by Christoph   Other than the title Kool & The Gang − Celebration suggests, this post is not about the R&B band of past glories and their big­gest hit, but instead celebrates the true "cool kids," mush­rooms − bio­lo­gi­cally correct Fungi − and their "hypothermic nature," studied by Cordero et al. (2023).   (click to enlarge) Figure 1. Wild mushrooms are colder than the sur­rounding air. Visible images and infrared thermographs of 20 different wild mushrooms in their natural habitat while attached to their natural substrate. (A) Amanita spp.; (B) Pleurotus ostreatus; (C) Am ..read more

by Christoph   Elio wrote A Table for Two many years ago, about the surprising observation that the Gram‑negative bac­terium Vibrio vulnificus can be preyed upon simultaneously by a bacteriophage and a "bacteriovorous" bacterium. He could hardly have figured that the single image in his piece is a perfect vignette for the greatly increased interest in phages and "Bdellovibrio and like organisms" (BALOs) today.   Bacteriophages and predatory bacteria appear as promising alternatives to antibiotic therapy at a time when physicians dread that bacterial in­fectious diseases will so ..read more

by Christoph   (click to enlarge) Figure 1. In situ digestion of the prey's proteinaceous con­tent by B. exovorus. The mCherry fluorescent signal is used as a reporter of the proteinacaeous cytoplasmic content. Representative time-lapse microscopy of the mCherry-producing C. crescentus (C. crescentusmCh) predated by B. exovorus. B. exovorus cell outlines (yel­low) and C. crescentus prey outlines (dashed white) were drawn manually based on the phase con­trast images. The fluorescence signal was false colored with the GreenFireBlue colormap in Fiji to dis­play chan ..read more

by Mechas   Anyone who has worked in a microbiology lab can empathize with the anguish of having a contaminant ruin your experiment. In many cases, such as in clinical laboratories or the food industry, contaminants can prove devastating and challenging to control. When dealing with environmental samples, on the other hand, contaminants are the norm.   Yet microbial contaminants can also be a source of beauty and discovery. The best-known case of a serendipitous discovery based on a con­taminant is, of course, the observation made by Alexander Fleming in 1928 of a fungus that inhibi ..read more

by Sarah Camara-Wilpert and David Mayo-Muñoz   Fig. 1. Phages infecting a bacterium, the end of the bacterium? Check out our newest insights into the bacteria-phage arms race in this post! © Eye of Science. Source Bacteria, just like humans, are frequently infected by viruses (bacteriophages or phages). Phages replicate at the expense of their hosts, killing them and the process releases hundreds of progeny into the environment to complete their life cycle. The end of bacteria? Not so fast! Bacteria evolved a variety of anti-phage defence mechanisms, such as the widespread CRISPR-Cas imm ..read more

by Roberto   Andrew Wright. Source This past October 9th, microbiology lost an extraordinary member when Andrew Wright died. Those of us fortunate to have interacted with him over the years lost a very good friend. Even on a first meeting it was impossible not to sense his kindness and genuine interest in the conversation, underscored by his gentle smile and an endearing Scottish accent.   Andrew obtained his Ph.D. in 1960 at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. He did a post-doc in Minnesota (1961−1963) but then moved to the Boston area to stay. Initially, as a post-doc with Phil ..read more

by Janie     In storytelling, there is a famous principle called Chekhov's gun. "If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise, don't put it there." This pithy (and very debatable) directive, attributed to the eponymous playwright, smells a whole lot like the (similarly very debatable) viewpoint of adaptationism in evolutionary biology, if the firearm here were some organismal trait and the firer were evolution.   Regardless of its usefulness or un-usefulness, it's at the very least a little nudge to drive some m ..read more

by Roberto   Fig. 1. Discovery curve for bacterial human pathogens. Year of first description is given on the x-axis and cumulative species number is given on the y-axis. Source. Frontispiece: Streptococcus pyogenes. Source In casual conversations, usually when speaking with friends about bacterial diversity, I mention that only a tiny minority of the Earth's bacteria cause human disease. In that context, I used to mention that the number of such pathogens was small, a few dozen, perhaps around 100. In using such "off the cuff" estimates I was not alone. But, oh my, was I off, way off ..read more

by Memo Berkmen     Memo Berkmen, long time friend and STC fan, sent us this Talmudic Question: "Can you imagine a place where conditions have remained relatively constant throughout much of Earth's history, a place where microbes evolved very slowly over 3 billion years such that if we compared the sequences of modern inhabitants to their 3-billion-year-old ancestors, we would see very few changes in their genomes or metabolisms?"   Do you want to comment on this post? We would be happy about it! Please comment on Mastodon, Bluesky, or on ? (formerly Twitter).     ..read more

by Roberto     Fig. 1. Cutimycin. Top: the amino acid sequence of the cutimycin structural gene product. Bottom: The chemi­cal structure of cutimycin after post-translational mo­difications. Source. Frontispiece: Human scalp Hair Fol­licles source. The secretion of small molecules is likely one of the most common ways in which bacteria interact with other bacteria, regardless of their environmental setting. Like many others, I like to refer to that universe of chemical interactions as "bacterial chemical ecology." Now, for a moment, try to visualize how you might ideally study these ..read more