This Week in Microbiology with Vincent Racaniello

TWiM #55: In the copper room

twiv@gmail.com (Vincent Racaniello & The American Society for Microbiology) — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 19:32:09 +0000

Vincent, Elio and Michael discuss the finding that copper surfaces reduce microbial burden and hospital-acquired infections in the intensive care unit.

TWiM #54: Dueling injectors and the microgenderome

twiv@gmail.com (Vincent Racaniello & The American Society for Microbiology) — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 18:19:44 +0000

Vincent, Elio, and Michael review how sex-dependent differences in the mouse microbiome regulate type I diabetes, and counterattack among bacteria.

TWiM #53: Live in Manchester

twiv@gmail.com (Vincent Racaniello & The American Society for Microbiology) — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 18:02:55 +0000

Vincent, Laura, David, Kalin and Paul get together at the Society for General Microbiology meeting in Manchester, England to talk about next-generation approaches to antimicrobial therapy.

TWiM #52: Clinical microbiology with Ellen Jo Baron

twiv@gmail.com (Vincent Racaniello & The American Society for Microbiology) — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 15:00:00 +0000

Vincent and Michael meet up with Ellen Jo Baron to talk about working in a clinical microbiology laboratory.

TWiM #51: Cave science with Hazel Barton

twiv@gmail.com (Vincent Racaniello & The American Society for Microbiology) — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 16:08:36 +0000

Vincent, Michael, and Elio meet up with Hazel Barton to talk about cave microbiology.

TWiM #50: These things aren’t even bacteria!

twiv@gmail.com (Vincent Racaniello & The American Society for Microbiology) — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 19:37:00 +0000

Vincent, Michael, and Stanley review the scientific career of Carl Woese.

TWiM #49: Grape-like Clusters

twiv@gmail.com (Vincent Racaniello & The American Society for Microbiology) — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 18:05:54 +0000

Vincent, Michael, and Elio discuss the HIV co-receptor CCR5 as a receptor for S. aureus leukotoxin ED, and the vineyard yeast microbiome.

TWiM #48: It’s all about direction

twiv@gmail.com (Vincent Racaniello & The American Society for Microbiology) — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 16:27:00 +0000

Vincent, Michael, and Jo discuss how subtle gender bias of science faculty favors male students, and the relationship of invasive infection and antibody orientation at bacterial surfaces.

TWiM #47: Resistance on the surface

twiv@gmail.com (Vincent Racaniello & The American Society for Microbiology) — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 19:12:03 +0000

Horizontal transfer of antibiotic resistance genes on metal surfaces, and using bacteriophage to reverse antibiotic resistance.

TWiM #46: Spore!

twiv@gmail.com (Vincent Racaniello & The American Society for Microbiology) — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 17:28:30 +0000

Vincent, Michael, and Elio meet up with Jonathan Dworkin to discuss how bacteria form spores and how they return to vegetative growth.

TWiM #45: Secreted nucleic acids RIG a STING

twiv@gmail.com (Vincent Racaniello & The American Society for Microbiology) — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 21:03:19 +0000

Vincent, Michael, Elio review innate immune sensing of Listeria secreted bacterial nucleic acids, and how Wolbachia enhances egg production in Drosophila.

TWiM #44: Phage interruptus

twiv@gmail.com (Vincent Racaniello & The American Society for Microbiology) — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 19:48:24 +0000

Vincent, Michael, Elio discuss the role of prophage excision in exit of Listeria from the phagosome, and analysis of bacterial communities in saliva.

TWiM #43: Bacterial caveolae and zapping acne with phages

twiv@gmail.com (Vincent Racaniello & The American Society for Microbiology) — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 17:00:52 +0000

Vincent, Michael, Elio review formation of caveolae in a bacterium, and the limited genetic diversity and broad killing activity of P. acnes bacteriophages.

TWiM #42: Staphylococcus, a three-star pathogen

twiv@gmail.com (Vincent Racaniello & The American Society for Microbiology) — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 14:09:00 +0000

Vincent, Michael, Elio, and Joe review highlights of the 15th International Symposium on Staphylococci and Staphylococcal Infections (ISSSI) in Lyon, France.

TWiM #41: ICAAC live in San Francisco

twiv@gmail.com (Vincent Racaniello & The American Society for Microbiology) — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 17:44:52 +0000

Vincent and Michael travel to San Francisco for the 52nd Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy (ICAAC), where they meet with Bill, John, and Victor to discuss tuberculosis, monitoring infectious disease outbreaks with online data, and outside-the-box approaches to antibacterial therapy.

