Pictures Considered #60 by Christoph — Let me start with an adage: a picture is worth a thousand words. Can this also be valid for video snippets? I think so. Here you see a few seconds of a looping video showing how a cholera bacterium extends a pilus, attaches the tip to DNA in the environment, and then retracts it. Worth a thousand words? Yes, sure, but also deserving 1,000 words...
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 — You've probably heard of spiders that fly withtout wings. They climb onto flowers or leaves, stand on their tiptoes, and push gossamer threads of silk from their spinnerets, glands in their abdomen, and take off. They do that to reach a nearby twig when weaving their webs or to make long-distance flights, sometimes over...
by Elio — It is not unexpected that the contemplation of bacteria and archaea should focus so much on the nature and importance of their cell envelopes. Here, after all, is the interface between the cell's interior and the outside world. It is also what a host perceives early on when becoming infected. Plus, as was...
by Amber Pollack-Berti — I'll admit, I've been in love with the type IV pili (T4P) for a long time. After memorizing all those complex pathways for regulation and metabolism, there was something so refreshing and accessible about pili. These bacterial surface appendages are, by their nature, mechanical structures. They are...
by Merry — Microbiologists have been fascinated by the social swarming of the myxobacteria since they were first isolated by Roland Thaxter in 1892. Traveling in "wolf packs," these bacteria glide along solid surfaces, such as agar. En masse they secrete enough extracellular enzymes to lyse and digest bacteria...
