Misfolded proteins are not just useless — they can be toxic. Some of them form linear aggregates known as amyloid fibres that can lead to disorders such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. Writing in PLoS Biology, James Shorter and colleagues describe a protein machinery that inhibits the formation and helps to dissolve such fibres.
Read the rest of the article >>>
Social media tools and academic publishing Alan J. Cann, Internet Consulting Editor, Annals of Botany; Department of Biology, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK As publishing moves from print-focused (slow, inflexible, expensive) to content-focused (digital delivery, article-level metrics/discussion), there is an increasing need for publishers to communicate with their audiences in ‘adjacent spaces’ beyond the traditional medium of the journal or book. Social technologies will continue to evolve rapidly for the foreseeable future, so publishers need to acquire sufficient expertise to remain agile in this area in the face of future developments. I will describe the Annals of Botany low-cost online social media strategy, which is extending the reach of the journal to new audiences and new demographic groups. This includees blogs as distribution hubs for content via RSS, Twitter and Facebook, and emerging tools such as Flipboard which allow content discovery on new platforms such as tablet computers.And here you have a link to the AoB Blog.
Bertalan Meskó (@Berci) has compiled a list of microbiology blogs that you may find useful: Microbiology in the Blogosphere.
Envious, I decided to make my own list of microbiology blogs. After checking my Google Reader, I came up with a collection of 20 great blogs. I know there are many more out there, so please feel free to add a comment and suggest any microbiology blogs that may be missing from my list.
So, here they come, in strict alphabetical order:
Read the rest of the article >>>
Multiple sclerosis is an autoimmune disease of the central nervous system that causes neurological disability in young adults. Several environmental and genetic factors have been linked to the disease, but the precise mechanisms involved, and whether neurological damage precedes inflammation or vice versa, remain unclear.
In a recent article published in Nature, an international consortium of researchers report the identification of 29 new susceptibility loci, most of which are related to immune system function and, in particular, to T-helper-cell differentiation.
Read the rest of the article >>>
Please watch the following video made by Nick Lariontsev, and then let me know if you don't think that microbes are fascinating things.
Read the rest of the article >>>
Every December, the journal Environmental Microbiology publishes a collection of humorous quotes made by peer reviewers while assessing manuscripts submitted to the journal. Some of them are hilarious! I am extracting a few of them from the last two years, but I recommend reading them all!
Here you go:
Desperate referees:
This paper is desperate. Please reject it completely and then block the author’s email ID so they can’t use the online system in future.
Read the rest of the article >>>
The journal PLoS Biology has launched a new series of articles on education "to present innovative approaches to teaching critical concepts, developments, and methods in biology." The title of the first article in the series is In Living Color: Bacterial Pigments as an Untapped Resource in the Classroom and Beyond.
"Soil bacteria from the Streptomyces genus represent a source of interesting natural products that have been largely overlooked by artists, researchers, and teachers. This article is intended to encourage amateurs and professionals alike to explore this overflowing source of biopigments. Not only does this endeavor have the potential to lead us toward a fertile nexus between art and science, it may also lead to a more sustainable and environmentally friendly way to color the world around us in the future. The relevance of biopigments to many facets of science, technology, and society, makes this material an outstanding tool to engage students of varying academic interests across multiple age groups. Therefore, we encourage teachers of all levels to consider using biopigments as a vehicle to introduce the scientific method to their students. To facilitate the implementation of biopigments into science and art curricula, we have provided a list of useful online resources and information about procuring materials [...] as well as recommend ways to evaluate the effectiveness of the lesson [...]."
Read the rest of the article >>>
The March issue of International Microbiology included a very nice article by Roberto Kolter, professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at Harvard Medical School. The title is Biofilms in lab and nature: a molecular geneticist’s voyage to microbial ecology (freely available as PDF).
In the article, the author gives an entertaining account of the path that lead him to the study of biofilms -- that is, aggregations of microbes growing on solid substrates. He also highlights some of his recent research on the ecology of microbial islands.
There is also a fish tank anecdote. And I added a couple of microbial cartoons, just for fun!
Microbes are excellent model organisms... at least for studies on basic cellular processes. As Jacques Monod put it: Ce qui est vrai pour le colibacille est vrai pour l’éléphant ("what is true for the colibacillus is true for the elephant"). That is why Roberto Kolter (and many other researchers) soon fell under the spell of bacteria and, in particular, the colibacillus Escherichia coli.
