by Daniel P. Haeusser — Happy Monday, readers! I hope you studied hard this weekend. Please put away your notes and close any open programs or browser tabs other than this one. It's time for a Small Things Considered general biology quiz:
In which of the following would you find genes for proteins involved in photosynthesis? (Note: One answer only!)
by Merry Youle — When a phage invades a host's premises, it delivers only its genome and perhaps a few specialized proteins needed immediately upon arrival. Its plan is simply to supervise production. The host is relied on to provide not only the raw materials and energy, but also the production equipment needed to…
by Merry Youle — For this, my last post as co-blogger, I chose to loop back to my very first post about my favorites among the many Small Things, the phages. That was BYOG: Bring Your Own Gene, published in March of 2008, recounting what was at the time a totally new story for…
by Merry — Of necessity, viruses rely on their host cells for both energy and molecular building blocks. Typically, lytic infection shuts down the synthesis of host proteins, and the cell's translation machinery is put to work in the service of viral replication. For marine cyanophage, this strategy runs into a troublesome wrinkle.
