Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Michael Schmidt, Elio Schaechter and Jo Handelsman.

The TWiM team celebrates 100 episodes with a Talmudic question, and discussion of how a single mutation alters bacterial host tropism.

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Links for this episode

• A single mutation alters bacterial tropism (Nat Gen)
• Talmudic question #104 (Small Things Considered)
• Principles of Microbial Diversity (ASM Press)
• Journal of Microbiology & Biology Education
• Letters read on TWiM 100

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.

Image: Yellow colonies of S. aureus on a blood agar plate, note regions of clearing around colonies caused by lysis of red cells in the agar By: HansN. on wikimedia. From the study (Nat Gen) "...only a single naturally occurring nucleotide mutation was required and sufficient to convert a human-specific S. aureus strain into one that could infect rabbits."