Talmudic Question #134
What effect do you think a large wind farm could have on the environmental microbiome of the area?
Other Posts
In a Cavern, in a Canyon….
by Elio — Certain large underground caverns owe their majesty to the biochemical action of tiny bacteria. In many parts of the world, caverns are formed by the dissolution of calcium carbonate deposits by sulfuric acid (this is known in the trade as "sulfuric acid speleogenesis"). Such microbial mining formed the...
Who Produced The First Ultrathin Section of Bacteria?
Pictures Considered #16 by Elio — It's hard to tell for sure, but it seems to have been a pair of investigators at the University of Southern California, Richard Baker and Daniel Pease, who published a paperin Nature in 1949 showing rather undifferentiated sections of Bacillus megaterium that lack discernible internal details. Interestingly, the very next...
Take your kids to the bugs on a Sunday afternoon
Micropia, the world's only microbe zoo in Amsterdam
by Mathias Grote — "Nowhere in the United States can the public get a true conception of the role of microorganisms in nature and in our daily lives." These words, penned in the late 1940s by Otto Rahn in an appeal for a "museum of microbiology" should remain true for several decades to come...The Attraction of Magnetotactic Bacteria
by Daniel P. Haeusser — Regular readers of Small Things Considered may recall our mention of the magnetotactic bacteria, organisms that can sense the Earth's magnetic field to orient themselves and distinguish up from down. The magnetotactic bacteria vary greatly in morphology, metabolism, and phylogeny, but they all share a little tool that permits the magnetic sensing underlying their coordinated movement (magnetotaxis).
Cyanobacteria: Growing a Green Future Around the Clock
by Spencer Diamond and Britt Flaherty — With such famous bacteria as Escherichia coli and Bacillus subtilis hogging the stage, it can be hard for bugs like cyanobacteria to enter the limelight. However, without E. coli and B. subtilis we would still be here today; without cyanobacteria (or something with similar capabilities) earth would be an anaerobic…
Location, Location, Location
by Alan Derman — Imagine trying to acquaint yourself with your favorite bacterium by learning the intracellular address of each and every one of its proteins. You can't see them in a light microscope, and you can't realistically do immunofluorescence; for that you'd need to purify each one and raise antibodies. So you have to modify them so that they can be seen. You have to tag them with...