TWiM #40: A mecca for microbiology

twiv@gmail.com (Vincent Racaniello & The American Society for Microbiology) — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 17:12:00 +0000

**MicrobeWorld app users, click the "e" symbol in the bottom right corner of this description to watch a bonus video version of this episode!**

Vincent and Stanley meet with Waclaw Szybalski and John Kirby at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on the occasion of its designation as a Milestones in Microbiology site. They reminisce about how the well known laboratory has advanced the science and teaching of microbiology, and discuss John’s work on the soil dwelling, predatory myxobacteria.

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This video is also available for free at www.microbeworld.org in the TWiM section, epsiode #40.

TWiM #39: What Darwin never knew

twiv@gmail.com (Vincent Racaniello & The American Society for Microbiology) — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 21:16:00 +0000

Vincent, Michael, and Elio reviews chapters from Microbes and Evolution, a collection of short, personal essays by microbiologists.

TWiM #38: The sound of whooping cough

twiv@gmail.com (Vincent Racaniello & The American Society for Microbiology) — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 00:36:16 +0000

Vincent, Jo, Michael, and Elio review an outbreak of pertussis in Washington, and how culturing can reveal rare members of the soil biosphere.

TWiM #37: Microbial Jekyll and Hyde

twiv@gmail.com (Vincent Racaniello & The American Society for Microbiology) — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 20:39:34 +0000

Vincent, Jo, Michael, and Elio discuss two examples of dynamic microbial symbioses that switch between mutualistic and pathogenic states.

TWiM #36: Domesticating a pathogen

twiv@gmail.com (Vincent Racaniello & The American Society for Microbiology) — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 20:22:00 +0000

Vincent, Michael, and Elio explore the origin of Mycoplasma pathogens of ruminants, and share their thoughts on the recent ASM General Meeting.

TWiM #35: Ohne hauch

twiv@gmail.com (Vincent Racaniello & The American Society for Microbiology) — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 02:13:00 +0000

Vincent, Michael, and Elio review necrotizing fasciitis, and a link between surface remodeling in gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria.

TWiM #34: Doing the DISCO with Emiliania

twiv@gmail.com (Vincent Racaniello & The American Society for Microbiology) — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 20:42:00 +0000

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Michael Schmidt, and Elio Schaechter

Vincent, Michael, and Elio discuss changing populations of Emiliania huxleyi and their viruses in the North and Black Seas.

Right click to download TWiM #34 (50 MB .mp3, 69 minutes).

Links for this episode:

The protist wonderland (Microbe)
Emiliania huxleyi home page
DISCO in the North Sea (FEMS Microbiol Ecol)
7000 years of Emiliania huxleyi in the Black Sea (Science)
Cheshire cat escape by Emiliania huxleyi (PNAS)
Letters read on TWiM 34

TWiM #33: Tuning the immune organ

twiv@gmail.com (Vincent Racaniello & The American Society for Microbiology) — Wed, 16 May 2012 18:35:00 +0000

Vincent, Michael, and Ivo review the requirement for segmented, filamentous bacteria for the induction of a specific type of helper T cell in the gut.

Links for this episode:

Induction of Th17 cells by segmented filamentous bacteria (Cell)
Segmented filamentous bacteria take the stage (Nature)
Genome of segmented filamentous bacteria reveals auxotrophy (Cell)
Segmented filamentous bacteria and diabetes protection (PNAS)

Send your microbiology questions and comments (email or mp3 file) to twim@twiv.tv ,

TWiM #32: Not the shadow biosphere

twiv@gmail.com (Vincent Racaniello & The American Society for Microbiology) — Wed, 02 May 2012 16:17:45 +0000

Rosie Redfield talks about her evidence that a bacterium cannot grow on arsenic instead of phosphorus.

TWiM 31: Screen door on a submarine

twiv@gmail.com (Vincent Racaniello & The American Society for Microbiology) — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 15:15:50 +0000

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Jo Handelsman, and Michael Schmidt

Vincent, Jo, and Michael discuss an archetypal protein transport system in bacterial outer membranes, and evidence that gut microbial enterotypes might not fall into defined groups.

