Small Things Considered

Pictures Considered #24. Ostreococcus tauri, the Smallest Known Eukaryote

by Elio | Ostreococcus tauri is about as small as a free-living eukaryote can get. Its disk-shaped cells are as small as 0.8 µm, which makes it possible to examine them by electron cryotomography. As reported in a paper from the Jensen lab, there is barely enough room in these cells... Read more →

Let's Not Forget Acetabularia

by Elio | If I asked you what was the experimental basis for the central dogma of biology (DNA makes RNA makes Protein), you would be likely to mention the classical findings that the transforming principle was DNA (Avery et al.) or that phages transfer DNA to the host (Hershey & Chase). However, it is unlikely that... Read more →

Five Questions About the Foraminifera

by Elio | The Foraminifera ("forams") are among the largest and most abundant of all unicellular organisms. They can reach 20 cm in length and 18 cm in width, and the shells surrounding them are even bigger, up to 30 cm in length. They have existed in prodigious numbers that the remnants... Read more →

Microbes or Not, Parasites All

by Elio | Parasites pose a problem for the semantically-oriented microbiologist. There is no question that unicellular parasites such as Giardia, Plasmodium, or Toxoplasma are microbes, thus we can appropriate them with impunity. But what about parasitic worms? They are clearly not microscopic* and are taxonomically apart from parasitic protist. Yet parasitic protists… Read more →

Let’s Start Out Big

by Elio | We are embarking on our seventh year, not a bad age for a blog, and we continue to be astounded by the fanciful tales from the pint-sized world of the Small Things. So, just to be contrary, I’ll start out with a story of a group of giants among microbes, the single-celled protists called... Read more →

Fine Reading: Houses Made by Protists

by Elio | If there is a limit to what unicellular organisms can do, you can't prove it by me. As Michael Hansell writes in an article entitled Houses Made by Protists, some single cells can make exceedingly intricate structures. Using a Q&A format, Hansell, who bears the interesting title of… Read more →

Fine Reading: Two Fine Protist Blogs

by Elio | Merry and I would like you to know about two specialized blogs that deal mainly with protists, one called Skeptic Wonder, the other The Ocelloid. The first one is a spirited blog whose history goes back to 2008, the second a recent addition to the Scientific American Blog Network.... Read more →

Hard Biology

by Elio | For some time, I've had the urge to learn something about diatoms. They are dazzlingly beautiful, relatively easy to manipulate, and have left a fossil record immense in quantity. I never had followed up on this yen, so here’s my chance. A recent paper shed light on the way they make… Read more →

Targeting an Achilles' Heel of Plasmodium

by S. Marvin Friedman | Plasmodium falciparum accounts for 85% of all cases of malaria, and thus is the most deadly of the many species in this genus. About 250 million people are infected annually, of which about one million die. Of these deaths, 90% occur south of the Sahara desert in Africa, and most… Read more →

Farmer Joe Dictyostelium

by Elio | The practice of agriculture is not limited to humans: ants, termites, and snails all grow fungi, and who knows who else do something similar. But not many have claimed that such activities are to be found among simpler organisms. Now we have a report that slime molds have also… Read more →