Talmudic Question #142
On the planet Krypton there are no lysogenic phages, only lytic ones. How does their planetary microbiome differ from ours?
Other Posts
No Bacterium Is An Island
by S. Marvin Friedman — To paraphrase an old adage, no bacterium is an island. Indeed, bacteria in nature exist as polymicrobial communities where interactions between individuals influence activities of the entire population. This is especially true of pathogenic bacteria, although it has been mostly ignored because we frequently isolate a single species from an infection…
What Happened to Our Friendly Enterococci?
by Merry Youle — Enterococci had been generally regarded as benign commensals, a part of our healthy intestinal microbiota. They were even invited in, being used as probiotics. But then, in the late 1970s, the first multiple drug-resistant strains appeared, and vancomycin-resistant strains followed in 1981. In recent decades, they have taken center stage…
Talmudic Question #46
by Daniel Portnoy — Why don't mammals make antibiotics of the type so readily made by bacteria and fungi?
Peer Pressure Induces Biofilm Production
by S. Marvin Friedman — Bacteria are expert census takers. Using chemical signals they can recognize when they are in a crowd, and then they respond with appropriate collective behaviors. This census taking, termed quorum sensing, activates such diverse cellular processes as bioluminescence, virulence factor production, biofilm formation, and sporulation. Pathogens often construct…
Talmudic Question #75
What would the world be like without the Archaea?
Programmed Cell Death
by S. Marvin Friedman — Gone are the days when bacteria were thought to just grow and divide and not bother to converse with one another. That simple idea has produced mountains of data and most of what we know about bacterial physiology is based on this notion. It turns out, as we know now…
