BacterioFiles

This episode: Trends of declining lichen populations and biocrust cover overall match trends of increasing temperatures in Colorado dryland! Download Episode  (6.4 MB, 9.3 minutes) Show notes: Microbe of the episode: Cherry chlorotic rusty spot associated partitivirus Takeaways: Global climate change is affecting almost every natural system on the planet, in predictable and also sometimes unexpect...

This episode: A virus partners with a parasitoid wasp to help exploit fruit fly victims! Download Episode  (7.7 MB, 11.2 minutes) Show notes: Microbe of the episode: Actinomadura livida Takeaways Parasitoid wasps have an interesting lifestyle: they inject their eggs into the larvae of other insects, and their young hatch and grow up by consuming the host from the inside. Some of these wasps also i...

This episode: Many organisms produce the smell of earth, geosmin, and many others can sense it–but why? Download Episode  (6.0 MB, 8.7 minutes) Show notes: Microbe of the episode: Acidianus spindle-shaped virus 1   News item   Takeaways The smell of soil or earth is one of the most recognizable smells, and comes largely from a chemical called geosmin, produced by many different kinds of bacteria....

This episode: Slime mold amoebas Fonticula alba have interesting and unique foraging and reproductive behaviors! Download Episode  (7.3 MB, 10.6 minutes) Show notes: Microbe of the episode: Cajanus cajan Panzee virus News item   Takeaways How did life develop from single-celled organisms acting independently into the complex, multicellular organisms we see and are today? Although it is difficult t...

This episode: A probiotic strain of E. coli can target and destroy pathogens that survive a treatment of antibiotics! Download Episode  (8.2 MB, 12 minutes) Show notes: Microbe of the episode: Streptomyces griseoruber   Takeaways Antibiotic resistance is becoming more and more of a problem as bacterial pathogens develop resistance to more and more drugs. For some people who develop an infection th...

This episode: Incorporating light-absorbing molecules into bacterial membranes can allow bacteria to use solar energy to transform nitrogen gas into fertilizer! Download Episode  (6.5 MB, 9.9 minutes) Show notes: Microbe of the episode: Wheat dwarf virus   Takeaways Turning nitrogen gas into biologically useful compounds, such as protein or ammonia for fertilizer, is an essential part of the globa...

This episode: A marine protist predator traps prey microbes in an attractive bubble of mucus, eats what it wants, and lets the rest sink, possibly sequestering significant amounts of carbon! Download Episode  (7.8 MB, 11.4 minutes) Show notes: Microbe of the episode: Bat associated cyclovirus 1 News item Takeaways The oceans have a lot of unique, unexplored life in them. This is true on a macro le...

This episode: Certain phages in the gut are linked with increases in performance on some cognitive tests! Download Episode  (7.5 MB, 10.9 minutes) Show notes: Microbe of the episode: Streptomyces bikiniensis News item Takeaways Our gut microbiota includes a large number of viruses, mostly bacteriophages. These fall into two groups, the lytic kind that infects and reproduces itself immediately in a...

This episode: Adding tags to proteins to increase their degradation can help engineered bacteria grow and survive better under various conditions! Download Episode  (7.3 MB, 10.4 minutes) Show notes: Microbe of the episode: Lactococcus virus sk1 News item Takeaways Engineering bacteria with new genetic pathways allows us to use them in many new and promising applications. Some of these are industr...

This episode: Single-celled bacteria can act independently to create patterns and structure in their biofilm communities! Download Episode  (9.6 MB, 14.0 minutes) Show notes: Microbe of the episode: Dictyostelium discoideum Skipper virus News item Takeaways Large multicellular organisms like us have interesting mechanisms for using one set of genetic instructions present in all cells to form a lar...

This episode: Gene transfers between viruses and eukaryotes have happened many times throughout evolutionary history! Download Episode  (7.5 MB, 10.9 minutes) Show notes: Microbe of the episode: Mycoplasma subdolum News item Takeaways As we've all seen recently, viruses can cause a lot of trouble. Their biology requires them to be parasites inside the cells of their hosts, and they can cause devas...

This episode: Human-based food used as bait by hunters can reduce bears' gut microbe diversity! Download Episode  (5.9 MB, 8.6 minutes) Show notes: Microbe of the episode: Actinomadura verrucosospora News item Takeaways Gut microbes are important for the health of most animals. In humans, many things can affect our gut microbe community, including diet, medications, and lifestyle. Eating a varied...

This episode: Simple microscopic animals can survive extreme radiation by ejecting damaged cells that might otherwise become cancer! Download Episode  (7.3 MB, 9.2 minutes) Show notes: Microbe of the episode: Helleborus net necrosis virus News item Takeaways Any multicellular organism with different types of cells needs some sort of cell regulation, to keep each cell type doing what it's supposed...

