by Elio — We are used to titillating stories of symbiotic mutualism where the host and the symbiont do amazing things together that neither could do alone. Think of lichens, root nodules in legumes, tube worms in deep sea vents. Such phenomena make us...
by Merry Youle — Glassy-winged sharpshooters, long notorious in wine country as an insect vector for Pierce's disease in grapes, have recently achieved notice for employing not one but two bacterial endosymbionts to provide essential nutrients. One...
by Elio — Some marine animals — clams, flatworms, and hydras — have green body parts although that is not their true color. Rather, they look green because they have ingested microscopic algae. Inside the animals, the algae act as photosynthetic symbionts, tiny gardens that provide their host with products of their...
by Elio — Certain marine ciliates use devices worthy of James Bond. Or so it looks like. These creatures carry bacterial ectosymbionts belonging to the Verrucomicrobia that have extraordinary attributes. Before revealing what this is...
by Elio — In Spanish or Italian,"colmo" means that something has truly reached the limit, the last straw. For endosymbionts, this can be claimed by bacteria that live not just inside host cells, but within their mitochondria. El colmo! This unusual...
