by Roberto — Before approaching matters of taste, I'll explain AvL. To many of our readers, the meaning of the acronym will be immediately apparent. But to others, perhaps those newer to microbiology, it may have no meaning at all. AvL is short for Antonie van Leeuwenhoek... Read more →
Protein Synthesis – A Molecular Happening
by Roberto — More than fifty years ago, towards the end of Spring term in May 1971, university campuses across the U.S. were rife with protests over the Vietnam war. Students skipped classes and left labs to participate in marches and sit-ins. In addition, the memory of Woodstock (August 1969) was still fresh in everyone's mind. Read more →
A Post-Human Biosphere
by Roberto — Only very rarely have I had the experience of serendipitously running into an article that is entertaining, hugely informative, and shocking all at once. It happened last week and I feel utterly compelled to provide brief comments interspersed among quotes from sections that I found particularly striking and thought provoking. Read more →
Pictures Considered #60: Vibrio cholerae harpooning DNA
by Christoph — Let me start with an adage: a picture is worth a thousand words. Can this also be valid for video snippets? I think so. Here you see a few seconds of a looping video showing how a cholera bacterium extends a pilus, attaches the tip to DNA in the environment, and then retracts it. Worth a thousand words? Yes, sure, but also deserving 1,000 words... Read more →
Emiliania huxleyi : Past, Present and Future
by Roberto — Christoph recently brought to my attention a resource for anyone interested in a brief introduction to coccolithophores, with particular emphasis on Emiliania huxleyi. Christoph knew well that I, as a fan of this microalga, would enjoy the site. This got me thinking about Ehux (its endearing name that many use) yet once more. Read more →
Pictures Considered #58: Visualizing Introns
by Christoph — When we talk about genes and genomes today, we almost reflexively thinks of long strings of the letters G, A, T, and C. And by reading sequences, we easily detect stretches that code for proteins. We detect promoters, transcription factor binding motifs, start/stop signals for transcription, signals where introns are removed by splicing from primary transcripts... Read more →
An Illustrated Tree
by Roberto — From the fundamental concepts of biology, the fact that all organisms now alive share a common ancestor (LUCA) ranks as one of my favorites. When I pause to consider that, despite four billion years of evolution and divergence, my ribosomal RNA shares some stretches of sequence identity with all other autonomous organisms, I still get goose bumps... Read more →
The Atlas of Cell Structure
by Roberto — Our knowledge of the structure of microbial cells just keeps getting better as the resolution of imaging techniques continues to increase. A key player in this rapidly evolving technological field is cryo-electron tomography (cryoET) which, aided by powerful computational tools, allows for the generation of three-dimensional images of whole microbial cells... Read more →
Fine Reading: The Life and Times of Paul Buchner
by Roberto — In preparing our recent post on ectosymbionts, I discovered Jan Sapp's 2002 perspective: "Paul Buchner (1886 –1978) and hereditary symbiosis in insects." I suspect that many STC readers will immediately recognize the name of Paul Buchner, after whom Paul Baumann named the now well-known aphid endosymbiont Buchnera. But I also suspect most will not know too much about Buchner's seminal contributions... Read more →
Applied Molecular Microbiology at Dubrovnik
by Roberto — If you are interested in any subject related to small molecule natural products of microbial origin, the "John Innes/Rudjer Bošković Summer School in Applied Molecular Microbiology" is for you. I know that course name is a mouthful so when I am describing the school to microbiologists, I refer to it simply as... Read more →