• En­ter the Pi­rates

    By Christoph — Mi­cro­bi­ol­o­gists know of only a small num­ber of gen­uine ra­pa­cious bac­te­r­ial species. In sci­en­tific terms, they are re­ferred to as "preda­tory bac­te­ria". Well-known ex­am­ples are Myx­o­coc­cus xan­thus and its ilk, which prac­tice "wolf pack" swarm hunt­ing, and the more soli­tary vam­pires from the Bdellovib­rio tribe. En­ter the pi­rates with Cap­tain Au­reispira…

  • Hav­ing the bow and ar­row might not be enough...

    by Natália C. Drebes Dörr — Daily chal­lenges in the life of mi­cro­scopic or­gan­isms are not that dif­fer­ent from those ex­pe­ri­enced by chee­tahs and gazelles in the sa­van­nas. Bac­te­ria are usu­ally em­bed­ded in com­mu­ni­ties where they need to ac­tively com­pete for food and space. Also, they are of­ten un­der the at­tack of vo­ra­cious preda­tors such as bac­te­rio­phages and pro­tists, which they fight...

  • Dial "V" for Mur­der

    by Christoph — If you read this blog fre­quently and, per­haps, be­cause we "em­pha­size the un­usual and the un­ex­pected phe­nom­ena", you may feel a lit­tle, Um.., bored to see yet an­other post on hor­i­zon­tal gene trans­fer (HGT). But wait, we've ac­tu­ally touched this topic in fewer than 30 of our 1,200+ posts. That's less than the...

  • Fine Read­ing: Killing by Type VI Se­cre­tion...

    by Elio — A re­cent pa­per by Mc­Nally et al. en­ti­tled: 'Killing by Type VI se­cre­tion dri­ves ge­netic phase se­pa­ra­tion and cor­re­lates with in­creased co­op­er­a­tion' be­gins with the fe­lic­i­tous para­graph be­low. I think that it en­cap­su­lates the main fea­tures of the par­a­digm shift that has oc­curred re­cently, from bac­te­ria as lone...

  • Tit-for-Tat: A Bac­te­r­ial Coun­ter­at­tack Sys­tem

    by Spencer Scott & John De Friel — Mi­cro­bial ecol­ogy may be a young field but it is well un­der­stood al­ready that there is a broad spec­trum of in­ter­ac­tions be­tween bac­te­r­ial species, rang­ing from co­op­er­a­tive to com­pet­i­tive. In a re­cent pa­per re­searchers from John Mekalanos' lab fur­ther char­ac­ter­ized a re­cently dis­cov­ered mech­a­nism for in­ter-cell com­mu­ni­ca­tion. This sys­tem, called…

  • Go­ing Next Door With­out Get­ting Your Feet Wet

    by Elio — In­tra­cel­lu­lar life has its perks. In­side host cells, bac­te­ria are pro­tected from neu­trophils, com­ple­ment, an­ti­bod­ies, some an­tibi­otics, and the other un­pleas­ant things float­ing around in tis­sue flu­ids. In ad­di­tion, here they have ac­cess to am­ple food. But there is a catch, namely how to in­fect other cells and other hosts…