Small Things Considered

Pictures Considered #55: Conjugation, and some pairing issues

by Christoph | If you've ever taken a class on bac­te­ri­al ge­ne­tics, ei­ther re­cent­ly or in the last few de­ca­des, you've no doubt seen this image: the con­ju­ga­tion of two bac­te­ri­al cells (Figure 1). And if you found this image so self-ex­pla­na­to­ry that you didn't both­er to ask for the source, you're not alone. The in­ter­net is re­plete with it, in vary­ing... Read more →

Pictures Considered #54 : Mitochondria can't swim...

by Christoph | ...and get pushed around in­stead. Not equip­ped with fla­gel­la for pro­pel­ling or Type IV pi­li for twit­ching they can't ac­tive­ly move. But one step at a time. If you re­call what you know about mi­to­chon­dria, you may pic­ture them as ovoid or bean-shaped or­gan­el­les, house­mates float­ing in the eu­kar­yo­tic cyto­plasm. They are... Read more →

Pictures Considered #53 : The ocean water column is profoundly dark...

by Christoph | ...for the most part. And it's vastly deep­er than the dia­gram Ro­ber­to showed in his re­cent post "The Bio­lo­gi­cal Pump." The eu­photic and meso­pe­lagic zone sizes are cor­rect, but do not even ap­pro­xi­ma­te­ly co­re­late with their ver­ti­cal re­pre­sen­ta­tion in the dia­gram. Why is this a point... Read more →

Pictures Considered #52 : Streptomyces stacks Z-rings...

by Christoph | Streptomyces stacks Z-rings... into lad­ders in­side its aeri­al/spo­ro­gen­ic hy­phae. If this sen­tence strikes you as a bar­rage of jar­gon or just gib­ber­ish, don't des­pair, help is coming. First, en­joy the "light show" in the 20‑se­cond video clip on the right side. It runs in loop, so you can fol­low more than... Read more →

Pictures Considered #51 : Headful Packaging, Literally...

by Christoph | For more than two decades we have known that the doub­le-stran­ded DNA of pha­ges is neat­ly rol­­led up in their cap­sids and fills them com­ple­te­ly. Cerritelli et al. (1997) have de­mon­stra­ted this for coliphage T7, and later Jiang et al. (2006) for Sal­mo­nel­la phage ε15. Yet, with a length of ~40 kb, both phages have more 'me­di­um si­zed' ge­nomes, and it is fine to learn now... Read more →

Pictures Considered #50 : The Four Kingdoms of Nature

by Christoph | We often talk sloppily of «algae» or «pro­tists» on these pa­ges when we con­si­der, ra­re­ly enough, uni­cel­lu­lar eu­kar­yo­tes. For my part, I at­tach little im­port­ance to bio­lo­gi­cal sys­te­ma­tics or taxo­no­my per se be­cause I'm more in­ter­es­ted in learn­ing how li­ving be­ings go about their bu­si­ness than in sort­ing them in­to va­ri­ous draw­ers. The­re­fore I most­ly con­fine my­self to the names of the... Read more →

Pictures Considered #49 : C-Reactive Protein

by Elio | Among the blood tests that your doctor may prescribes is the one for C-Reactive Protein (CRP). What is it? CRP is a protein made by the liver in response to inflammation anywhere in the body, so a positive result will alert the physician that something along those lines is going on some place within you. Read more →

Pictures Considered #48 : Contributions to the Biology of the Bacilli

by Roberto | It was fifteen or twenty years ago, I can't recall the year any more. But I vividly remember walking into Harvard's Farlow Botany Library, being shown to a seat next to an elegant wooden table, and asked to don a pair of white gloves. The protocol stemmed from the fact that I had requested to see an original of the second volume of the journal Beiträge zur Biologie der Pflanzen (Contributions to the Biology of Plants), from 1876. Read more →

Pictures Considered #47 : Phages in the Gardens

by Roberto | A few weeks ago, I found myself aimlessly exploring the garden of the Palace of Holyroodhouse (Edinburgh, Scotland), which has served as the principal residence of the Kings and Queens of Scots since the 16th century. Read more →

Pictures Considered #46 : Fairy Lights (nanometer scale)

by Christoph | This post features electrons, which are among the smallest things possible. There are, of course, even much smaller things than electrons but this blog keeps clear of the quantum realm, most of the time. Yet to make up for the electrons' teensyness – if they could keep still some 4 × 10²¹ would fit into... Read more →