Looking at these photomicrographs, one could scarcely imagine that the fossil chains of Reduviasporonites were anything BUT conidiophores and conidia. That could just be my personal bias talking. When I'm at the microscope, there's typically a fungus under it.

Great history!

Now we have, the Trilobites Age, the Ammonites Age, the Dinosaurs Age and the Fungi Age.

Regards

It's a great gift to the world to encourage the next generation to be more aware of the microbes all around (and within) them!

Elio replies:

Microbiologists=small biologists

Thanks for sharing some new information here. I like this site and it is very informative and hence people who will come across this site will gain lot of information about it. I am very to being glad to be part of this site! I will visit this site in future too.

One theory, which I just made up after reading wikipedia[folivores], is based on the observation that flying animals are rarely folivores because the amount of cellulose digesta they'd need to hold is so heavy. It says that folivorous bats chew leaves and soon eject the recalcitrant material such as cellulose, which tallies with this. My suggestion is that the same thing may apply more weakly to climbers, so there are less folivores than grazers. Cows are much freer than monkeys to carry around many kg of digesta, as well as the more massive digestive tract needed to deal with that stuff.

This post of John Dennehy's might be relevant:
http://evilutionarybiologist.blogspot.com/2008/06/this-weeks-citation-classic-world-is.html

Hello
You have given really nice information about cell organization.I am always interested in this topic.Thank you very much for giving such a good information.You have done a great job.Keep doing good work.

I really enjoyed that. Granted, I don't pretend that I understood more than half of all the mushroom speak, but still it was a good listen. Very educational.

(Oops - forgot the [1]...)

[1] - Is there anything known that can respire on fluorine?...

Elio replies:

I have no idea but it would be strange, no? Anybody?

I wouldn't underestimate the effect of the metabolic Irrational Exuberance that we and our fellow freakish oxygen-respiring critters can have. It seems reasonable to me that we might be out-biomassed by anaerobes, but our (meaning all oxygen-respiring single- and multi-celled organisms) ability to harness the electron-sucking power of oxygen - the second-most electron-suckingest element that exists[1] - enables us to oxidize carbon at a comparatively awesome rate and efficiency.

I wonder - how much exchange of oxygen atoms goes on between the anaerobic and aerobic biospheres? Is there enough separation that there might be differences in oxygen isotope ratios, which could in turn be compared to the oxygen isotopes in atmospheric carbon dioxide to estimate how much comes from aerobic vs. anaerobic activity?

Elio replies:

You make a challenging and perhaps elegant point. Not being an expert, I hope that others who know more of such maters would comment.

Elio replies:
The fungi emit rather small amounts of light . I see your living room lined with pieces of rotting wood, which you would have to moisten form time to time. You're sure you want to do this?

Wow, Merry! Such a cool topic!

Long ago, I did a little work with Megan Nunez on atomic force microscopy of biofilms on surfaces. I knew that there had to be a very thin layer of water above the biofilm, through which the probe was tapping. And it occurred to me at the time that there could be so much happening in that very, very thin layer of water.

We tend not to think about the "microbial perspective"---how things "look" to a microbe.

Your post is another example!

Nice comments from all! My first attempt to reply was eaten with gusto by my web browser crashing. So here I go again:

1. First, this entire discussion reminds me of the following:

“So naturalists observe, a flea
Has smaller fleas that on him prey;
And these have smaller still to bite ‘em;
And so proceed ad infinitum.”
-Jonathan Swift (“Poetry: A Rhapsody”).

2. Dr. Worthen, I have known Jorg Graf for a number of years, and his passion for leech-microbial associations (and his puckish sense of humor) always lead me to following this topic. He gave a superb seminar at the symbiosis symposium, for example.

3. Apologies for misunderstanding qetzal’s comment. I believe that a “Russian Nesting Dolls” paradigm for thinking about microbial interactions (in some cases, “intra-action”?) is useful and accurate. Merry’s topic is particularly instructive (I came to that line of thinking while considering “R-bodies” and the “kappa” phenotype in the protist Paramecium---look at how much more is known nowadays!).

We tend to think in reductionist terms, looking at simple systems and associations to gain an intellectual foothold on a problem. And there has been much benefit from that approach.

But looking, for example, at gut microbiota creates a different kettle of metaphorical fish, with over a thousand phylotypes to consider. There are many classes of “microbial associate” in that case, clearly, including: residents that use the location as a surface and little more, co-ops that contribute to upkeep or defense, transients that are just passing through (!), and “squatters” that “set up shop” in a disturbed or damaged location, to name a few.

Some of the associations may turn out to be trivial to understand, and others rivaling systems biology style complexity.

This makes me think, in turn, of “group activities” among microbes where “cheating” arises (say, among myxobacters, as studied by Greg Velicer and others). Surely such “cheating” will occur among the many denizens of a complex microbiota…ranging from (again) trivial examples to the very subtle.

I am then reminded of this great quote:
“All organisms are nothing but a bag of other organisms walking around.”
-Thomas Miller (UC Riverside).

Some of those organisms cooperate. Others fight. Still others are oblivious to one another. In a way, we are all ecospheres, writ moderately large. And enormous---whole worlds!--- to the microbes around us!

Thanks for the nice comments.

I got a thrill when I saw the link to my paper on leeches (Worthen et al. 2006) I've been out of the research world for a few years now, but it's always nice to see someone's still reading my stuff!

