From ASM Microbe 2023 in Houston, TWiM speaks with Mimi Goldschmidt about her remarkable career in microbiology which included training astronauts to safely bring moon rocks back to Earth.
TWiM highlights viral defense and counter-defense: cGAS mediated ubiquitination to counter infection, and viral sponges that sequester nucleotide signals to inactivate immunity.
TWiM describes a potential connection between a bacterial protein that damages DNA and human cancers, and how to synthesize antimiicrobial natural products from reconstructed bacterial genomes of the Middle and Upper Paleolithic.
TWiM investigates the high variability in the rate and amount of current production from microbial fuel cells, and how bacteria link their growth rate to external nutrient conditions via a protein that functions as a cellular rheostat.
TWiM reveals environmental integrons, bacterial genetic elements notorious for their role in spreading antibiotic resistance, and how Salmonella invasion is controlled by competition among intestinal chemical signals.
TWiM reveals a new type of satellite virus that requires only phage tails for producing infectious virus particles, and that highly virulent plague bacteria differs from its innocuous enteric predecessor by its resistance to lysis by human complement.
TWiM reveals housefly dispersal of antimicrobial resistant bacteria, and a reproductive organ in squid linked to symbiotic bacteria.
TWiM reveals quorum-sensing systems that regulate intestinal inflammation and permeability caused by P. aeruginosa, and how plasmids manipulate bacterial behavior through translational regulatory crosstalk.
TWiM presents a protocol for evolving caffeine-tolerant yeast by high school students in the home, and how predator-prey dynamics change when multiple bacteria grow together in biofilms.
TWiM explains the synthesis in bacteria of new energy-dense biofuels that can replace rocket and jet fuels, and the use of nanopore sequencing to improve diagnosis and treatment of patients with serious infections.
The Hosts of TWiM
Petra Levin, Ph.D.
Michele Swanson, Ph.D.
Michael G. Schmidt, Ph.D.
Vincent Racaniello, Ph.D.