"And what we found through genetic analyses was rather extraordinary. Death allowed new life; we were witnessing evolution in real time [...]. Underlying the usually observed death phase was a dynamic world of dying and growing bacteria. There were constant population takeovers such that pre-existing fitter bacterial mutants grew as the original population met its demise. Evolutionary cheating we would call it later on [...]"In other words, the adverse conditions occurring in the E. coli cultures during the death phase (toxic products, little food) appeared to have two contrasting effects. It was obvious that many cells were dying -- but, at the same time, successive waves of different spontaneous mutants were able to thrive and outgrow their dying siblings in this less-than-optimal environment. These findings were reviewed in two papers with memorable titles: Life after log and GASPing for life in stationary phase.
"The years that followed represented for me a dramatic turn of direction in my research. One might ascribe the change to some sort of “post-tenure depression”; I refer to it as the “epiphany of the fish tank” now. [...]
Microbial life on surfaces, for decades studied by Bill Costerton and other intrepid pioneers of the biofilm field, had been long ignored by most microbial physiologists and molecular geneticists, myself included. However, things changed for me in 1994 when, noticing my depressed state, members of my laboratory gave me a fish tank in a effort to draw me out of the blues. As I sat locked-up in the office staring at the tank, I realized that by studying shaken cultures of E. coli I had been barking up the wrong tree. The water in the fish tank remained crystal clear, it was on the surfaces where most microbial activity was occurring."
That observation applies well beyond fish tanks. It is possible that the majority of microbes on Earth spend most of their lives in aggregates attached to surfaces, and therefore not in a free-floating or swimming, planktonic state. Obviously, they are not solitary guys: we could view biofilms in nature as quite complex 'societies' or 'cities' where different types of microorganisms inhabit buildings made out of sticky macromolecules (polysaccharides, proteins, DNA). Importantly, microbes in biofilms are sometimes resistant to the action of antibiotics, to which the same organisms are sensitive when in planktonic state. 
The 'fish tank epiphany' lead Kolter into biofilm research. A first approach he and his collaborators took was to study the biofilms formed by certain Bacillus subtilis strain. The accompanying image shows --on the left-- a beaker with a floating film that the microbe forms when grown in a standing (not shaken!) liquid culture, and --on the right-- a magnified view of a colony grown on an agar plate. Although these biofilms consist only of a single organism, they are actually highly structured, with several layers composed of different cell types engaged in various activities: some cells are actively producing the matrix (not the Wachowskis' movie but the glue that keeps the biofilm together), others are swimming around, and there are also some cells in the process of becoming spores. How close is that to a multicellular organism?
The first island is Sarracenia purpurea, a carnivorous plant feeding on the insects and spiders that fall into its water-filled pitchers. Kolter and collaborators found that the inside of unopened, newly formed pitchers was sterile -- there you go, a microbial island is born! This allowed them to analyse the composition of the nascent bacterial population in the pitchers during the season, as microbes colonized the island. Among other results, the researchers found that pitchers containing certain mosquito larvae (keystone predators) had a greater bacterial diversity.Read the rest of the article >>>
TED is a nonprofit organization devoted to "ideas worth spreading." They are mostly known because of their growing collection of fascinating talks about a wide array of topics, including science, art and anything in-between (or around). The talks are recorded and the videos are freely available at their website, where you can also find information about the speakers and interactive transcripts (including translations to various languages).
In this post I'm collecting links to all the TED videos I could find related to the microbial world.
Topics include: life in the deep oceans, medical mysteries, bacterial Esperanto, predicting pandemics, robots turned into microbiologists, new approaches to handle infectious diseases, looking for life on Mars and beyond, fungi that could save the world, bacteria that may have caused mass extinctions...
Awesome, huh?
I'm also embedding a video for one of the latest TED talks: Seth Berkley: HIV and flu -- the vaccine strategy. The speaker, epidemiologist Seth Berkley, is the founder of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative. In this talk, filmed last February, he spoke about new methods for making vaccines for AIDS and flu.
I was very disappointed by public concerns that we ordered too much flu vaccine and that some might get wasted. (...) I think that both declaring this a global pandemic and accelerating vaccine production as quickly as possible were the right decisions. If you want to prepare a population for an emergency it means that you might ultimately spend some money that isn’t used.That's a good point. Many criticisms have been raised in the last months against WHO decisions in relation to the recent flu pandemic. And some of those criticisms were undeserved, in my opinion.
Sadly not. (...) The problem is not that young scientists don’t think vaccines are incredibly important, the problem is that it is seen as such a difficult problem, such a long-term problem that what they’re worried about is: Can they build a career on it? Can they get the types of breakthroughs they need in a rapid time frame that would make it a productive place to work?It is disturbing that the "productivity" concept not only is doing harm to many researchers' careers but may also be slowing down the development of much-needed medical treatments...
