Category: Meet a Microbe
Bdellovibrio, the microscopic vampire
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.
Meet Carsonella ruddii, a Microbe so Small That Might Not Even Be a Microbe
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 not a free-living microorganism. It dwells within bacteriocytes in the abdomen of sap-feeding insects known as psyllids. Since these insects are restricted to plant sap, their diet is high in sugar but lacking in most essential amino acids and vitamins. Thus, C. ruddii was considered an endosymbiont because it also contains genes for the biosynthesis of essential amino acids. (more…)
Meet a microbe: Deinococcus radiodurans
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,” after the movie Conan the Barbarian. D. radiodurans is a spherical bacterium and four individual cells are typically stuck together forming a square shaped cluster. Aside from radiation resistance, D. radiodurans is also resistant to ultraviolet light and desiccation. (more…)
Vibrio natriegens as the new E. coli?
Anyone who has dabbled into molecular biology knows that Escherichia coli has been the go-to model organism for quite some time. As an organism that is easy to grow and easy to genetically manipulate in the lab, E. coli has become one of the most commonly used microorganisms in labs that study a variety of biological systems. It has been used to inform the behavior of other bacteria (which may be harder to grow or more difficult to work with). Outside of strictly microbiology research, E. coli has been used to produce many biomolecules by inserting genes needed to produce these molecules into the bacterium. (more…)