I probably spend way too much time on Twitter browsing the latest science news and getting distracted by all the cool things in the microbial world. Yes, Science Twitter is a great place to find relevant research papers. Here’s a few things that caught my eye this month.
Binning Singletons
If you attended ASM Microbe last year, you might have heard of Binning Singletons. It’s a peer-to-peer mentoring group that consists of five steps named after microbiology-related themes:
- Identify the singletons (individuals attending alone)
- Bin the singletons (mentors are binned with 2-4 singletons)
- Horizontal transfer (transfer of knowledge and networking between the mentors and singletons)
- Quorum sensing (all of the different bins of singletons get together at a mixer)
- Exponential growth (describing the positive effect on the singleton)
The Binning Singletons team recently published a paper with more details in mSphere.
DIY Kit for rRNA depletion for RNA-seq
Since most of the RNA in bacteria is ribosomal RNA (rRNA), microbiologists often remove rRNAs from the total RNA sample before RNA-seq. When the Ribo-Zero kit from Illumnina was discontinued, Michael Laub’s lab created their own method for rRNA depletion based on an algorithm for designing biotinylated oligonucleotides that will hybridize specifically to rRNAs of any given species. The methodology can also be used for metagenomic samples.
Find more about this protocol in bioRxiv.
Serratia marcescens strains in honey bees
I’m always on the lookout for visually amazing microbes on Twitter. Just a few days ago, I came across these Serratia strains isolated from honey bee guts and hemolymph with and without GFP plasmids.
It turns out that Serratia marcescens, which typically live in soil and water and is an opportunistic pathogen to many plants and animals, is also a widespread opportunistic pathogen of honey bees. S. marcescens also seems to evade the host immune response and possibly contributing to honey bee decline.
Hope you will join me in a month for the next round of cool microbiology I saw on Twitter!
