by Elio
The American Academy of Microbiology has just announced the release of its newest colloquium report, The Uncharted Microbial World: Microbes and their Activities in the Environment. This report, based on a series of discussions by experts in the field of microbiology, explores the mysteries of the microbial world.
It makes for very good reading.
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.
by Jamie Henzy — Scientists at one time shared the title of "natural philosophers", and largely spoke the same language. As their techniques grew in sophistication, they set as their goal nothing less than the building of a giant tower of Knowledge of all Nature. When God saw this blatant display of hubris, she struck their tongues so that their speech could no longer be understood to one another, and they scattered far and wide...
by Elio — Tom Brock (1926−2021) can readily be considered the father of extremophile microbiology. He pioneered the study of high temperature-loving microbes, by investigating, in a nearly frolicsome way, the hot springs of Yellowstone Park. He carried out this work pretty much alone, with both experimental ingenuity and conceptual gusto,...
by Scott Chimileski — In part one of my tour of the Microbial Life exhibition at the Harvard Museum of Natural History (HMNH), I wrote that the microscopy station and the live bacterial colonies are my personal favorites. Actually, those are my second and third favorites. I was saving my "most favorite" exhibit for its very own post: a giant-sized, living and changing Winogradsky column.
by Elio — The winner of the 2012 Peter Wildy Prize For Microbiology Education is Vincent Racaniello of Columbia University, a fellow blogger (Virology Blog) and the podcast host of TWiV (This Week in Virology), TWiP (This Week in Parasitism), and TWiM...
by Elio — daresay that most of us feel frustrated and thwarted in the attempt to bring order in the chaotic thicket of microbial taxonomy. In our bewilderment we wonder, for example, if the concept of species will – Cheshire Cat-like – fade from view. Now the American Academy of Microbiology has...
Do they write about nanobacteria?
I have a question...
I noticed a contaminated plate in my incubator. This foreign yellow microorganism seemed to follow a crack in the agar (the plate was old). I thought that was interesting.
So I got a plate and put a series of cuts into the agar from one side of the plate to the other, then streaked perpendicular to the cuts at one side of the plate. Sure enough, the yellow microorganism followed the cuts away from the streaks. In fact, it looked like they formed colonies along the streak. I assume they are following a moisture gradient. Have you ever seen anything like that or know what microorganism this might be?
John,
I can't say that I have seen this phenomenon, but perhaps I was good at throwing out my used plates before they dried out! Perhaps someone else reading this can help.
Elio
This brought Roger Stanier's ELASTICOTAXIS observations to mind. The individual who wrote ought to be told of this phenomenon! In addition, when I saw the several comments about being amazed by unusual aspects of bacteria I was reminded of the late Jackson Foster's paraphrasing of the Ladies Home Journal's "motto"–Never Underestimate the Power of the Microbe. He used it quite often, and it seems more apt than ever!