• Lost & Found #5

    by Christoph — When you leave 𝕏, it means that among the "book­marks" you take with you, you will also come across some that con­tain im­ages or videos that are mainly nice to look at and even en­ter­tain­ing. As in 'Lost & Found #4', two such are in­cluded to­day in 'Lost & Found #5'.

  • Macrolides from Mol­lusks, Not Mi­crobes?

    by Janie — Last year, we cov­ered the mi­cro­bi­o­log­i­cal im­pli­ca­tions of feather pig­ments in par­rots, touch­ing on an un­ex­pected polyke­tide syn­thase (PKS) ac­tive in an an­i­mal rather than a mi­crobe or plant. Now, a re­dux of an­i­mal polyke­tides! This episode of mol­e­cules from un­ex­pected places takes place un­der­sea, star­ring the clam.

  • Fast Is Good...

    by Michael Schmidt — Every now and then you read a pa­per and think to your­self, this might trans­form pa­tient care. Such was the case when I read a pa­per sug­gested to me by one of our faith­ful TWiM (This Week in Mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy) lis­ten­ers, Dr. Volkan Ozenci of the Karolin­ska Uni­ver­sity Hos­pi­tal in Swe­den. The pa­per, 'An­tibi­otic sus­cep­ti­bil­ity...'

  • Friend & Foe

    by Christoph — In a post two month ago, I re­ferred to 'de­fen­sive sym­bioses'. In a nut­shell: one or more sym­bi­otic bac­te­ria pro­duce a cock­tail of an­tibi­otics that pro­vide pro­tec­tion of a eu­kary­otic host against an ar­ray of op­por­tunis­tic bac­te­r­ial and fun­gal pathogens. I in­tro­duced the term not in con­trast but...

  • Even More An­tibi­otics In The Nurs­ery!

    by Christoph — We had learned ear­lier that Phil­an­thus tri­an­gu­lum bee­wolves – soli­tary dig­ger wasps that prey on bees, hence their name – em­ploy a "cock­tail" of nine dif­fer­ent an­tibi­otics to pro­tect their off­spring from detri­men­tal fun­gal in­fec­tions. The an­tibi­otics are pro­duced – I re­peat from the ear­lier post – by a bac­te­r­ial sym­biont, 'Can­di­da­tus Strep­to­myces phil­an­thi', which the...

  • Fol­low Your Nose...

    ...To­wards More Eco­log­i­cal An­timi­cro­bial Ther­a­pies
    by Roberto — The re­mark­able trans­for­ma­tion in the con­trol of in­fec­tious dis­eases by an­tibi­otics is one of the glo­ri­ous sto­ries in mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy. But now, al­most in­sep­a­ra­ble from their dis­cov­ery and ap­pli­ca­tion, is its nasty se­quel, the rapid evo­lu­tion of an­tibi­otic re­sis­tance. We con­tin­u­ally read re­ports of the dire pub­lic health sit­u­a­tion that we may...