The TWiM team reveal how bacteria in a shipworm’s gills help digest wood in the gut, and an approach that identifies a new antibiotic from the soil.

Links for this episode:

• Gill bacteria enable a novel digestive strategy (PNAS)

• Killing bacteria without resistance (Nature)

• An irresistable newcomer (Nature)

• Peptidoglycan synthesis animation

• 10 x 20 initiative (IDSA)

• Longitude Prize

Visit microbeworld.org/twim for more.

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello.

Special guest: Rob Knight

Vincent meets up with Rob Knight to talk about the technology that has fueled his drive to sequence the Earth and its inhabitants.

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• Microbes en masse (Nature)
• Obesity alters gut microbial ecology (PNAS)
• Sharing microbiome with dogs (eLife)
• Earth microbiome project (BMC Biology)
• Stability of gut micobiota (Science)
• Gut microbes and the brain (J Neurosci)

Send your microbiology questions and comments (email or mp3 file) to [email protected], or call them in to 908-312-0760. You can also post articles that you would like us to discuss at microbeworld.org and tag them with twim.

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello.

Special guest: Stanley Maloy

Vincent meets up with Stan Maloy on the campus of San Diego State University to talk about his career in microbiology and his work as Dean of Science.

• Maloy lab
• Salmonella.org
• Microbial genetics course page
• Typhoid Mary

Send your microbiology questions and comments (email or mp3 file) to [email protected], or call them in to 908-312-0760. You can also post articles that you would like us to discuss at microbeworld.org and tag them with twim.

Vincent, Elio, and Michael discuss a symbiosis between a nitrogen-fixing cyanobacteria and a single-celled eukaryotic alga.

Links for this episode:

• Unicellular cyanobacterium and alga symbiosis (Science)

• Diversity of nitrogen-fixing cyanobacterium and its host (Environ Micro)

• Talmudic Question #4 (answer)

• Talmudic Question #2

• Coccolithophore (Wikipedia)

Visit microbeworld.org/twim to view the complete shownotes and entire back catalog.

Vincent, Elio, and Michael reveal that a soil-dwelling nematode can recognize and respond to a bacterial quorum sensing molecule through a sensory neuron.

Vincent, Elio, Michael and Michele discuss the possible eradication of wild poliovirus type 3, and how microsporidian parasites prevent locust swarming behavior.

Vincent, Elio, and Michele review a study of the viruses and bacteria in commensal rats in New York City.

Visit microbeworld.org/twim for complete show notes. Thanks for listening!

Vincent meets up with Laurene and David at the Annual Meeting of the Southern California Branch of the American Society for Microbiology, where they discuss how the Los Angeles County Department of Health is preparing for an outbreak of Ebola virus infection, and Cepheid’s game-changing, modular PCR system for the diagnosis of infectious diseases.

Vincent, Michele, and Michael discuss how a gene from bacteria protects a tick from plant cyanide poisoning, and enhanced transmission of Streptococcus pneumoniae by influenza virus co-infection in mice.

Michele speaks with members of the Department of Bacteriology at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, on the occasion of its designation as a Milestones in Microbiology site, where they discuss how the department has advanced the science and teaching of microbiology.