In this edition of This Month in Microbiology, we feature the Contamination World Cup, huge phages, coronavirus resources, and bacterial warfare.
World Cup of Contamination
Beginning with Noodlococcus, a bacterial colony that looks like noodles, to sharing photos of contaminants on the Contamination Club Twitter feed, contaminants are tossed aside no longer. Now, the Contamination Club is hosting the World Cup of Contaminations. Submitted photos of contaminants will go head to head on Twitter, and the prize? Whole-genome sequencing. To enter, follow the directions in their tweet announcement.
This year we will be hosting the first World Cup of Contaminations 🏆
Submitted contaminants will go head to head in Twitter polls and the overall winner will be whole genome sequenced! 🧬 pic.twitter.com/zXrA9FoD2c
— Contamination Club (@ContamClub) February 19, 2020
Huge bacteria-eating viruses
Bacteriophages, viruses that infect bacteria, typically have small genomes. Now, Jillian Banfield’s lab recently identified hundreds of phage genomes that exceed 200 kilobases, four to five times larger than the average phage genome. The largest phage genome found: 735 kb. According to Banfield, these huge phages bridge the gap between life (bacteria and archaea) and non-life (viruses).Â
Coronavirus dashboard
If you’ve been following COVID-19 and if you love data visualization, you’ll love these dashboards created by Andrzej Leszkiewicz. It’s updated at least daily and there are 24 pages of data.
With all the misinformation out there, here are some other reliable resources to stay informed:
- ASM – Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) Resources
- CDC – Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)
- WHO – Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak
Mass cell suicide in bacterial warfare
In a bacterial population, some cells may die to release toxins to help out their clonemates (programmed suicide). How many cells do this? It’s unclear because cells that were killed by a competitor could not be distinguished from cells that have undergone programmed suicide.
Elisa Granato and Kevin Foster found a way to monitor this process using fluorescence reporters. There were some conditions where nearly all cells go through programmed death such as in the presence of a DNA-damaging toxin or when cells are at the interface between competing colonies. Why does this make sense evolutionarily? These cells will likely die anyways in these conditions.
Hope you will join us next month to another update of cool microbiology!
