This Week in Microbiology

TWiM travels to Michigan State University to celebrate their designation as an ASM Milestones in Microbiology site, and speaks with Vic DiRita, Elizabeth Heath-Heckman, Rich Lenski, and Jim Tiedje about their careers and their research.
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MSU designated a Milestones site (ASM)

125 years of impact (MSU)


Music used on TWiM is composed and performed by Ronald Jenkees and used with permission.
Send your microbiology questions and comments to twim@microbe.tv

TWiM explains a bacterial antiviral defense system that uses a noncoding RNA template to build tandem-repeat DNA through a mechanism that parallels how eukaryotic telomerase extends telomeres, and genome sequencing of the Tsimane of Bolivia and the Hadza of Tanzania which reveals over a thousand gut bacterial species shared between the two populations, many now vanishing from industrialized humans, suggesting they co-migrated with our ancestors out of Africa and into the Americas.
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Antiviral immunity via telomerase-like reverse transcription in bacteria (Nature)

Prehistoric global migration of vanishing gut microbes with humans (Nature)


 
Music used on TWiM is composed and performed by Ronald Jenkees and used with permission.
Send your microbiology questions and comments to twim@microbe.tv

TWiM explains how bacterial endosymbionts enhance fungal virulence by disrupting the protective rhizobiome, and the development of rationally engineered Salmonella typhimurium strains with enhanced safety and antitumor efficacy. 
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Plant, fungus, endosymbiont, and rhizobiome (PNAS)

Engineering S. typhimurium to kill tumors (mBio)



Music used on TWiM is composed and performed by Ronald Jenkees and used with permission.
Send your microbiology questions and comments to twim@microbe.tv

TWiM wonders why archaea are not pathogenic, and reveals how a colibactin produced by a honeybee gut symbiont defends against pathogens.
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Why are archaea not pathogenic? (mBio)

Archaeal viruses (Archaea)

Colibactin made in honeybee gut (Nat Micro)



Music used on TWiM is composed and performed by Ronald Jenkees and used with permission.
Send your microbiology questions and comments to twim@microbe.tv

TWiM explains the finding that Bunsen burners do not decrease deposition of microbe-containing particles, and how gut microbiota generate dinitrosyl iron complexes with cardiometabolic benefits.

Hosts:  Vincent Racaniello and Michael Schmidt
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Links for this episode:


Bunsen burners don't do what you thought they did (Micro Spectrum)

How does air circulate in passenger planes? | AFP

How germs travel on planes | Raymond Wang

Gut bacteria and cardiometabolic health (Cell)


 
Music used on TWiM is composed and performed by Ronald Jenkees and used with permission.
Send your microbiology questions and comments to twim@microbe.tv