• Life Af­ter CPR

    by Me­chas Zam­brano and Roberto — For most Eng­lish speak­ers, CPR would be as­sumed to stand for car­diopul­monary re­sus­ci­ta­tion, of­ten­times a real life saver. But for many read­ers of this blog, the acronym has a whole dif­fer­ent mean­ing. For the last few years, CPR, has stood for the "Can­di­date Phyla Ra­di­a­tion." The dis­cov­ery of the CPR su­per­phy­lum was (and re­mains) one of the most re­mark­able de­vel­op­ments in our grow­ing re­al­iza­tion that the ge­netic di­ver­sity...

  • A sprin­kle of acid a day keeps the law en­force­ment away

    by Aleks Prochera — Imag­ine you look like some­one dan­ger­ous, a crim­i­nal, an en­emy. De­spite be­ing an ex­em­plary cit­i­zen, you have to deal with the pos­si­bil­ity that, at one point or an­other, you might get in trou­ble with law en­force­ment sim­ply be­cause you ap­pear threat­en­ing. That's a strug­gle that many bac­te­r­ial mem­bers of a plant's mi­cro­biome face.

  • The Con­tin­u­ing Saga of In­sect-As­so­ci­ated Strep­to­myces

    by Roberto — For some rea­son that I can­not re­ally pin­point, I am con­tin­u­ally fas­ci­nated by the in­ter­ac­tions that are con­tin­u­ally dis­cov­ered be­tween in­sects and bac­te­ria. Among some of my fa­vorites are those that in­volve in­sects that carry bac­te­ria that pro­duce an­timi­cro­bial com­pounds that in turn pro­vide a use­ful func­tion for the in­sect.

  • Straw­berry Fields For­ever

    by Me­chas Zam­brano and Roberto — Close your eyes for a mo­ment and imag­ine your­self in front of a plate full of freshly picked, bright red, fra­grant, ripe, and sweet straw­ber­ries. For most of you, that should be a truly "mouth wa­ter­ing" ex­pe­ri­ence. If you do en­joy straw­ber­ries, you are part of a long and wide­spread plea­sure that goes back mil­len­nia through the eat­ing of wild straw­berry species...

  • A Ver­ti­cal Sym­biont Keeps Its Chro­mo­some...

    ...Ori­ented To­wards The Host
    by Philipp We­ber — Have you ever heard of '𝘊𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘥𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘴 Thiosym­bion oneisti' It is a rod-shaped bac­terium that at­taches, via one of its poles, to the cu­ti­cle of a ma­rine ne­ma­tode. Oneisti is com­mit­ted to have each daugh­ter cell in con­stant and in­ti­mate con­tact with its host. To ac­com­plish this, it can­not sim­ple elon­gate along...

  • Strictly In­tra­cel­lu­lar Par­a­site No More

    by Elio — We learn with mother's milk (or at least in a be­gin­ning mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy course) that cer­tain bac­te­ria, no­tably rick­ettsiae, chlamy­diae, and anaplas­mas, can­not grow out­side of host cells. Thus, they are de­fined as be­ing strictly in­tra­cel­lu­lar par­a­sites. Ha! A mem­ber of the rick­ettsiae has now been found to grow freely out­side of host cells.