Lost & Found #2

by Christoph

On our way out of 𝕏 (for­merly Twit­ter), I look through soon-to-be-ob­so­lete "book­marks" and show you what shouldn't just end up in the bin. I started this col­lec­tion of para­pher­na­lia (?) with Lost & Found #1 and here now are three more sal­vaged book­marks in Lost & Found #2.
 

Book­mark #1

Ri­bo­so­mol­o­gists to­day have an bustling zoo of high-res­o­lu­tion struc­tures of all pos­si­ble types of ri­bo­somes, of small and large sub­units, and also of ri­bo­somes bound to 1, 2, or 3 tR­NAs. These forms can even be im­aged side-by-side in whole cells at res­o­lu­tions in the 4–10 angstrom (Å) range with the help of Cry­oET. The tweet was based on a preprint and has since been pub­lished.


If the tweet is no longer avail­able, you can see a screen cap­ture here, and the video here (GIF).

Book­mark #2

Both the tiny Patescibac­te­ria (CPR bac­te­ria) and the DPANN ar­chaea could so far only be ob­tained as co‑cultures with their re­spec­tive bac­te­r­ial or ar­chaeal hosts. They are thought to thrive mainly if not ex­clu­sively as epibionts of their hosts (here and here in STC). And this sym­bio­sis is pro­bably not mu­tu­ally ben­e­fi­cial; they are more of a nui­sance for their hosts. As far as I'm aware there has not yet been a study that finds DPANN ar­chaea as epibionts of bac­te­ria (please cor­rect me, I've lost track). But, as Nicole – now @nicoledubilier.bsky.social on Bluesky – points out in her tweet, there are ap­par­ently Patescibac­te­ria that grow on Methan­otrix ar­chaea. Her tweet was based on a pub­lished pa­per, in which the au­thors state: "...re­sults show a novel cross-do­main par­a­sitism be­tween Bac­te­ria and Ar­chaea".


If the tweet is no longer avail­able, you can see a screen cap­ture here, and the im­age here.

Book­mark #3

Among all the var­i­ous small things we con­sider here in STC, we have largely ne­glected the Zygo­mycetes – not so Elio, of course, who wrote Three to Tango fea­tur­ing Rhi­zo­pus mi­crosporus. These fungi were named af­ter their spe­cific for­ma­tion of (mei­otic) zy­gospores, which de­velop when com­pat­i­ble mat­ing types come into con­tact via hy­phal tips. Zy­gospores are easy to see in the dense and mostly whitish hy­phal net­work be­cause of their pig­men­ta­tion, as No­rio Takeshita shows in the video.


If the tweet is no longer avail­able, you can see a screen cap­ture here, and the video here (GIF).
 

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