A Few In­ter­net Sites of Note

Note. We keep this post for his­tor­i­cal rea­sons. But as of 2023, the men­tioned blogs may not be ac­tive any­more.

by Elio

Like other blog­gers, I have a per­sonal in­ter­est in vis­it­ing other blogs from time to time. I am glad to say that I am of­ten sur­prised and pleased by the qual­ity of of­fer­ings in the mi­cro­bi­o­log­i­cal bl­o­gos­phere. Here are a few of my fa­vorite ex­am­ples.

Sci­en­tific Amer­i­can spon­sors a lot of blogs, sev­eral of which are of di­rect nter­est to mi­cro­bi­ol­o­gists. I greatly en­joy The Art­ful Amoeba, writ­ten by the gifted Jen­nifer Frazer, IMO, one of the very best sci­ence writ­ers around. When she touches on mi­cro­bial top­ics, be­ware! Both your senses and your mind will be set at­in­gling. Her last post in this area an­swers the ques­tion that I, and I trust oth­ers, have had for ages, namely how can fla­gella of spiro­chetes and spir­illa move their cell when they are en­cased in the periplasm. Get ready to think about how cer­tain corks crews ("ca­vat­appi) work.

More about move­ment, this time of round bac­te­ria. How does a round ball know which way to move?  Lab Rat ex­plains how the spher­i­cal forms of Ser­ra­tia marcescens move about and how this dif­fers in their rod-shaped con­fig­u­ra­tion.

Yet an­other of Sci­en­tific Amer­i­can blogs that I heartily ap­prove of is The Ocel­loid, writ­ten by Psi Wave­form, who has col­lab­o­rated with me in this blog and else­where. She writes about the pro­tists with depth of knowl­edge and in spritzy a style that does them jus­tice.

Mark Mar­tin, the au­thor of this blog, is ded­i­cated to teach­ing un­der­grad­u­ates about the mi­cro­bial world and is a true mi­cro­bial su­prema­cist. He is in­de­fati­ga­ble in voic­ing his be­lief that if mi­crobes ac­count for about half this planet's biome and about half the bio­chem­i­cal trans­ac­tions, they de­serve a com­men­su­rate chunk of the bi­o­log­i­cal cur­ricu­lum. To make the point, he makes his teach­ing se­duc­tive by in­tro­duc­ing par­tic­u­larly clever ac­tiv­i­ties. In my next in­car­na­tion, I will stand in line to sign up for one of his courses.

This site only has an oc­ca­sional mi­cro­bi­o­log­i­cal bend, which is a shame for us be­cause of the qual­ity of the writ­ing. This time, the au­thor, Christo­pher Tay­lor, ex­plain the rea­son why methanogens play such an im­por­tant role in ru­men fer­men­ta­tion wand why this mat­ters to the en­vi­ron­ment. An oc­ca­sional visit to this blog will in­evitably ex­pand your bi­o­log­i­cal hori­zons.

The ASM web­site, Mi­crobe World is re­plete with so­cial me­dia ma­te­r­ial. I sub­scribe via email to one in par­tic­u­lar, the "Daily News Di­gest." The trou­ble with it is that it pro­vides me with so much in­ter­est­ing stuff that I am dis­tracted from my nor­mal chores. I can't think of a bet­ter source of cur­rent in­for­ma­tion in mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy.

And in a sim­i­lar vein Ce­sar Sanchez' site pro­vides an­other source of cur­rent in­for­ma­tion about top­ics of mi­cro­bi­o­log­i­cal im­por­tance, in­clud­ing health. His choices are par­tic­u­larly as­tute and enor­mously use­ful.

Yet an­other news-ori­ented site, Mi­cro­bi­ol­o­gy­Bytes has been go­ing steadily for quite a few years, pro­vid­ing valu­able and ex­cit­ing in­for­ma­tion with a slight em­pha­sis on the viruses. This is not sur­pris­ing, given that it is run by vi­rol­o­gist Alan Cann.

And fi­nally, a blog site that em­pha­sizes tat­toos on evo­lu­tion and its trees.