Small Things Considered

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 →

More Respect For the Silicon Cycle, Please

by Elio | Silicon is the second most abundant element within Earth’s crust and is necessary for the livelihood of protists, plants, and animals. Maybe best known, silica (SiO₂ or opal) is used by marine organisms such as diatoms and rhizarians to build their glassy and often beautiful shells. Read more →

Ocean's Tiniest Predator – Um, Really?

by Christoph | Three months ago, I introduced to this blog "Ocean's Ti­ni­est Pre­da­tor" based on a very re­cent pa­per by Ka­men­na­ya et al. (2018) who claimed to have iden­ti­fied Braa­ru­do­sphae­ra bi­ge­lo­wii, a mem­ber of the pho­to­syn­the­tic al­gal clade Hap­to­phy­ta, as a pre­da­tor of the abun­dant ma­ri­ne Cya­no­bac­te­ri­um Pro­chlo­ro­coc­cus. Our rea­der Be­ne­det­to pointed out... Read more →

The Nuclear Option

by Christoph | When considering "Who ate whom?", you're likely to think of the eukaryotes. They gobble up just about everything by pha­gocytosis, a common property of unicellular protists and cells of more complex multicellular eukaryotes such as us humans (macrophages, for example ). And whether it's microplastics, mineral fibers like asbes­tos, organic debris or living... Read more →

Ocean's Tiniest Predator

by Christoph | In popular terms, the marine food chain goes like this: "phytoplankton feed the zooplankton that feed the small fish (larvae) and crustaceans that feed the larger fish that feed the even bigger fish that feed us". Thus we have us, Homo sapiens, together with the great white shark, Carcharodon carcharias, and... Read more →