Small Things Considered

Summer Vacation

by the STC team
We are taking our customary two week vacation. Do you think we deserve it ? Looking forward to seeing you again on July 4th ! Read more →

Retrospective, January to June 2022

by Christoph
Keeping with tradition, here is a lightly annotated list of our forty-five posts from the last half year. Read more →

Celebrated Women in Microbiology

by Roberto
...This provided the per­fect op­por­tu­ni­ty to dive into the life of this not­ed mi­cro­bio­lo­gist. Alice Evans (1881–1975) made some of most im­port­ant con­tri­bu­tions to mi­cro­bio­lo­gy in the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry. In 1917 she pre­sent­ed her work show­ing that a bac­te­ri­um found in raw milk – Ba­cil­lus abor­tus, now... Read more →

How to Be a Lichen

by Nastassja Noell
Lichens are symbiotic or­gan­isms – al­gae, fun­gi, cy­ano­bac­te­ria, bac­te­ria and yeasts – that form mi­nia­ture eco­sys­tems that you can hold in the palm of your hand. They live on trees and rocks through­out the South­ern Ap­pa­lach­ians, and are also found in the Arc­tic, the An­tarc­tic, rain­forests, al­pine tun­dra and es­pe­cial­ly in the de­sert. Read more →

...and Many Images of Microbiology

by George A. O’Toole
Roberto Kol­ter, after over 20 years of ser­vice, has de­cid­ed to step away as the co­ver edi­tor at the Jour­nal of Bac­terio­lo­gy (JB), and I want to take this op­port­uni­ty to both thank him and to re­flect. When Ro­ber­to start­ed as co­ver edi­tor, the front of JB... Read more →

A Revisionist History of Science

by Janie
Whether read or listened to, a story is essentially a colorless armature made of words, and it's up to each reader/listener to interpret it, imagine it, and people it with appearances, colors, movements, emotions. The process depends upon the individual's own experiences, since all things present... Read more →

Talmudic Question #196

The establishment of an oxygen-respiring bacterium in the cytoplasm of an archeon might have given rise to the eukaryotes. What was the first adaptive trait... Read more →

On drums: Escherichia coli

by Christoph
"Light funky groove with a rol­ling snare pat­tern and oc­ca­sion­al fills, syn­co­pat­ed wood block and per­cus­sive hand‑drum and rol­ling con­ga pat­tern" de­scrib­es a par­ti­cu­lar drum pat­tern (#15) by ac­claimed Ni­ge­ri­an mas­ter drum­mer Tony Allen. But don't wor­ry, you didn't stumble in­to the drums sect­ion... Read more →

Pictures Considered #57: Coloring a Cell

by Christoph
Our ability to visual­ly per­ceive and dis­cri­mi­nate is al­ways sligh­ly over­whelmed by black-and-white ima­ges. Es­pe­cial­ly, of course, when the ob­jects de­pict­ed are out­side our trained, fa­mil­iar size spec­trum, such as bac­te­ri­al cells and their in­nards. Take for ex­ample Fi­gure 1, the cryo-ET image of a ti­ny... Read more →

Magnificently long : Thiomargarita magnifica

by Christoph
Microbiologists study mi­crobes with mi­cro­scopes be­cause they are not vis­ible to the na­ked eye. Un­less they are. This was ex­act­ly the case for "Can­di­da­tus Thio­mar­ga­ri­ta mag­ni­fi­ca", de­scribed in a re­cent Bio­Rχiv pre­print by Vol­lard et al. (2022): "A cen­ti­me­ter-long bac­te­ri­um with DNA com­part..." (more about the se­cond part of the title... Read more →