(...) from a public policy point of view, there’s great expense involved in dealing with the epidemic through treatment and reaching people when they’re already infected. (...) But this is a long-term entitlement program, because once you put somebody on treatment, they have to get treatment for the rest of their lives and they develop conditions, they develop toxicity and they need other treatments. So, there’s almost a sense now that all of the bright lights of that unbelievable effort -- the unprecedented emergency program for AIDS relief, Bush’s triumph that people look on as being a great thing that he did, will create a demand that gets higher and higher and higher just to keep up with where we are.So, making an effective vaccine against AIDS may be very difficult. But it is worth the effort.
Magnus Larsson: Turning dunes into architecture. "Architecture student Magnus Larsson details his bold plan to transform the harsh Sahara desert using bacteria and a surprising construction material: the sand itself." July 2009.
Nathan Wolfe: hunting the next killer virus. "Virus hunter Nathan Wolfe is outwitting the next pandemic by staying two steps ahead: discovering deadly new viruses where they first emerge -- passing from animals to humans among poor subsistence hunters in Africa -- before they claim millions of lives." February 2009.
Bonnie Bassler: discovering bacteria's amazing communication system. "Bonnie Bassler discovered that bacteria "talk" to each other, using a chemical language that lets them coordinate defense and mount attacks. The find has stunning implications for medicine, industry -- and our understanding of ourselves." February 2009.
Hans Rosling on HIV: New facts and stunning data visuals. "Hans Rosling unveils new data visuals that untangle the complex risk factors of one of the world's deadliest (and most misunderstood) diseases: HIV. He argues that preventing transmissions -- not drug treatments -- is the key to ending the epidemic." February 2009.
Kary Mullis' next-gen cure for killer infections. "Drug-resistant bacteria kills, even in top hospitals. But now tough infections like staph and anthrax may be in for a surprise. Nobel-winning chemist Kary Mullis, who watched a friend die when powerful antibiotics failed, unveils a radical new cure that shows extraordinary promise." February 2009.
James Nachtwey fights XDR-TB. "Photojournalist James Nachtwey sees his TED Prize wish come true, as we share his powerful photographs of XDR-TB, a drug-resistant strain of tuberculosis that's touching off a global medical crisis. Learn how to help at http://www.xdrtb.org" October 2008.
Paul Stamets: six ways mushrooms can save the world. "Mycologist Paul Stamets lists 6 ways the mycelium fungus can help save the universe: cleaning polluted soil, making insecticides, treating smallpox and even flu." March 2008.
Peter Ward: Earth's mass extinctions. "Asteroid strikes get all the coverage, but "Medea Hypothesis" author Peter Ward argues that most of Earth's mass extinctions were caused by lowly bacteria. The culprit, a poison called hydrogen sulfide, may have an interesting application in medicine." February 2008.
Paul Ewald: can we domesticate germs? "Evolutionary biologist Paul Ewald drags us into the sewer to discuss germs. Why are some more harmful than others? How could we make the harmful ones benign? Searching for answers, he examines a disgusting, fascinating case: diarrhea.". March 2007. (I embedded this video in a previous post.)
Bill Stone explores the world's deepest caves. "Bill Stone, a maverick cave explorer who has plumbed Earth’s deepest abysses, discusses his efforts to mine lunar ice for space fuel and to build an autonomous robot for studying Jupiter’s moon Europa." "How do you take a robot and turn it into a field microbiologist?" March 2007.
Laurie Garrett on lessons from the 1918 flu. "In 2007, as the world worried about a possible avian flu epidemic, Laurie Garrett, author of "The Coming Plague," gave this powerful talk to a small TED University audience. Her insights from past pandemics are suddenly more relevant than ever." February 2007.
Penelope Boston says there might be life on Mars. "So the Mars Rovers didn't scoop up any alien lifeforms. Scientist Penelope Boston thinks there's a good chance -- a 25 to 50 percent chance, in fact -- that life might exist on Mars, deep inside the planet's caves. She details how we should look and why." February 2006.
Larry Brilliant wants to stop pandemics. "Accepting the 2006 TED Prize, Dr. Larry Brilliant talks about how smallpox was eradicated from the planet, and calls for a new global system that can identify and contain pandemics before they spread". February 2006.
Joe DeRisi solves medical mysteries. "Biochemist Joe DeRisi talks about amazing new ways to diagnose viruses (and treat the illnesses they cause) using DNA. His work may help us understand malaria, SARS, avian flu -- and the 60 percent of everyday viral infections that go undiagnosed." February 2006.
David Gallo on life in the deep oceans. "With vibrant video clips captured by submarines, David Gallo takes us to some of Earth's darkest, most violent, toxic and beautiful habitats, the valleys and volcanic ridges of the oceans' depths, where life is bizarre, resilient and shockingly abundant." February 1998.
Read the rest of the article >>>
