Mark returns to TWiM to join in a discussion of soil microbiota as game-changers in restoration of degraded lands, and discovery of a centimeter-long bacterium, the biggest yet discovered.
In this food-centric TWiM, we reveal the microbiomes of carnivorous vulture bees and of Gala apples from all over the world.
Mark Martin returns to TWiM for a discussion of the frightening global burden of bacterial antibiotic resistance, and a solution to the problem of daylight nitrogen fixation in a cyanobacterium, despite the incompatibility of nitrogenase with oxygen produced during photosynthesis.
TWiM explains how bacterial symbionts regulate tick blood feeding activity, and the reasons why antibiotics exist.
On this episode of TWiM, how phages prevent other phages from invading their hosts without blocking their own reproduction, and plastic-degrading potential of microbes across the Earth.
TWiM discusses antigenic variation within dengue virus serotypes, and an mRNA vaccine that induces antibodies against tick proteins and prevents transmission of the Lyme disease agent.
TWiM reveals a study showing that positive interactions among bacteria are far more common than previously thought, and how acquisition of a single gene enabled Yersinia pestis to expand the range of mammalian hosts that sustain flea-borne plague.
Mark Martin returns to TWiM for a discussion of the observation that Gram’s stain does not cross the bacterial cytoplasmic membrane, and suppression of gingival inflammation and bone loss through host modulation caused by episymbiotic Saccharibacteria.
Petra Levin joins TWiM to tell three stories from her laboratory: how starvation induces shrinkage of the bacterial cytoplasm; plasticity of E. coli cell wall and how it influences antibiotic resistance across different environments; and induction of antibiotic resistance by Triclosan.
On this episode of TWiM, using colicins to ferry DNA into cells through an iron transporter, and construction of highly efficient microbial fuel cells that produce more electrical current than previously observed.
The Hosts of TWiM
Petra Levin, Ph.D.
Michele Swanson, Ph.D.
Michael G. Schmidt, Ph.D.
Vincent Racaniello, Ph.D.