Small Things Considered

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 →

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 →