• The Long Star State

    by Kevin D. Young — There is noth­ing new un­der the sun. King Solomon may be tech­ni­cally cor­rect about the dearth of nov­elty, at least in its most gen­eral form. But that doesn't mean we can't be sur­prised, over and over, by things we've just dis­cov­ered. For ex­am­ple, I would have thought that the ba­sic shapes of bac­te­ria...

  • Why Do Bac­te­ria Fil­a­ment?

    by Elio — Some bac­te­ria nat­u­rally grow as fil­a­ments, e.g., mem­bers of the actin­o­mycetes. Many oth­ers, e.g., E. coli and B. sub­tilis, make fil­a­ments only when un­der stress – a fact that has been known for about one hun­dred years but is still a bit of a mys­tery. Many kinds of stress can prompt this re­sponse, in­clud­ing...

  • In a Cav­ern, in a Canyon….

    by Elio — Cer­tain large un­der­ground cav­erns owe their majesty to the bio­chem­i­cal ac­tion of tiny bac­te­ria. In many parts of the world, cav­erns are formed by the dis­so­lu­tion of cal­cium car­bon­ate de­posits by sul­fu­ric acid (this is known in the trade as "sul­fu­ric acid speleo­ge­n­e­sis"). Such mi­cro­bial min­ing formed the...