That is a great question, qetzal. There are well over a thousand phylotypes of microbes in the human gut, but how many are truly mutualists remains uncertain.

Or think about the termite hindgut!

I think that this whole concept that eukaryotes are "superorganisms" composed of a collection of vast numbers of different species may have quite a bit of validity. I feel a new T-shirt and button image coming on!

I tried to leave a note here to ask if we should start the field of "biofilmomics," but it didn't seem to take. Unless the Microbial Good Taste Police deleted it! Too many "omics" spoils the field, perhaps?

Dear Elio, Merry and all readers,

I appreciate that you are enjoying my image of an Antarctic diatom chain but like all my images (and most other texts and photos found on the web unless they are specifically noted as being in the public domain), my image is protected by copyright and this use can be considered copyright infringement because it was used without my knowledge or permission, and no license fee was paid for its use. Like other artists and photographers, licensing and selling my images is my income. Please either delete this image from your site and alert readers not to use it if they lifted it before removal, or contact me to arrange a fee.

Thanks,
Dee

Does 'benthic' work?

Elio replies:

Benthic refers to the bottom surface of the oceans, not to the water column.

Elio repleis:
Hold on. We're going to post something about "nueston "next.

i may dislike science but I am just amazed with the fact seeing genes like this which is in the process of reproducing

Today, "Penicillin: Blocks formation of cell walls" is usually just one of many bullet points on a lecture about antimicrobial agents. It's fascinating to read a first hand account of of the thinking and experiments that were done to realize that fact. We need more writing in the sweet spot between pop. sci. and academic papers that conveys the feel of scientific investigation and helps us to remember there's a vast body of work behind every highlighted fact in a textbook. It passes on the culture of curiosity and keeps us humble and grateful.

What a treat to read this "first person" view of a subject central to microbiology! Many, many thanks to the author for such a fun essay.

Well, nothing easier if you only consider the experiment itself. Once you factor in the regulatory, handling, & disposal requirements, things change.

In my limited experience, quantum dots are cool, but there are things you can do with 32P or other radionuclides that you can't possibly do with quantum dots.

As for lab safety, I think most molecular labs used small enough amounts that safety was not such a huge issue. Obviously, proper procedures are needed, but they're not really THAT hard to maintain. Safety for the folks who have to dispose of aggregated wastes from multiple labs may well be a bigger issue, though.

Also, didn't Joshua Lederberg once suggest that we could look for "shadow life" (i.e., life that did not use nucleic acids) by enrichment in the presence of high levels of 32P?

Hmmm....

That red tide really is beautiful. I'm not well versed in this sort of thing, but if I read that part correctly, any and all red tides should be avoided as toxic? Or do I have that wrong?

I know that one of my colleagues uses an irradiator to stop memory B cells from growing, but other than those kinds of cases, where is the need for radiation in today's microbiology/ID lab?

A beautiful article on a beautiful system. Perhaps another example of how all the world is a phage!

It's certainly true that people of my "era" in biology became pretty paranoid (or cavalier) about radioactivity. It's good, I think, that hot isotopes are not used in the undergraduate classroom much these days.

Nanodots---also called quantum dots---may be used in the future in the way hot isotopes were used in the Good Old Days:

Frasco, MF and N Chaniotakis. (2009). "Bioconjugated quantum dots as fluorescent probes for bioanalytical applications." Anal. Bioanal. Chem. ---- this just came out on August 28th and is available electronically; PUBMED does not give a good record yet.

let me tell you that even if you do not accept this comment the information you have in your post is wonderful, very complete, very useful, interesting. Is just wonderful, this is a wonderful article!
Thank you for sharing!!!
Tatiana E. Jeffrey

Elio responds:
True, we normally don't post comments from commercial sources only distantly related to our blog. However, your candor in assuming that we won't accept it is refreshing, so here it is.

... but you have to implant them in the aphids yourself.

Elio's response:
I hadn't thought of these extra benefits, but concur with you entirely. Understanding the metric (a popular term these days) of radioactivity was useful to me both in the lab and the classroom.

Pollution? Landfill? Health risks?

Well, I find that students have more trouble understanding that Hershey-Chase experiment. But maybe nanodots will come to the rescue.

how does it do that

Elio replies:
Some of the biochemistry of bioluminescence is known and analogous in fungi and fireflies.

The reader will not exhaust all historically significant definitions of life, and naturally, would suspect you have not done so either - rendering any conclusions drawn here as suspect as well.

Not to take away from the content, which was interesting. But I still am not convinced one way or the other (that "life" does or does not, should or should not, include "viruses".)

thats my unqualified 2 cents

Elio's reply:
We would pick a definition of life if we could. I'm not aware of a commonly agreed one. Different ones continue to appear. The funny thing is that everyone knows what "life" is, even though it escapes definition. That's true for "viruses." You know what they are, and so do I, but defining them is another matter.

There is a gap between "knowing" and "defining." I'm no philosopher, so I wonder about why defining things is so difficult.

How that unstable approximation might be maintained is curious. The wasp is always experimenting with ways to get past the defense, and perhaps succeeding occasionally, thereby wiping out the defenseless fraction of the population, and sometimes herself if that's too large. H. defensa, if it gets too good, wipes out the wasp population but also renders itself redundant and soon dispensed with. Probably this has happened frequently in isolated pockets, with repopulations from nearby and a tendency to reduced experimentalism in all participants?

As I read this fine post, Johnny Nash's tune "I Can See Clearly Now" was in my head.

What a wonderful time to study microbiology!