This episode: How family members share gut microbes across multiple generations! Download Episode  (7.3 MB, 10.7 minutes) Show notes: Microbe of the episode: Dyozetapapillomavirus 1 Takeaways Our gut's microbial communities can greatly influence our health, for good or bad. The makeup of these communities can be influenced by many factors, including genetics, health status, diet, and other aspects...

This episode: Bacteriophages can hitch a ride on bacteria they don't infect to travel through soil on fungal filaments, potentially helping their carriers by infecting and killing their competitors! Download Episode  (7.1 MB, 10.3 minutes) Show notes: Microbe of the episode: Epinotia aporema granulovirus News item Takeaways For tiny bacteria, partially dry soil can be like a vast system of caverns...

This episode: Beetles inoculate bamboo with a fungus that consumes the bamboo sugars to feed the beetle larvae! Download Episode  (7.7 MB, 11.2 minutes) Show notes: Microbe of the episode: Saccharomyces cerevisiae virus L-BC (La) News item Video: Lizard beetle laying its egg Takeaways The structural polymers that make up plants, such as cellulose, can be difficult for many organisms to digest. Som...

This episode: New techniques allow specific modifications in certain members of a complex community of microbes, without isolating them in pure culture first! Download Episode  (11.5 MB, 16.7 minutes) Show notes: Microbe of the episode: Tomato golden mosaic virus News item Takeaways The technology for understanding and manipulating microbial genetics has come a long way in a short time. It used to...

This episode: Predatory bacteria could protect lobster farms from disease-causing bacteria! Download Episode  (4.8 MB, 7 minutes) Show notes: Microbe of the episode: Gordonia rubripertincta     Takeaways Antibiotics have done wonders for controlling bacterial pathogens. Many people have lived that would otherwise have died, and some industries have produced much more than they would have, particul...

This episode: A bacteriophage that overcomes the bacterial CRISPR/Cas immune system by interrupting the CRISPR DNA with its own genome! Download Episode  (6.8 MB, 10 minutes) Show notes: Microbe of the episode: Wenzhou mammarenavirus Takeaways Bacteria have many ways to resist being exploited by bacteriophage viruses, including the adaptable CRISPR/Cas system that uses a piece of viral nucleic aci...

This episode: Bacteria can use blobs of disordered proteins to quickly adapt to new conditions!   Thanks to Dr. Saumya Saurabh for his contribution! Download Episode  (10.9 MB, 15.9 minutes) Show notes: Microbe of the episode: Drosophila melanogaster Micropia virus     Takeaways Bacteria can adapt to environmental fluctuations via mechanisms operating at the various levels of the central dogma, or...

This episode: A phage both kills bacterial pathogens and selects for reduced virulence! Download Episode  (6.3 MB, 9.9 minutes) Show notes: Microbe of the episode: Helminthosporium victoriae 145S virus   News item   Takeaways Using bacteria-killing viruses to treat bacterial infections, or phage therapy, can be a good alternative to antibiotics in some situations when there are no effective antibi...

This episode: Tiny bacteria that live on larger bacteria reduce the inflammation and gum disease the bigger microbes cause in the mouths of mice! Download Episode  (6.3 MB, 9.2 minutes) Show notes: Microbe of the episode: Actinomadura viridilutea   Takeaways Even bacteria can be hosts to smaller symbionts living on them. Some kinds of these extremely tiny bacteria live in various parts of our bodi...

This episode: A virus lurking in a bacterial genome protects its host population from infection with other phages, by killing off infected cells! Download Episode  (7.6 MB, 11.0 minutes) Show notes: Microbe of the episode: Olive latent ringspot virus   Takeaways Many bacteriophages just go in and gobble up all their host's resources to make a bunch of new viruses right away. Others play a longer g...

This episode: Harmless gut microbes resist cholera with good defense or better offense! Download Episode  (5.8 MB, 8.4 minutes) Show notes: Microbe of the episode: Streptomyces corchorusii   News item   Takeaways The community of microbes in our guts is highly diverse, yet generally they all coexist relatively peacefully. Some pathogens can invade this community and cause massive disruptions. Chol...

This episode: Prions in yeast can allow better adaptation to changing conditions! Download Episode  (9.5 MB, 13.9 minutes) Show notes: Microbe of the episode: Hepatovirus F   News item   Takeaways Prions can be deadly. They're misshapen proteins that cause a cascade of misfolding of similar proteins if they get into the nervous system, resulting in neurodegeneration in mammals. But in other organi...