Small Things Considered

One Grain of Sand

by Christoph | Microbiologists face three problems today when talking to fellow biologists or any curious audience: the numbers of pro­kar­yo­tes and unicellular eukaryotes, their diversity, and their tininess. Sure, one can do the maths and juggle with numbers. That's entertaining, and everybody is amazed when they learn that microbiologists easily count up to 10⁸ individual cells in an E. coli  colony... Read more →

Heat, Hydrogen, and Togas

by Elio | Extremophilic microbes, especially the thermophilic ones, are exceedingly interesting for many industrial processes. And why not, be­ing that high temperatures prompt faster enzymatic reactions. Pre­sent-day uses for such organisms include the production of poly­sac­cha­ri­de-, lipid-, and protein-degrading enzymes among many. It is worth re­mem­ber­ing that this pursuit was initiated by... Read more →

A Lakeside Tale

by Christoph Weigel | How small are bacteria ? And how big can they get as single cells ? For the lower end of the size scale, we know since the work of Jill Banfield's team that a multitude of ultra-small bacteria exist with a spherical diameters of ~0.25 µm and calculated cell vol­umes of ~0.009 µm³. Much larger are newborn cells of Escherichia coli  with a length of... Read more →

Island Stories and Venus's Hair

by Christoph Weigel | El Hierro is the last in a row of islands in the Canary archipelago, Atlantic Ocean: the farthest west and farthest south, the smallest, and youngest. Its geographic coordinates 27°45'N 18°00'W translate to a longitude of ~450 km west of the Moroccan coast, and to the latitude of Tampa, Florida. All Islas Canarias are... Read more →

All Quiet on the Bacterial Front –The Evolution of Sterilization Techniques

by Ananya Sen | The main purpose of disinfection and sterilization, then and now, is to counter the spread of microbes, especially patho­gens. Although the causative mechanism of disease progression was unknown, scientists postulated a connection between putrefaction and the dissemination of disease. Therefore, they set out to eliminate the effects of decomposition to reduce... Read more →

Tales of Mystery and Imagination (2/2)

by Daniel P. Haeusser | Early attempts from the 1970's to detect peptidoglycan in PVC superphylum members failed, lead­ing to the accepted conclusion that the periplasm of the majority of its species lacked a cell wall. These early experiments involved classical techniques of peptidoglycan detection through bio­che­mi­cal purification and characterization of sacculi, and observation by electron microscopy. In more recent years, as genome sequencing... Read more →

Tales of Mystery and Imagination (1/2)

by Daniel P. Haeusser | Over the last ten-plus years of this blog's ex­istence, one cluster of branches on the bacterial phy­lo­ge­ne­tic tree in particular has presented us with fascinating mysteries regarding basic, and seemingly unique, cellular biology. Many aspects of the species on these branches remain enigmatic, but what details researchers have been able to coax from them... Read more →

On Shape

by Manuel Sánchez | If there is something that draws attention to the study of eukaryotes it is the enormous diversity of their morphology, from the largest sequoias to the smallest radiolaria. Prokaryotes, on the other hand, seem rather simple and boring. If you open page 109 of the 7^th edition of Murray, Rosenthal, and Phaller's "Medical Microbiology" you will find... Read more →

Talmudic Question #142

On the planet Krypton there are no lysogenic phages, only lytic ones. How does their planetary microbiome differ from ours? Read more →

Persistence Persists

by Elio | I get an almost visceral enjoyment from pieces on historical tidbits, especially when their target deals with an exceptional insight. Paradoxically, the more centrally important such breakthrough is, the more it tends to become submerged in the canon of current knowledge. I have called this the 'Magasanik paradox', after the notable scientist who pointed out this fact. Luckily, the Journal of Bacteriology comes to the rescue... Read more →