Links for this episode:

Discovery of a TAM, a new bacterial protein transport system (Nat Struct Mol Biol)
Commentary on TAM discovery
Enterotypes of the human gut microbiome (Nature)
Gut enterotypes might be less clear-cut (Ed Yong)
Letters read on TWiM #31

TWiM #30: Unraveling melioidosis and insulin resistance

twiv@gmail.com (Vincent Racaniello & The American Society for Microbiology) — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 19:09:11 +0000

On episode #30 of the podcast, Vincent, Elio, and Michael review how a toxin from Burkholderia pseudomallei inhibits protein synthesis, and the role of the gut microbiome in modulating insulin resistance in mice lacking an innate immune sensor.

TWiM #29: Death and an iron-loaded spike

twiv@gmail.com (Vincent Racaniello & The American Society for Microbiology) — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 16:55:35 +0000

On episode #29 of the podcast, Vincent and Stanley review how a phage pierces the cell membrane with an iron-loaded spike, and two programmed cell death systems in E. coli.

TWiM #28: Not unorganized bags of enzymes

twiv@gmail.com (Vincent Racaniello & The American Society for Microbiology) — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 17:12:00 +0000

Vincent, Michael, and Elio review how competition within a host drives virulence of Streptococcus pneumoniae, and the expanding universe of the bacterial cytoskeleton.

TWiM #27: An inflamed gut is good for Salmonella

twiv@gmail.com (Vincent Racaniello & The American Society for Microbiology) — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 18:00:00 +0000

Vincent, Elio, and Michael review how inflammation allows Salmonella to compete with fermenting gut microbes, and a riboswitch in bacterial and Archeal species that is triggered by fluoride.

TWiM #26: Suum cuique

twiv@gmail.com (Vincent Racaniello & The American Society for Microbiology) — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 18:05:00 +0000

Vincent, Elio, and Michael discuss the finding of Sutterella species in the gut of autistic children, and methods for cultivating oral bacteria.

TWiM #25: Magnetotactic bacteria and totally drug resistant TB

twiv@gmail.com (Vincent Racaniello & The American Society for Microbiology) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 16:22:00 +0000

On episode #25 of the podcast, Vincent, Elio, and Michael review bacteria that use the earth’s magnetic field for navigation, and identification of totally drug resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

TWiM #24: This year in microbiology

twiv@gmail.com (Vincent Racaniello & The American Society for Microbiology) — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 17:30:00 +0000

Vincent, Michael, and Cliff review ten compelling microbiology stories from 2011.

TWiM #23: Fighting antibiotics with toxic gas and starvation

twiv@gmail.com (Vincent Racaniello & The American Society for Microbiology) — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 20:32:52 +0000

Vincent, Jo, Elio, and Michael explain how a swarming bacterium helps disperse a non-motile fungus, and bacterial antibiotic tolerance mediated by hydrogen sulfide and starvation responses.

TWiM #22: Microbiology 911

twiv@gmail.com (Vincent Racaniello & The American Society for Microbiology) — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 18:22:27 +0000

Vincent and Michael speak with Alfred Sacchetti, MD, Chief of Emergency Services at Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center, about microbial infections encountered in the emergency room.

TWiM #21: Symbiotic margheritas

twiv@gmail.com (Vincent Racaniello & The American Society for Microbiology) — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 18:44:14 +0000

Vincent and Elio discuss ancient symbiosis between Alphaproteobacteria and catenulid flatworms, and a toxin from Helicobacter pylori that engages the mitochondrial fission machinery to induce host cell death.

TWiM #20: Facebook for bacteria

twiv@gmail.com (Vincent Racaniello & The American Society for Microbiology) — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 20:12:00 +0000

On episode #20 of the podcast This Week in Microbiology, Vincent, Michael, and Elio follow up on the outbreaks of E. coli in Germany and cholera in Haiti, then discuss genes that confer self-identity to Proteus mirabilis.

TWiM #19: Your microbiome is what you eat

twiv@gmail.com (Vincent Racaniello & The American Society for Microbiology) — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 19:44:51 +0000

Vincent, Michael, Elio, and Jo discuss the genome sequence of Y. pestis from victims of the Black Death, and the effect of diet on gut microbial enterotypes.

TWiM #18: Escherichia coli K-12, an emerging pathogen?

twiv@gmail.com (Vincent Racaniello & The American Society for Microbiology) — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 19:42:31 +0000

Vincent, Michael, Elio, and Stanley explain how to make the human intestinal commensal and benign laboratory bacterium Escherichia coli K-12 into an invasive organism, and the unearthing of century-old spores in New York City.

TWiM #17: Debugging endosymbiosis

twiv@gmail.com (Vincent Racaniello & The American Society for Microbiology) — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 17:38:55 +0000

Vincent, Michael, and Elio focus on endosymbiosis: the rapid spread of Ricekttsia in whitefiles, and a metabolic patchwork in nested symbionts of mealybugs.

