Ret­ro­spec­tive, July to De­cem­ber 2025

by the STC Team

In keep­ing with tra­di­tion, here is the list of our posts from the last half year.

In Memo­riam

Elio (1928–2025)  by The STC Team — Los­ing a close friend al­ways sad­dens one deeply, re­gard­less of age. Los­ing a per­son who has so im­mensely in­flu­enced our world­view through his guid­ance and ex­am­ple makes the sad­ness even deeper.

Elio in 2022.

Odds & Ends

A New Dawn  by Roberto — Re­freshed af­ter the sum­mer break, STC blog­ging re­turns for the sec­ond half of 2025. by Roberto — De­spite global de­vel­op­ments that raise se­ri­ous con­cerns re­gard­ing the fu­ture of sci­ence, I re­main op­ti­mistic about the long-term fu­ture and there­fore thrilled by STC's plans go­ing for­ward.

Up & Run­ning, again  by Roberto — When I wrote "A New Dawn," the last thing I imag­ined for the fu­ture of STC was that our plat­form, Type­pad, would go dark on us...

Screen cap­ture of Girl with a Pearl Ear­ring. Source

Into the Deep Blue  by Christoph — Just let the deep ul­tra­ma­rine blue of the fron­tispiece sink in at your leisure. Take your time. Surely, You will soon re­al­ize that it is not a pho­to­graph of the night sky with the milky way and myr­i­ads of stars, but a de­tail from an oil paint­ing…

Phys­i­ol­ogy & Ge­net­ics

The Ri­bo­some as Chap­er­one  Small, sin­gle-do­main pro­teins usu­ally fold cor­rectly with­out much as­sis­tance. But larger pro­teins, of­ten con­tain­ing mul­ti­ple do­mains need as­sis­tance. To help with pro­tein fold­ing, there are nu­mer­ous pro­teins known as chap­er­ones.

Com­mit­ment to Biofilm For­ma­tion  Pseudomonas aerug­i­nosa start biofilm for­ma­tion us­ing mechanosen­si­tive ap­pendages.

Lac operon: Wait… what?! Noise in the base­ment?  by Christoph — If you've ever come across the topic of 'gene reg­u­la­tion in bac­te­ria' in your bi­ol­ogy classes at high school, col­lege or uni­ver­sity, you've in­evitably learned about a clas­sic: the lac operon of E. coli. Well, this it's not an exam here! Just ask your­self what you re­mem­ber with­out the help of an AI...

Movie S1. © A time-lapse se­quence cap­tures a phe­no­type switch­ing event. In the pres­ence of 50 μM TMG, one daugh­ter cell of a di­vid­ing cell switches phe­notype to ex­press many LacY-YFP mol­e­cules (yel­low flu­o­res­cence over­lay) while the other daugh­ter cell does not. Source

Lac operon: Two gems from the early days (1|2)  by Christoph — When I re­cently wrote about noise in the base­ment of the lac operon, I stum­bled across two pa­pers in said base­ment, both of which I con­sider gems of early mol­e­c­u­lar bi­ol­ogy ... Here in part 1, I will dust off the lac re­pres­sor story a bit to make this gem sparkle again…

Lac operon: Two gems from the early days (2|2)  by Christoph — When I re­cently wrote about noise in the base­ment of the lac operon, I stum­bled across two pa­pers in said base­ment, both of which I con­sider gems of early mol­e­c­u­lar bi­ol­ogy... In part 2 now, I will dust off the lac op­er­a­tor story a bit to make this gem sparkle again…

Sym­bioses

Lichens Rise to Promi­nence  Note­wor­thy — Lichen fos­sils in­di­cate they were strate­gic for the col­o­niza­tion of ter­res­trial en­vi­ron­ments.

Roberto's Se­ries on Growth and Ces­sa­tion of Growth

The Ex­plorer in the Cave  Imag­ine, if you will, you are an ex­plorer. Cu­ri­ous. Fas­ci­nated, en­chanted even, by the nat­ural world, in all its rich­ness and beauty. Now, you find your­self ex­plor­ing a won­drous cave whose walls are stun­ning; stud­ded with shin­ing crys­tals.

Ex­po­nen­tial Growth, Ephemeral & Un­sus­tain­able  A few months ago, this idea dawned on me: I should write a se­ries of posts on pop­u­la­tion dy­nam­ics. By no means a for­mal quan­ti­ta­tive treat­ment of the sub­ject. In its stead, a sub­jec­tive in­ter­pre­ta­tion of a topic that has cap­tured my at­ten­tion for nearly half a cen­tury.

