We’re deep into tick season in the Eastern US. As dog parents, we give our pup monthly flea and tick medication and check her for ticks if she’s been in fields or wooded areas. We thought we were in the clear, but when we went to the vet one time, her routine bloodwork came back…
Microbes come in many shapes and sizes, appearing as spheres, rods, and spirals under the microscope. Aside from these more commonly found microbial shapes, many microbes take on a more unique appearance. One of these microbes is the square-shaped Haloquadratum walsbyi, which was discovered in 1980 by A. E. Walsby. It became known as the…
I was inspired to write this poem (first poem on The Microbial Menagerie!) from a writing workshop I’ve been taking. We were reading Workshop by BIlly Collins, and there was a line in there “Or is it a kind of indoor cemetery? There’s something about death going on here.” that this is loosely based upon.
In 2006, Carsonella ruddii was reported as the smallest of the small: this microbe contains the smallest genome identified at the time, clocking in at 159,662 base pairs encoding 182 genes. The Escherichia coli genome on the other hand contains over 4 million base pairs encoding about 4,000 genes. Unlike E. coli, Carsonella ruddii is…
Meet Deinococcus radiodurans, one of the world’s toughest bacterium. It’s an extremophile and one of the most radiation-resistant organisms known on Earth. This hardy little bacterium can survive over a thousand times the amount of radiation that would kill a human. Its tolerance to many harsh conditions has earned itself the name “Conan the Bacterium,”…