Bacteria like sharing their sweets

Magentotactic bacteria and their applications

Magentotactic bacteria are the types of bacteria capable of orientation in an external magnetic field because of the ability to produce structures called magnetosomes. Magnetosomes, nanometer-scale structures, are present in most of the magnetotactice bacteria. They are intracellular organelles composed of magnetic iron mineral crystals individually surrounded by a phospholipid layer. Because o...

Endosymbiosis: Bacteria Sharing the Load

A nested set of bacterial endosymbionts within mealybug cells collectively provides amino acids to their host, but their genomes show that some pathways are distributed between both endosymbionts, while other essential proteins are missing altogether. The possibility that additional functions are shared between partners warrants comparisons with organelles.

Stars, Swatches, and Sweets

Architects tend to refer to themselves as visual people. Though we often employ this as an excuse for our poor writing skills, it also points out our fascination with visual information, our interest in making sense out of visual relation­ ships and our love for making things that are under­ stood largely in visual, as well as visceral, terms. Lately however—perhaps because I have been writing ...

Bacteria and Their Products

Sweets, chocolate, and atypical depressive traits.

An original questionnaire, the Foods and Moods Inventory (FMI) was used to investigate appetite for sweets and chocolate and its relationship to dysphoric mood. The FMI was administered to a group of subjects with an identified interest in chocolate (chocolate group, N = 73), a comparison sample (comparison group, N = 172), and a sample of former alcoholics (N = 22). Those who reported "self-me...