City, Biofilm of Hu­mans (Part I)  The ti­tle of today's post is a twist on the opin­ion ar­ti­cle Paula Wat­nick and I wrote at the turn of the cen­tury: Biofilm, City of Mi­crobes. As I con­tem­plate pop­u­la­tion dy­nam­ics, from bac­te­ria to hu­mans, I am in­creas­ingly con­vinced that hu­man cities and mi­cro­bial biofilms man­i­fest some sim­i­lar at­trib­utes.

City, Biofilm of Hu­mans (Part II)  You have the priv­i­lege of or­bit­ing Earth aboard the ISS. As night­time dark­ness en­velopes a cloud­less Eu­rope, your at­ten­tion is drawn to your fa­vorite city in the world, the "City of Lights." Paris. From your van­tage point, some 400 km above the sur­face…

The Other Side of the Hill  In a re­cent se­ries of posts, I broached the sub­jects of growth and the ces­sa­tion of growth. Bac­te­r­ial and hu­man...

The Other Side of the Hill

Ecol­ogy

Sens­ing the World.  by Me­chas — Oc­to­puses pro­vide clues as to how we can sense mi­crobes in com­plex en­vi­ron­ments.

Re­mov­ing For­ever Chem­i­cals.  Note­wor­thy — "For­ever chem­i­cals," also known as PFAS (per- and poly­flu­o­ro­al­kyl sub­stances), are a group of more than 4,500 syn­thetic com­pounds used in a wide range of con­sumer and in­dus­trial prod­ucts, like cos­met­ics, cloth­ing, and cook­ware.

Dy­ing Sea Stars.  Note­wor­thy — Since 2013, sea star wast­ing dis­ease has dev­as­tated pop­u­la­tions of sea stars along the Pa­cific Coast of North Amer­ica...

Tree Trunk Mi­cro­bio­mes  Note­wor­thy — Trees trunks, which com­prise the largest reser­voir of bio­mass on Earth, also con­tain their own mi­cro­bio­mes.

Pathogens

Global Phage-As­sisted Sal­mo­nella Vir­u­lence  Note­wor­thy — Mi­crobes cross environ­ments, mod­u­lat­ing com­mu­ni­ties and in­tro­duc­ing ge­netic in­for­ma­tion that is, in ad­di­tion, changed by phages. But how can these phage-me­di­ated gene ex­change events be un­cov­ered?

My­cobac­terium tu­ber­cu­lo­sis Dis­rupts Host Splic­ing  Note­wor­thy — De­spite hav­ing learned much about My­cobac­terium tubercu­losis (Mtb) bi­ol­ogy and patho­gen­e­sis in re­cent decades, tu­ber­cu­lo­sis (TB) re­mains one of the lead­ing causes of death from a sin­gle in­fec­tious agent. TB caused more than 1 mil­lion deaths in 2023, de­spite be­ing a cur­able and pre­ventable dis­ease.

The Cost of For­get­ting.  by Chelsi — Vac­cines have made a world that is safer and health­ier. But, vac­cines have made us com­fort­able enough to for­get.

Napoleon's Re­treat.  Note­wor­thy — An­cient DNA re­veals the likely cause be­hind the dev­as­tat­ing down­fall of Napoleon's army as it re­treated from Rus­sia in 1812.

Non-an­tibi­otics and En­teric In­fec­tions  Note­wor­thy — It's al­lergy sea­son. To as­suage your dis­com­fort, your physi­cian pre­scribes a long-term treat­ment with an an­ti­his­t­a­mine. Feel­ing much bet­ter, you go out to en­joy some of your fa­vorite street foods. Sadly, those de­li­cious sa­vory treats that you so en­joyed be­fore no longer sit well at all with your di­ges­tive tract.

Scan­ning elec­tron mi­cro­scope im­age of an in­testi­nal bac­te­r­ial com­mu­nity (1:1,000,000). These microor­gan­isms form an ecosys­tem through their in­ter­ac­tions that is es­sen­tial for hu­man health. Med­ica­tions can se­verely dis­rupt this frag­ile bal­ance by elim­i­nat­ing ben­e­fi­cial bac­te­ria and pro­mot­ing the growth of harm­ful species. © Maier Lab (Lisa Maier, Anne Grießham­mer, Leonardo Boldt), Tübin­gen Struc­tural Mi­croscopy Core Fa­cil­ity (Michaela Wilsch-Bräuninger, Ste­fan Fis­cher); Kolorierung/Coloring: Elke Neud­ert