TWiM #102: Happiness is the spore-formers in your gut
The TWiM team discusses evidence that serotonin synthesis is regulated by spore-forming members of the gut microbiota.
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When Antibiotic Resistance in vitro Does Not Tell You...
...What You Need To Know by Terry Roemer — Increasingly, it is becoming apparent that there is a deep difference between what happens in vivo and in vitro. The idea that one can comfortably extrapolate from the bench to, say, the bedside, is receding rapidly. Living things, not even the smallest ones, are no agar plates, however convenient and inexpensive these may be.
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Flights of Discovery
by Mizuho Ota — I wonder if you are familiar with this icon. It depicts the "eyedropper," a commonly used tool in computer graphics and painting programs that allows you to choose any spot on an image and identify its exact color. On a computer this is easy information to obtain; however, in dealing with real materials, the question "but what exactly IS it?"…
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TWiM #76: Genetic Biopixels and a Pathogenic Sweet Tooth
Vincent, Elio, Michael, and Michele discuss the use of bacteria to build a genetic sensor for heavy metals, and how host sugars help enteric pathogens to expand after antibiotic treatment.
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No Bacterium Is An Island
by S. Marvin Friedman — To paraphrase an old adage, no bacterium is an island. Indeed, bacteria in nature exist as polymicrobial communities where interactions between individuals influence activities of the entire population. This is especially true of pathogenic bacteria, although it has been mostly ignored because we frequently isolate a single species from an infection…
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TWiM #51: Cave Science with Hazel Barton
Vincent, Michael, and Elio meet up with Hazel Barton to talk about cave microbiology.
