by Christoph — There are strikingly different table manners among human cultures past and present when it comes to food ingestion, who wouldn't know. Not so with our single-celled eukaryotic relatives, the protists, who gobble up everything that feels and smells about right? Wrong. Engulfment, as biologists call this behavioral process is a bit like putting a bowl of ramen noodles to your lips and...
The Polymicrobial Pathogenesis of Black Band Disease
by Daniel P. Haeusser — This June Disney released the anticipated Pixar Animation Studios sequel 'Finding Dory' to earn the largest animated film opening receipts in North America ever. The popularity of the original 'Finding Nemo' in 2003 led to reportedly increased demand for clownfish like Nemo for pets; some concerned environmentalists worry that...
by Elio — Not long ago, we posted a piece entitled "The Awesomest Thing in Biology" in which we celebrated the mind-boggling complexities of the ocelloid, an organelle that closely resemble the vertebrate eye – in a unicellular protist! It turns out that further surprises come our way...
by Elio — So says a blogger by the name of Psi Wavefunction regarding an eye-like structure of some protists called the ocelloid. She wrote this in a now defunct blog eponymously called 'The Ocelloid'. I couldn't agree with her more. The ocelloid is the structural and functional equivalent of the sophisticated eye of metazoans...
