Small Things Considered

Feel dehydrated? Dig for some water then!

by Christoph | Cyanobacteria of the genus Chro­oco­cci­diop­sis are known to sur­vive harsh en­vi­ron­men­tal con­di­tions, high and low tem­pe­ra­tures, ion­izing ra­dia­tion, and high sa­li­ni­ty. Add re­sist­an­ce to de­hy­dra­tion or, in the ex­treme form, de­sic­ca­tion and you have a se­ri­ous chal­len­ger of Dei­no­coc­cus to the title "champ­ion of re­sil­ience". Like the lat­ter, Chro­oco­cci­diop­sis is ea­si­ly found in the Ata­ca­ma de­sert... Read more →

Bacterial Genomes, IKEA-Style (Some Assembly Required)

by Janie | Much like “artificial” languages like Esperanto or Tolkien's fifteen (!) Elvish tongues, genomes, too, are subject to manipulation and modulation, by the scientist's hand. There's been a smattering of posts here on the blog that touched on synthetic genomes... Read more →

The Crowded Nucleoid

by Elio | Eukaryotic cells may be composed of many parts, but, by and large, they make some kind of sense. Take the nucleus for example. Its space is defined by the nuclear membrane and, for all the complexity of its many transactions, it is amenable to a reasonable understanding. You cannot say this for the prokaryotic nucleoid... Read more →

Fine Reading: Guts and Glory, Microbiome Edition

by Janie
Research on the microbiome, particularly the gut microbiome, garners ever-increasing attention from both the scientific and public eye (and the press). But as with most other fads, there’s a need to parse out fact from fiction... Read more →

Processing the Ps in Times of Stress

by Daniel | A decade ago, Fred Neidhardt wrote a tour de force post for our blog on a case of con­ver­gence be­tween bac­te­ri­al phy­sio­lo­gy and vi­ru­lence that fea­tured a re­view by Da­le­broux et al. from Mi­chele Swan­son's lab. The spe­ci­fic to­pic of that con­ver­gence was the role that the nuc­leo­tide gua­no­sine te­tra­phos­phate (ppGpp) plays in the in­tra­cel­lu­lar... Read more →

@NAChristakis on COVID-19 and Immunity

by the STC team | We came across a long thread on Twitter these days that out­lines rea­lis­tic per­spec­tiv­es for a way through and out of the pan­demic. The au­thor, Ni­cho­las A. Chris­takis (@NAChris­takis), a so­cio­lo­gist and phy­si­cian who con­ducts re­search in the areas of so­cial net­works and bio­so­cial sci­ence at Yale Uni­ver­si­ty, kind­ly gran­ted us per­mis­sion to re-blog... Read more →

Teachers Corner: Who bears the load?

by Roberto | First, let me comment on the title I wrote. It should have read, what bears the load? Better yet, what part of the bacterial cell envelope is the load-bearing component? Whenever I taught bacterial cell biology I always started by describing the components of cell envelope, cytoplasmic membrane, cell wall and, in the Gram-negatives, the outer membrane. Read more →

A Bacterial Protein Takes on "Birds of a Feather Flock Together"

by Janie | For a bacterium, stick­ing onto things is the go-to way to play it safe. The abi­li­ty of bac­te­ria to ad­here to sur­faces is a ma­jor boon to their sur­vi­val, en­abling them to co­lo­ni­ze and form com­mu­ni­ties in di­verse en­vi­ron­ments rang­ing from deep sea vents to steel pi­ping to ani­mals' teeth. In ma­ny in­stan­ces, stick­ing on­to sur­faces... Read more →

Trichoplax & Company II.

by Christoph | When searching the metagenomes ob­tain­ed from single Tri­cho­plax H2 in­di­vi­du­als for 16S and 18S rRNA-spe­ci­fic se­quen­ces, Gru­ber-Vo­dic­ka et al. found, next to the pre­va­lent Tri­cho­plax and Grel­lia se­quen­ces a third se­quen­ce at high fre­quen­cy that mat­ched well with known 16S rRNA se­quen­ces from the Ma­ri­na­mar­gu­lis­bac­te­ria (ZB3), a branch with­in the phy­lum Mar­gu­lis­bac­te­ria... Read more →

Trichoplax & Company I.

by Christoph | Take a few thousand small eu­kar­yo­tic cells, al­low for a few dif­fe­rent cell types, and sea­son the cells ge­ne­rous­ly with en­do­sym­bionts (no, not mi­to­chon­dria, they al­ready have these!). Let the cells self-or­ga­ni­ze into a pat­ty – or a po­ta­to chip, if you're more in­to a ve­gan life­style – with a dia­me­ter of ap­pro­xi­ma­te­ly 0.5–1.0 mm, and a mere 25 µm thick. Read more →