via thekidshouldseethis:

From medicalschool, watch this time lapse clip of how bacteria reproduce by dividing into two every 20 minutes. 

Bacteria are microscopic single-cell organisms that are found in the air, inside and on our bodies, in the dirt, and everywhere in nature. There are both harmful and beneficial kinds. Some cause diseases, while others help our bodies function. For example, there are more than 400 types of bacteria live in the human digestive system. There are also kinds that are used to make medicines, and others that make foods like cheese and yogurt. (Might anyone know what kind of bacteria this is?)

More mentions of bacteria are in these videos.

And thanks to those little bugs’ ability to grow so unbelievably fast, scientists like Richard Lenski have ben able to recreate eons of evolution in just a couple decades. Check out one of the longest-running experiments ever: The E. coli evolution experiment.

Source: medicalschool

Here’s A Light Fixture That Runs On Bacteria As we phase out incandescent lights for compact fluorescents, we save energy but take the risk of mercury pollution (there’s heavy metals galore in CFLs). What if we could light our homes with biology? Similar to the Glowing Plant project from earlier this week, here’s Philips concept for a microbial lamp powered by the chemistry of biological luminescence. It’s part of Philips’ “Microbial Home” future concept, which also includes urban beehives and bacterial waste recycling. You can get off the grid, and onto the petri dish. (via Co.Design)
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Here’s A Light Fixture That Runs On Bacteria

As we phase out incandescent lights for compact fluorescents, we save energy but take the risk of mercury pollution (there’s heavy metals galore in CFLs). What if we could light our homes with biology?

Similar to the Glowing Plant project from earlier this week, here’s Philips concept for a microbial lamp powered by the chemistry of biological luminescence. It’s part of Philips’ “Microbial Home” future concept, which also includes urban beehives and bacterial waste recycling.

You can get off the grid, and onto the petri dish.

(via Co.Design)

Source: fastcodesign.com

A little artwork I did recently: Remember, learn to love your inner ecosystem or they might rise up against you :) Check out more microbiome goodies in the latest episode of It’s Okay To Be Smart on YouTube (which you’re all subscribed to, of course). What does this picture mean, you ask? Our genome has about 20,000 genes in it. But if you added up all the genes in all the species of bacteria that call us home, the number is closer to 2 million genes! We are the <1%
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A little artwork I did recently: Remember, learn to love your inner ecosystem or they might rise up against you :)

Check out more microbiome goodies in the latest episode of It’s Okay To Be Smart on YouTube (which you’re all subscribed to, of course).

What does this picture mean, you ask? Our genome has about 20,000 genes in it. But if you added up all the genes in all the species of bacteria that call us home, the number is closer to 2 million genes! We are the <1%

Insect wings can shred bacteria to pieces! This video shows how a newly discovered nanostructure on the wings of cicadas can rip certain bacterial membranes to shreds. This structure, perfected by nature as a natural defense against dangerous microbes, could be harnessed by humans to create antimicrobial surfaces.

Sometimes nature is our best innovator.

(More at Nature News)

Source: nature.com

Coming of Phage

Everything you’ve been taught about phage is wrong. Well, maybe not everything. Heck, maybe you’ve never been taught anything about phage in the first place! But if you’ve ever encountered a story about this family of bacteria-infecting viruses, I’m willing to bet it included a picture much like this:

image

That geometric lunar lander is the standard illustration of phage such as T7. It looks exotic and alien, a freakish example of biological symmetry, but it’s pretty true to the actual biology: The icosahedral protein head, the protruding neck that it uses to pierce the membrane of its victim so that it can inject its genetic material … and the legs.

Wait a sec, those legs need revising. Some really cool new research by Ian Molineux (who taught my graduate school molecular bio class, btw) says that all those “legs-out”, moon lander drawings of phage probably aren’t right.

In the video above you see that, according to the electron imagery they report in their Science paper, those legs stay tucked up next to the body for most of the free-floating life of the phage. It sort of drags one or two along, waiting to hook onto an appropriate bacterium that it can infect, at which point it extends the rest of the legs to go into full infection mode. To give you an idea of how hard this was to observe, a single phage is only around 20-30 nanometers wide, which means you could fit about 4,000 of them across the width of a single human hair!

It might seem like a small, ho-hum tidbit of research at first, since who really cares about a virus that infects bacteria? But phage are incredibly important. Phage have driven a great deal of the evolution of life on Earth. They are vehicles of gene swapping that have allowed genomes to expand and become more complex. They are veterans of 70+ years of biology research, from back when we first identified DNA as a genetic material to today’s exotic synthetic biology applications. A great deal of what we know about molecular genetics is because of these little guys, and we’re still making the most basic discoveries as to how they function.

Never let anyone tell you that there’s nothing left to discover! We have scarcely begun to fill in the colors, even for the most basic parts of biology’s palette. 

You Are Your Microbes

Sure, you feel human, but that’s only mostly right. In and on your body, you’re outnumbered by ten times when it comes to microbes. And many of them have essential duties that we just couldn’t do by ourselves. Here’s a trip through your microbial inner universe … what we call the “microbiome”.

A lesson by Jessica Green and Karen Guillemin for TEDEducation.

Previously: The family tree of your microbiome, the “kitten microbiome” and more.

And don’t miss this Radiolab episode all about Guts.

Source: youtube.com

The Evolution of Cavities How our ancestors development of farming led to a population explosion of a certain bacterium in our mouths, evolving in the human mouth to break down plant sugars and grains by stealing genes from other bacteria in our bodies, and how that gave us cavities.  (via Phenomena: The Loom)
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The Evolution of Cavities

How our ancestors development of farming led to a population explosion of a certain bacterium in our mouths, evolving in the human mouth to break down plant sugars and grains by stealing genes from other bacteria in our bodies, and how that gave us cavities. 

(via Phenomena: The Loom)

Source: National Geographic

Wee (Me) Beasties This is inside you, right now. You&#8217;re looking at a (false-colored, unfortunately) electron microscope image of a colonucopia of gut bacteria. From the common species like E. coli to the still-to-be-discovered, your biology depends a lot on what you&#8217;re made of that isn&#8217;t exactly you.  In addition to, you know, digesting your food, these little guys can turn your immune system against you and even influence your mood. If you want to dig deeper inside your intestinal tract, there&#8217;s a fantastic Radiolab episode called &#8220;Guts&#8221; you should check out. Check out more amazing images of the unseen microbial world as as tiny art at National Geographic&#8217;s Microbes: Small, Small World gallery. (tip of the electron microscope probe to Science-Based Life)
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Wee (Me) Beasties

This is inside you, right now. You’re looking at a (false-colored, unfortunately) electron microscope image of a colonucopia of gut bacteria. From the common species like E. coli to the still-to-be-discovered, your biology depends a lot on what you’re made of that isn’t exactly you. 

In addition to, you know, digesting your food, these little guys can turn your immune system against you and even influence your mood. If you want to dig deeper inside your intestinal tract, there’s a fantastic Radiolab episode called “Guts” you should check out.

Check out more amazing images of the unseen microbial world as as tiny art at National Geographic’s Microbes: Small, Small World gallery.

(tip of the electron microscope probe to Science-Based Life)

Source: National Geographic