Small Things Considered

Of Terms in Biology: Trans-Translation

by Janie, Christoph and John McCutcheon | This could become a very short explainer of the term "trans-trans­lation", as gi­ven by Vioque and de la Cruz in their mini­review:"Trans-trans­lation is a pro­cess found in all bac­te­ria, which con­tri­butes to the re­lease of ri­bo­somes that are stalled through a va­rie­ty of causes, for ex­ample when the 3' end of a trun­cated mRNA lack­ing a stop codon... Read more →

Having the bow and arrow might not be enough...

by Natália C. Drebes Dörr | Daily challenges in the life of mi­cro­sco­pic or­gan­isms are not that dif­fer­ent from those ex­per­ienc­ed by chee­tahs and ga­zel­les in the sa­van­nas. Bac­te­ria are usu­al­ly em­bed­ded in com­mu­ni­ties where they need to ac­tive­ly com­pete for food and space. Also, they are often under the at­tack of vo­ra­cious pre­dators such as bac­te­rio­pha­ges and pro­tists, which they fight... Read more →

Exploration, Streptomyces-style

by Roberto | The evolutionary trajectories of bacteria are great­ly in­fluen­ced by their re­pro­duc­tive suc­cess in chan­ging en­vi­ron­ments. Of course, this is not just about how fast bac­te­ria di­vide when con­di­tions per­mit growth but also how well they sur­vive in the ab­sence of growth. In ad­di­tion, an im­port­ant de­ter­mi­nant of the over­all fit­ness of a bac­te­ri­al lineage is... Read more →

Spy Gadgets

by Janie | Some bacterial enzymes have interesting character arcs. DNA poly­merase, courtesy of Thermus aquaticus, soaks up the limelight as an enzyme pulled out of bacteria and cata­pulted into molecular biology stardom. One enzyme that is certainly less-known is FbaB, which helps Strepto­coccus pyogenes adhere to and invade host cells... Read more →

The Streptococcal Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

by Janie | In Norse mythology, the goddess Freyja has a cloak of feathers that can ferry her between human and falcon forms. The Aztec deity Tezcatlipoca sometimes wore a jaguar skin to disguise himself. Sneaking into the ranks of such mythological figures is the more tangible and much smaller Group A Streptococcus... Read more →

Teachers Corner: Where have all the protons gone?

by Roberto | Learning is complicated. To anyone involved in teaching, it is apparent that students learn in diverse and often mysterious ways. It has even been said that one never really learns something until one has to teach it! Read more →

A Novel Way to Kill Your Neighbor

by Elio | Ever wonder why that paradigm of bacterial signaling molecules, (p)ppGpp, uses guanosine (G) and not some other base (is this a Talmudic Question in the making?)? To remind you, guanosine tetraphosphate, ppGpp, (or the pentaphosphate, pppGpp, the two have pretty much the same activity), is the classic bacterial "alarmone"... Read more →

Of Terms in Biology: RNA Thermometer

by Christoph | Fancy calling a ther­mo­me­ter "cool"? An RNA Ther­mo­me­ter (RNAT) is, tech­ni­cal­ly speak­ing, si­mi­lar to a Bre­guet ther­mo­me­ter − not named after the fa­mous French avia­tion pio­neer, but after his great-great-grand­father Abra­ham-Louis (1747–1823) − in that it re­acts to chang­ing tem­pe­ra­tures with ther­mal ex­pan­sion or con­tract­ion of a strip: a bi­metal­lic strip in Bre­guet's de­vice and par­tial­ly double-strand­ed RNA in an "RNA Ther­mo­meter". Read more →

The Cake-Cutting Problem in the Archaeal World

by Kanika Khanna | Have you ever wondered how to slice a cake in equal pro­por­tions for a large party? Hugo Stein­haus, a fa­mous Polish ma­the­ma­ti­cian in­tro­duced a ma­the­ma­ti­cal way to deal with the fair cake-cut­ting prob­lem af­ter the se­cond world war. He pos­sib­ly used cakes as an ab­stract re­pre­sen­ta­tion of the li­mit­ed... Read more →

Getting to grips with the intangible

by Christoph | Imagine the E. coli nucleoid as a swig but of of a high­ly vis­cous tan­gle of a 2 nm thin and ~1.5 mm long DNA poly­mer, de­co­rat­ed with and high­ly com­pact­ed by a ple­tho­ra of pro­teins, and some­how sus­pend­ed in the cy­to­plasm of a cell with a vol­ume of ~1.3 µm³. It's vir­tu­al­ly im­pos­si­ble to "grip" the nu­cleoid, to mea­sure... Read more →