Biological robustness is a principle that may shed light on system-level characteristics of biological systems. One intriguing aspect of the concept of biological robustness is the possible existence of intrinsic trade-offs among robustness, fragility, performance, and so on. At the same time, whether such trade-offs hold regardless of the situation or hold only under specific conditions warran...

1.Holmes, D.S. and M. Quigley. 1981. A rapid boiling method for preparation of bacterial plasmids. Anal. Biochem. 114:193-197. 2.Liu, Z. and N.C. Mishra. 1995. Single-tube method for plasmid miniprep from large numbers of clones for direct screening by size or restriction digestion. BioTechniques 18:214217. 3.Majumdar, M.K. and D.A. Williams. 1992. Minipreparations of plasmid DNA directly from ...

Continuous culture of Bacillus popilliae was achieved for the first time in a small chemostat. Initially, variable cell yields during steady-state chemostat growth led to a re-examination of growth rates in batch cultures. B. popilliae NRRL B-2309 and a wild strain were both found to be natural mixtures of three substrains characterized by different growth rates and colony morphologies and vary...

It has been known for many years that small fractions of persister cells resist killing in many bacterial colony-antimicrobial confrontations. These persisters are not believed to be mutants. Rather it has been hypothesized that they are phenotypic variants. Current models allow cells to switch in and out of the persister phenotype. Here, a different explanation is suggested for persistence, na...

Background

Many Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) have recently been subject of increased focus, particularly with relation to high-throughput screening (HTS) initiatives. These vital endeavours largely rely of two approaches, in vitro target-directed screening using biochemical assays or cell-based screening which takes no account of the target or targets being hit. Despite their successes both of these...