• A Worm­ful of Bugs, Again...

    by Christoph — When you've fol­lowed our posts on sym­bioses be­tween an­i­mals and bac­te­ria over the last two years or so, you could have eas­ily got the im­pres­sion that they oc­cur mainly be­tween in­sects and Gammapro­teobac­te­ria from the or­der En­ter­obac­terales of this large and di­verse phy­lum. This im­pres­sion would be skewed but only be­cause our choice of top­ics was!

  • A Mi­cro­bial Liver

    by Elio — Best I can tell, the ma­rine flat­worms Para­catenula sug­gest a novel twist on sym­bio­sis. Here, sym­bi­otic bac­te­ria do not just pro­vide car­bon com­pounds for their host but ac­tu­ally store them. And they do that also for en­ergy...