• Po­lar En­chant­ment

    by Elio — All bac­te­ria, even those that are spher­i­cal, dis­play geo­met­ric asym­me­tries dur­ing at least part of their life cy­cle, and it ap­pears that cells take ad­van­tage of these asym­me­tries to lo­cal­ize cel­lu­lar com­po­nents to spe­cific sites. So be­gins a pa­per by Li and Young that de­scribes a novel ap­proach for…

  • Some Like It Curved

    by Elio — Think about it: un­der­stand­ing what goes on in­side any cell is hard enough. Add to that the com­plex­i­ties of be­ing rod-shaped, and the mind starts to bog­gle. Peo­ple have won­dered about this aplenty. For sure, many ex­pe­di­tions have set out to ex­plore the poles of rod-shaped bacilli — how they are cre­ated…