Small Things Considered

Talmudic Question #189

Can you imagine an active mode of motion that unicellular microbes are not capable of, but multicellular eukaryotes are? Read more →

Talmudic Question #188

Best we know, which contains the largest number of species: the Bacteria, the Fungi, or the Protists? Read more →

Talmudic Question #187

by Raymond Cox
Why does Brevibacterium grow so slowly? Read more →

Talmudic Question #186

In their classical experiments, Oswald Ave­ry, Colin Mac­Leod, and Mac­lyn McCarty showed that strep­to­coc­ci in a spe­ci­fic growth phase take up exo­genous DNA, result­ing in a trans­for­ma­tion of their phe­no­type... Read more →

Talmudic Question #185

Can you conceive of a virus that can divide by binary fission? Read more →

Talmudic Question #184

What will be found in the samples collected by Perseverance once they are brought to Earth and fully analyzed? Read more →

Talmudic Question #183

Can you think of any features of a viral genome that might allow you to tell if it is capable of causing a pandemic? Read more →

Talmudic Question #182

Difficult as it may be to predict which agent will cause the next pandemic, which *single* measure would you recommend should be taken now to mitigate its future effects? Read more →

Talmudic Question #181

Some authors have written describing single cells as "cog­ni­tive" or "agents with agen­das." Cog­ni­tion may not be far from con­scious­ness… . In what­ever sense you choose, could you ar­gue that bac­te­ria have con­scious­ness? Read more →

Talmudic Question #180

Why didn’t mitochondria keep a DnaA-dependent origin of replication? Read more →