Small Things Considered

Grant's Anatomy

by Christoph | At an EMBO workshop in Copen­ha­gen in 2006 on 'Cell cycle and cy­to­ske­le­tal ele­ments in bac­te­ria,' I was al­most un­able to stay put in my seat dur­ing one pre­sen­ta­tion: Grant Jen­sen showed the 3D-mon­tage of cryoET ima­ges of mag­ne­to­somes in Mag­ne­to­spi­ril­lum mag­ne­to­tac­ti­cum. It was a vi­su­al jour­ney in­to and through the in­ter­ior of a cell,... Read more →

Pictures Considered #55: Conjugation, and some pairing issues

by Christoph | If you've ever taken a class on bac­te­ri­al ge­ne­tics, ei­ther re­cent­ly or in the last few de­ca­des, you've no doubt seen this image: the con­ju­ga­tion of two bac­te­ri­al cells (Figure 1). And if you found this image so self-ex­pla­na­to­ry that you didn't both­er to ask for the source, you're not alone. The in­ter­net is re­plete with it, in vary­ing... Read more →

A Most Lively Virus – and an Addendum

by Merry and the STC team
Mor­pho­lo­gi­cal­ly speak­ing, the vi­rus­es of me­so­phi­lic and mo­de­ra­te­ly ther­mo­phi­lic bac­te­ria and ar­chaea are a dull bunch. Of 5,100 surveyed, 97% are ho-hum head-and-tail phages − icosahedral heads with helical tails... Read more →

A Dual-Function Small RNA

by Christoph | We cele­brate the 60th an­ni­ver­sa­ry of the Lac oper­on this year and what bou­quet − et bien sûr un coup de cham­pagne − would be more ap­pro­pri­ate than to take a look at how post-tran­script­ion­al gene re­gu­la­tion com­ple­ments and ex­tends clas­si­cal tran­script­ion­al gene re­gu­la­tion? I'm talk­ing of small RNAs (sRNAs) and their role... Read more →

Of Terms in Biology: Diazotroph

by Roberto | It all started with my want­ing to write a post on Fran­kia. I did what I al­ways do when think­ing of a new post. I googled 'small things considered frankia'. Nothing. Good start, I can dive in­to the topic. Next, I thought let's put Frankia in the con­text of prior posts. I googled 'small things considered rhizobium'. Nothing again... Read more →

Replay: On Teaching

by Stanley Falkow | A graduate student came to my office recently to say that she was increasingly bothered by anxiety and the ‘terror’ of having to speak at laboratory meetings. She had also learned a month ago that she was expected to lecture to a class organized by her mentor. The thought of… Read more →

Pictures Considered #54 : Mitochondria can't swim...

by Christoph | ...and get pushed around in­stead. Not equip­ped with fla­gel­la for pro­pel­ling or Type IV pi­li for twit­ching they can't ac­tive­ly move. But one step at a time. If you re­call what you know about mi­to­chon­dria, you may pic­ture them as ovoid or bean-shaped or­gan­el­les, house­mates float­ing in the eu­kar­yo­tic cyto­plasm. They are... Read more →

Teachers Corner: The Name for the Small Things We Consider

by Elio & Roberto | As microbiology teachers, ma­ny of us de­light in re­tel­ling the 17th cen­tu­ry sto­ry of Leeu­wen­hoek peer­ing through his mi­cro­sco­pe at samp­les from his den­tal plaque or Delft ca­nal wa­ters and nam­ing the crea­tur­es he ob­serv­ed "ani­mal­cul­es." How­ever, that sto­ry is apo­cryph­al be­cause Leeu­wen­hoek spoke Dutch. The words he used to de­scribe Read more →

Pictures Considered #53 : The ocean water column is profoundly dark...

by Christoph | ...for the most part. And it's vastly deep­er than the dia­gram Ro­ber­to showed in his re­cent post "The Bio­lo­gi­cal Pump." The eu­photic and meso­pe­lagic zone sizes are cor­rect, but do not even ap­pro­xi­ma­te­ly co­re­late with their ver­ti­cal re­pre­sen­ta­tion in the dia­gram. Why is this a point... Read more →

Teachers Corner: Chalks Talks vs PowerPoints

by Elio | Two years ago today, Christopher Waters from Michigan State University posted a preprint in bioRxiv entitled "Rock the Chalk: A five-year comparative analysis of a large microbiology lecture course reveals improved outcomes of chalk-talk compared to PowerPoint." It is a good read... Read more →