Small Things Considered

A Whiff of Taxonomy – Cycloclasticus

by Christoph | Whenever you stumble across the name of a bac­te­ri­al spe­cies you've ne­ver heard of be­fore you pro­bab­ly won­der what the heck that name wants to tell you. You're not alone, al­so mi­cro­bio­lo­gists often scratch their heads. Sure, they are fa­mi­liar with the ve­ne­rable tra­di­tion in all of bio­lo­gy to name spe­cies ac­cording to the rules... Read more →

Salamalga

by Jamie | Long, long ago, some two billion years, when earthlings were represented solely by prokaryotes, there existed dense microbial mats, bustling with activity and with metabolic sophistication to match the most advanced engineering of eukaryotic metropolises of today. In­cluded in the mats were many types of bacteria alongside their "odd­ball" brethren, members of the Archaea family. Like any complex com­munity of entities with varied interests, there was friction, there was war, there were truces, there was stealing, and sometimes there was cooperation.  Read more →

Let's make some more tyrosine, together! (part 2)

by Christoph | Figure 2 in the Anbutsu et al. pa­per is so stuf­fed with in­for­ma­tion about the wee­vils' Nar­do­nel­la en­do­sym­biont ge­no­mes that I bet­ter tear it a little apart to show you that it is ac­tu­al­ly pos­sible to ob­ser­ve ge­no­me re­ducti­on 'at work'. As said in part 1, the ge­no­mes are ti­ny (0.2‒0.23 Mb) and con­tain... Read more →

Let's make some more tyrosine, together! (part 1)

by Christoph | Surprisingly, it is not particu­lar­ly dif­fi­cult to per­suade the yeast S. ce­re­vi­si­ae to ac­cept E. co­li bac­te­ria as 'room­mates', that is, as sub­sti­tu­te for de­fec­ti­ve mi­to­chon­dria (see Elio's recent blog). As 'hous­ing me­di­a­tor' you have to pro­vide the pro­spec­ti­ve room­mate with a de­fense against the host's SNARE sys­tem, 'dis­able' both part­ners by en­gin­eering... Read more →

Sensing Quorum Backwards

by Elio | Obvious in the establishment and progress in bacterial patho­genesis is that the inoculum, the number of bacteria entering their host at one time, must be of an effective size. Depending on the infectivity of the species, this can vary from a single bacterium to millions of them. Read more →

Go Ahead, Prove that Eukaryotic Cells AroseVia Endosymbiosis

by Elio | Say you want to prove once and for all the endosymbiotic theory of the origin of eukaryotic cells, substantiating that a cell (according to many, an archaeon) acquired a bacterium that eventually morphed into a mitochondrion. Read more →

Symbiosis

by Elio et al. | For as long as I can re­mem­ber, I have been fas­ci­na­ted by the sub­ject of sym­bio­sis. This is one of the grand themes in bio­lo­gy, what Mar­ga­ret McFall-Ngai has apt­ly called 'the ele­phant in the room', de­serv­ing much love and at­tent­ion. But ex­act­ly, what is it that is so fas­ci­na­ting about it? Read more →

Snacking on thistles (second bite)

by Christoph | For the thistle tortoise beet­le, Cas­si­da ru­bi­gi­no­sa, bit­ing once into its pre­fer­red food is not enough, it tak­es a se­cond bite. So, 80 years af­ter the first de­scrip­tion of a bac­te­ri­al sym­biont in C. ru­bi­gi­no­sa by H.-J. Stam­mer, Hassan Salem and his col­lea­gues took up the thread and stu­di­ed the sym­biont to more... Read more →

Snacking on thistles (first bite)

by Christoph | Way back in 1936, the zoologist H.-J. Stammer published a study of various beetles of the Cassidinae family (order Co­le­o­ptera) and their microbial symbionts. Among them was the thistle tortoise beetle, Cas­sida rubiginosa, an obligate foliovore, or put another way, a dedicated ve­gan with a penchant for thistles (Cirsium sp.). Thistles were a pest for far­mers in the pre-Roundup™ age, and some... Read more →

What To Do When You Run Out of a Cherished Symbiont?

by Elio | The answer is easy: pick up another one. This happens with the cicadas, those noisy insects that have been in the mindfulness of humans since antiquity. Cicadas, like aphids, psyllids, leafhoppers and others, feed on plant sap fluids, which are rich in sugars but poor in amino acids and vitamins. Read more →