Spooky season is here! While we associate Halloween with ghost stories, haunted houses, zombies, and trick-or-treating, the microbial world contains many eerie, microscopic (and macroscopic) tales. This Halloween, we bring you seven tales of microbial spookiness. (1) Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus, the vampire bacteria Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus has many names such as the vampire bacterium or the predatory…
When you’re scouring the pumpkin patch this autumn for the perfect pumpkin for your carving creations, you likely won’t come across Styrian pumpkins. These pumpkins are known as “naked-seeded pumpkins” because they possess seeds that are encased by just a thin membrane rather than a shell. The Styrian pumpkins were bred in the late 1800s…
The best season is upon us. The time of vibrant foliage, pumpkins, apples… and all the microbes that come with that. When it comes to the intersection of food and microbiology, we typically think of fermented foods (ex: sourdough, yogurt, kombucha, etc.). But plants naturally have their own microbes associated with them too. Today, we’ll…
Looking to add some microbiology into your reading routine? This list of microbiology books reflects the many ways that microbes touch our lives – from being the organisms behind illnesses to the little helpers that help us make food. So here it is, a microbiology summer reading list for microbiology enthusiasts out there. If you…
What’s my microbe moment – the moment I realized that microbes were going to change my life? A few months ago, the Microbigals blog reached out to me about a podcast episode they were planning, one that celebrates the diverse perspectives amongst microbiology science communicators: our favorite moments with microbes, how we got into microbiology,…