• On Old Age

    by Elio — In a cou­ple of months, my age will be di­vis­i­ble by 31 (no, I won't be 62 years old, nor 124). Does this level of senec­ti­tude give me per­mis­sion to muse about hav­ing be­come an "old sci­en­tist?" What do you think?
     

  • Stalk­ing Caulobac­ter

    by Christoph — When it comes to cel­lu­lar dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion in bac­te­ria, two model sys­tems stand out in my mind: sporu­la­tion in Bacil­lus sub­tilis and the two dif­fer­ent cell mor­pholo­gies in Caulobac­ter cres­cen­tus. Both sys­tems have in com­mon that dra­matic changes in cell mor­phol­ogy, are eas­ily ob­served in the mi­cro­scope. In the case of B. sub­tilis spore for­ma­tion, a num­ber of stress sig­nals can de­rail the cell from its de­fault cell cy­cle...

  • Mother's Love

    by Elio — Bi­nary fis­sion is a most im­pres­sive in­ven­tion. In one fell swoop, it en­sures that prog­eny cells are born alike and en­dowed with the same po­ten­tial for growth and sur­vival. Sim­ple as it sounds, it must have taken con­sid­er­able evo­lu­tion­ary con­tor­tions to make it func­tion so well...