Small Things Considered

Of Terms in Biology: Trophosome

by Elio | A rather specific term, trophosome refers – as per the Wikipedia – to 'an organ found in some animals that houses symbiotic bacteria that provide food for their host.' Trophé (τροφή) denotes nourishment, soma (σῶμα), body, denoting that trophosomes are intimately involved in their host's nutrition. Read more →

Prokaryotic Pointillism: When a Sea Sponge Endosymbiont Paints the Bigger Picture

by Janie
A while ago, I read a piece from Catapult Magazine that mused about the strangeness of eating fish. The article asked, why do we so willingly eat creatures that come from a place so poorly understood? Read more →

Fungomania 3. Farming and Alcohol

by Elio
Alcohol and farming do not often go together, unless you think of beetles. In certain species, ethanol is used to increase the fruit of their labor, which sounds good but requires an explanation. Read more →

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 →