TWiM #16: ICAAC Live

twiv@gmail.com (Vincent Racaniello & The American Society for Microbiology) — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 00:19:45 +0000

On episode #16 of the podcast This Week in Microbiology, Vincent, Michael, Arturo, Stuart, and David converse about antimicrobial resistance and why most fungi do not cause disease at the 51st Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy (ICAAC).

TWiM #15: Microbial long distance relationships

twiv@gmail.com (Vincent Racaniello & The American Society for Microbiology) — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 16:51:05 +0000

On episode #15 of the podcast This Week in Microbiology, Vincent, Michael and Jo review the number of species on Earth, evidence that the 2010 Haitian cholera outbreak originated in Nepal, and how gut microbiota influence the immune response to influenza virus infection of the lung.

TWiM #14: Vomocytosis and microbial transistors

twiv@gmail.com (Vincent Racaniello & The American Society for Microbiology) — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 15:17:00 +0000

On episode #14 of the podcast This Week in Microbiology, Stanley, Margaret, Michael and Elio review how the fungus Cryptococcus escapes from macrophages, and electrical conductivity in nanowires formed by the bacterium Geobacter.

TWiM #13: Probiotics and inflammasomes: Telling good bacteria from the bad

twiv@gmail.com (Vincent Racaniello & The American Society for Microbiology) — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 18:13:25 +0000

On episode #13 of the podcast This Week in Microbiology, Stanley, Jo, Michael and Elio discuss how colonic microbial ecology and risk for colitis are regulated by an inflammasome, and amelioration of intestinal inflammation in mice by delivery of a probiotic-derived soluble protein to the colon.

TWiM #12: Photothermal nanoblades and genome engineering

twiv@gmail.com (Vincent Racaniello & The American Society for Microbiology) — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 16:38:32 +0000

Vincent, Margaret, Michael and Elio review the use of photothermal nanoblades to dissect the Burkholderia intracellular life cycle, and manipulation of chromosomes in vivo for genome-wide codon replacement in E. coli.

TWiM #11: Chickens, antibiotics, and asthma

twiv@gmail.com (Vincent Racaniello & The American Society for Microbiology) — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 17:26:21 +0000

Vincent, Margaret, Michael and Elio review the presence of extended spectrum beta-lactamase genes in chicken meat and in humans, and a beneficial effect of Helicobacter pylori colonization on the development of allergen-induced asthma.

TWiM #10: A symbiotic cloaking device

twiv@gmail.com (Vincent Racaniello & The American Society for Microbiology) — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 17:41:53 +0000

On episode #10 of the podcast This Week in Microbiology, Vincent, Margaret, Elio, Michael and Dickson discuss the symbiosis between the Hawaiian bobtail squid and the luminous, gram-negative bacterium Vibrio fischeri.

TWiM #9: Bean sprouts and E. coli O104:H4

twiv@gmail.com (Vincent Racaniello & The American Society for Microbiology) — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 15:46:24 +0000

Vincent, Michael, and Cliff review the outbreak of bloody diarrhea and hemolytic uremic syndrome in Germany caused by Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli O104:H4.

TWiM # 8: Live in NOLA

twiv@gmail.com (Vincent Racaniello & The American Society for Microbiology) — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 16:21:18 +0000

Vincent, Michael, and Stanley recorded TWiM #8 live at the 2011 ASM General Meeting in New Orleans, with guests Andreas Baümler, Nicole Dubilier, and Paul Rainey. They spoke about how pathogens benefit from disease, symbioses between chemosynthetic bacteria and marine invertebrates, and repetitive sequences in bacteria.

TWiM #7: Cycles of life and death, light and dark

twiv@gmail.com (Vincent Racaniello & The American Society for Microbiology) — Wed, 18 May 2011 16:28:00 +0000

Vincent, Cliff, Elio, Margaret, and Michael discuss programmed cell death in E. coli, and the daily synthesis and degradation of enzymes needed for photosynthesis and nitrogen fixation by cyanobacteria.

TWiM #6: Antibacterial therapy with bacteriophage: Reality or fiction?

twiv@gmail.com (Vincent Racaniello & The American Society for Microbiology) — Wed, 04 May 2011 15:35:00 +0000

Vincent, Cliff, Michael and Elio review the use of bacteriophages to manage infections, and the presence of antibiotic resistance genes in the bacteriophage from urban sewage and river water.