Small Things Considered

A Whiff of Taxonomy – Lacrymaria olor

by Roberto — I was recently made aware of one of Earth's "most interesting living beings owing primarily to its power of elongation, its wonderful elasticity and its great freedom of movement." Thus begins a captivating 1911 article by S. O. Mast, describing the amazing features of the ciliate Lacrymaria olor. Read more →

Stops Making Sense

by Christoph  
One of the most con­vinc­ing ar­guments for a com­mon ori­gin of all known life forms on this pla­net is that they all use the same ge­net­ic code. In my un­der­stand­ing, the ar­gu­ment is strength­en­ed, per­haps some­what coun­te‑­in­tuiti­ve­ly, by the nu­mer­ous find­ings that and how ma­ny life forms mo­di­fy the ca­no­ni­cal ge­net­ic code in ways that suit them... Read more →

The Who-Ate-Whom of Terms in Biology: Virovory

by Christoph  
Like with the cus­to­ma­ry New Year's Eve fire­works, eve­ry year we bio­lo­gists are blessed with hi­ther­to un­known or lar­ge­ly un­com­mon sci­en­ti­fic terms. Some stick, others blaze away like said fire­works. How would you guess the term "vi­ro­vo­ry," which was ad­ded to Wi­ki­pe­dia on 29 Decem­ber 2022, will fare? Read more →

Luciferin in Scintillons at Sea

by Janie 
Summer through au­tumn is the time of year for ma­rine di­no­fla­gel­lates' famed light fes­ti­vals. If the con­di­tions are just right, the roll of an ocean wave or the push of a ka­yak paddle or the sway of your legs as you wade in deep­er is enough to set the wa­ters... Read more →

In the Company of Bacteria: Amoebae

by Christoph  
In times long past, highly evolved eu­karyotes, for ex­ample bio­chemists, oc­ca­sio­nal­ly quip­ped that bac­ter­ia were noth­ing more than a bag of en­zymes. Well, from the per­spec­tive of bac­ter­ia, one could easi­ly re­turn the com­pli­ment: eu­kar­y­o­tes, for ex­ample single-cel­led amoe­bae, are little more than a... Read more →

A Dinoflagellate and its Mucosphere

by Christoph
There are strikingly dif­fer­ent table man­ners among hu­man cul­tures past and pre­sent when it comes to food in­gest­ion, who wouldn't know. Not so with our single-cel­led eu­kar­yo­tic re­la­tives, the pro­tists, who gobble up eve­ry­thing that feels and smells about right? Wrong. En­gulf­ment, as bio­lo­gists call this be­ha­vio­ral pro­cess is a bit like put­ting a bowl of ra­men noo­dles to your lips and... 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 →

A Whiff of Taxonomy – The Apicomplexa

by Elio
The phylum Apicomplexa encompasses a large number of obligate intracellular parasitic protists, including the Plasmodium of malaria, toxoplasma, cryptosporidium, coccidia, and many others. Read more →

Unicellular Capsaspora and animal multicellularity

by Victoria Shabardina
It is common in biolo­gy to look at little things to learn how the big parts work: we study mo­le­cul­es to un­der­stand cells and study or­gans to know how the bo­dy funct­ions. But it is dif­fer­ent with Cap­sa­spo­ra, be­cause it is a whole, a com­plete single-cell or­gan­ism, and it is ac­ti­ve­ly stu­died for elu­ci­dat­ing how... Read more →

Proteorhodophytina: Obscure Red Algae Are Keepers of Deep Evolutionary Secrets

by Lukáš Novák
You may be familiar with some red al­gae even with­out rea­liz­ing it, as many spe­cies have pro­found eco­lo­gi­cal, in­dus­tri­al, and cu­li­na­ry im­port­ance! Ma­cro­scopic red al­gae re­pre­sent one third of all sea­weeds grown in aqua­cul­ture world­wide and cre­ate half of the eco­no­mic value ge­ne­ra­ted by this in­dus­try. Among the most com­mon­ly used are spe­cies of the genus Py­ro­pia... Read more →