic ef­fects on po­pu­la­tion siz­es, com­mu­ni­ty com­po­si­tion, and nu­trient cyc­ling... Read more →

Evolution-Proofing Antibiotics

by Vilhelmiina Haavisto | Since the dis­co­ve­ry of pe­ni­cil­lin and its de­vel­op­ment in­to a the­ra­peu­tic agent, an­ti­bio­tics have re­vo­lu­tion­ized me­di­cine and saved count­less lives. How­ever, the way we use these life-sav­ing me­di­cat­ions is fun­da­men­tal­ly un­sus­tain­able as pa­tho­gens ra­pid­ly evolve re­sist­ance, ren­der­ing ma­ny se­ri­ous in­fect­ions ef­fect­ive­ly un­treat­able. Read more →

Small RNAs Considered

by Janie | With the discovery of the trp attenuator in the 1970s, followed shortly by the ColE1 plasmid RNA I, RNA became a much more interesting personality. The biomolecule wears far more hats than mRNA, rRNA, and tRNA. In all its multitudes, RNA seems to boast an infinite functional repertoire... Read more →

A Dual-Function Small RNA

by Christoph | We cele­brate the 60th an­ni­ver­sa­ry of the Lac oper­on this year and what bou­quet − et bien sûr un coup de cham­pagne − would be more ap­pro­pri­ate than to take a look at how post-tran­script­ion­al gene re­gu­la­tion com­ple­ments and ex­tends clas­si­cal tran­script­ion­al gene re­gu­la­tion? I'm talk­ing of small RNAs (sRNAs) and their role... Read more →

The Hunger Games

by Elio |I am not usually drawn to start out an ar­ticle by con­si­der­ing a bac­te­ri­um's name, but when con­front­ed with Ag­gre­ga­ti­bac­ter ac­ti­no­my­ce­tem­co­mit­ans, I had to take a pause. A well-tra­vel­ed Gram-negative coc­co­ba­cil­lus, this car­rier of such a con­vo­lut­ed mo­ni­ker start­ed life simp­ly as an Ac­ti­no­ba­cil­lus... Read more →

Of Terms in Biology: Diazotroph

by Roberto | It all started with my want­ing to write a post on Fran­kia. I did what I al­ways do when think­ing of a new post. I googled 'small things considered frankia'. Nothing. Good start, I can dive in­to the topic. Next, I thought let's put Frankia in the con­text of prior posts. I googled 'small things considered rhizobium'. Nothing again... Read more →

Why Calcify?

by Roberto | Janie's re­cent Bio-Brick post, where she in­tro­duces mi­cro­bi­al­ly in­duced cal­cite pre­ci­pi­ta­tion, prompt­ed me to con­tinue on the to­pic. In con­trast to the amor­phous chalk Janie de­scribed, which is pro­duced by bac­te­ria from lime­stone, I'll be de­scrib­ing a ve­ry dif­ferent sort of chalk. Still cal­cium car­bo­nate, but with a com­ple­te­ly dif­fer­ent ge­ne­sis. Read more →

Transient Thoughts on Transduction

by Roberto | What with the all the talk about CRISPR, the renewed interest in phage therapy, the widespread occurrence of huge phages (to mention but a few of the reasons phage are constantly in the news these days), it's no exaggeration to say that once again in biology "phage are all the rage"... Read more →

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 →