Small Things Considered

Risks and benefits of workouts while fasting (part 2)

by Christoph | You may wonder whether the 'oligo­tro­phic growth state' of Ba­cil­lus sub­ti­lis – the sub­ject of part 1 – isn't just the ca­pri­ole of a do­mes­ti­ca­ted bac­te­ri­um in the lab, and not of much re­le­vance "in the wild." But, as you will soon see, it pro­bab­ly is re­le­vant in na­tu­ral set­tings. But first I have to go back... Read more →

Risks and benefits of workouts while fasting (part 1)

by Christoph | No intro today, I'm about to make one big leap right into the sub­ject. It's about Ba­cil­lus sub­ti­lis but I will not touch what this mul­ti-ta­len­ted bac­te­ri­um is so well known for: spo­ru­la­tion, bio­film for­ma­tion, mo­ti­li­ty by swim­ming, swarm­ing mo­ti­li­ty, can­ni­ba­lism, and "na­tu­ral com­pe­tence" for DNA up­take (aka trans­for­ma­tion). It's about the re­act­ion of B. sub­ti­lis to food de­pri­va­tion. Read more →

The world of small RNAs and regulatory peptides in prokaryotes

by Matthias Gimpel | The natural habitats of most bac­te­ria are cha­rac­te­ri­zed by chan­ging en­vi­ron­men­tal con­di­tions such as fluc­tua­tions in tem­pe­ra­ture, os­mo­la­ri­ty, chan­ging or li­mi­ted nu­trient sup­ply, or the oc­cur­rence of com­pe­ting mi­cro­bes and bac­te­rio­pha­ges. Con­se­quent­ly, fle­xible and ener­gy-ef­fi­cient adap­ta­tion to these chan­ging ex­ter­nal pa­ra­me­ters is the basis for their sur­vi­val. Read more →

The Complex and Mysterious Red Queen

by Jamie | The Red Queen of Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass is a prominent figure among evolutionary biologists. Her line to Alice, "‘Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place" struck the biologist Leigh Van Valen as an apt metaphor for the need for species to constantly adapt to the changing environment in order to survive. Read more →

The Pyrenoid – Not Your Average Cookie-Cutter Organelle

by Janie Kim
The chloroplast is the chocolate chip cookie of the carbon-fixing, photosynthesizing world: it's a reliable, traditional, well-known staple. Lesser known is the more mysterious shape-shifting organelle called the pyrenoid. Read more →

Fungomania 2. Hyphal Comings and Goings

by Elio
Until a few decades ago, mushrooms were thought of being some kind of plants. We now know that they belong to their own kingdom, the Mycota (or: Fungi). They typically consist of caps and stems that arise from a microscopic network residing underground or in rotting trees. Read more →

Blown Out of Proportion – The Role of ppGpp in Balanced Metabolism

by Elizabeth Mueller & Corey Westfall | Chocolate chip cookies are one of our guilty pleasures in the Levin Lab. They provide a satisfying, albeit unhealthy, avenue to celebrate success (or escape failure) in the lab. In addition to being warm, gooey, and delicious, a more practical attribute we appreciate is the scalability of the recipe: We can adjust the quantity of cookies we bake in proportion to our accomplishments or to the volume of ingredients in our kitchens without compromising the quality. Read more →

A Whiff of Taxonomy – Cycloclasticus

by Christoph | Whenever you stumble across the name of a bac­te­ri­al spe­cies you've ne­ver heard of be­fore you pro­bab­ly won­der what the heck that name wants to tell you. You're not alone, al­so mi­cro­bio­lo­gists often scratch their heads. Sure, they are fa­mi­liar with the ve­ne­rable tra­di­tion in all of bio­lo­gy to name spe­cies ac­cording to the rules... Read more →

Escape From the Wall

by Roberto | Who would have thought it? That the bac­terial cell wall would turn out to be so rea­di­ly dis­pen­sa­ble. Among the first les­sons I taught on bac­te­ri­al cell struc­ture was the fact that the ever pre­sent cell wall, com­posed pre­do­mi­nant­ly of pep­ti­do­gly­can, forms a pro­tec­tive shield around the cyto­plas­mic mem­brane. A shield that pre­vents the bac­te­ri­al cell... Read more →

Inside Earth, Microbes Approach Immortality

by Jennifer Frazer | Last December, the Deep Carbon Observatory an­nounced an astounding fact: the mass of the mi­crobes living beneath Earth's surface amounts to 15 to 23 billion tons of carbon, a sum some 245 to 385 times greater than the carbon mass of all humans. That's amazing. It wasn't so long ago we weren't even sure life at depth was possible. Read more →