• Sib­lings Strike Again

    by S. Mar­vin Fried­man — Bac­te­ria ca­pa­ble of sporu­la­tion go out of their way to grow rather than sporu­late. They will there­fore try to ob­tain needed nu­tri­ents, even at the cost of killing their neigh­bors. When starved for nu­tri­ents, cells of Bacil­lus sub­tilis en­gage in can­ni­bal­ism, that is they lyse their sib­lings and...

  • Bac­te­ria of a Feather…

    by Elio — Just when we thought we'd heard it all, along came a study on the bac­te­r­ial degra­da­tion of bird feath­ers. We ad­mit we hadn't pre­vi­ously spent much time con­tem­plat­ing the pos­si­bil­ity that feath­ers would be sus­cep­ti­ble to bac­te­r­ial degra­da­tion, just like any other ker­atin-con­tain­ing struc­ture. But to a bird...