by Christoph — At an EMBO workshop in Copenhagen in 2006 on 'Cell cycle and cytoskeletal elements in bacteria,' I was almost unable to stay put in my seat during one presentation: Grant Jensen showed the 3D-montage of cryoET images of magnetosomes in Magnetospirillum magnetotacticum. It was a visual journey into and through the interior of a cell,...
Pictures Considered #55 by Christoph — If you've ever taken a class on bacterial genetics, either recently or in the last few decades, you've no doubt seen this image: the conjugation of two bacterial cells (Figure 1). And if you found this image so self-explanatory that you didn't bother to ask for the source, you're not alone. The internet is replete with it, in varying...
by Christoph — Imagine the E. coli nucleoid as a swig but of of a highly viscous tangle of a 2 nm thin and ~1.5 mm long DNA polymer, decorated with and highly compacted by a plethora of proteins, and somehow suspended in the cytoplasm of a cell with a volume of ~1.3 µm³. It's virtually impossible to "grip" the nucleoid, to measure...
by Christoph — Streptomycetes, these non-motile Actinobacteria that are capable of mycelial growth much like fungi, are quite inventive when it comes to the distribution of their spores. They don't just rely on enchanting scents like geosmin that they emit to attract springtails, which transport their spores over long distances (see Roberto's recent post). They also routinely employ bacterial transport workers.
by Alise Muok and Ariane Briegel — Try to imagine a creature that can survive from the heat of 150°C (300°F) to the cold of –270°C (–454°F), in the absence of oxygen, after complete dehydration, at 1,000× atmospheric pressure, and after the radiation and vacuum of space. Who might such space travelers be?
by Elio — In a recent post (The Age of Imaging), I mused about advances in microscopy that are revolutionizing our concept of bacterial cell structure. High on the list of amazing developments is cryoelectron tomography (CET), a technique that allows one to look inside bacterial cells. Flash-freezing cells at very low temperatures...
