"Wherever You Are On Your Journey To The Microcosmos, The Odds Are High That You'll Run Into A Diatom.

hello hellsitegenetics. do u know how to stop wanting to eat electrophoresis gel

the craving never stops you just have to get good at eating it when the lab supervisors arent looking

Photos from my friend who is a vet tech

Hydra (genus)

©️nonotnow photography.

🔬~microscope: biolam r11~

📸iPhone 11

Compressed Know-How: General Classifications used in Microbiology

Taxonomy - It is the systematic arrangement and classification of organisms into related groups

It can be divided into Kingdom and System Classifications.

Kingdom Classification used today is the 5 Kingdom formulated by Robert Whittaker. It contains the following: Animalia, Plantae, Protista (protozoa + algae), Fungi and Monera (bacteria).

Criteria used for the 5 Kingdom Classification:

Cell Type (Prokaryote or Eukaryote)

Cellular Organization (Unicellular or Multicellular)

Nutritional Type (based on Food Acquisition, Energy Source and Carbon Source)

System Classification can be either through Phenetic or Phylogenetic classifications.

Phenetic (Taximetrics) are based on their observable traits or overall similarities.

Eg. Morphology of bacteria, Staining reactions and Metabolic rate of bacteria.

Phylogenetic (Phyletic) is based on the evolutionary development and genetic composition. This will include the familiar taxonomic levels:

Domain

Kingdom

Phylum

Class

Order

Family

Genus

Species

Rules in properly naming bacteria:

In the Binomial System of Nomenclature, it involves the Genus' name, then species epithet eg. Staphylococcus aureus

The name should always be italicized or underlined

Genus' name: 1st letter is capitalized, and the only name that can be abbreviated. (S. aureus)

Species epithet: 1st letter is a small capital letter, or it can be all capitalized (STAPHYLOCOCCUS AUREUS)

Common names of bacteria, as listed below:

Yersinia pestis

Yersinia pestis is the bacterium responsible for plague, with the most common manifestations being bubonic plague, septicemic plague, and pneumonic plague.

Image taken via transmission electron microscopy. Bar = 1 μm

Photo credit: Hans R. Gelderblom, Rolf Reissbrodt/RKI

Bad Newts: Amphibians are in Serious Trouble

My colleagues and I have just had a paper published in Nature, based on our efforts to assess almost all amphibian species for the IUCN Red Lists. The major takeaway messages:

It is a bad time to be an amphibian

Two fifths of all amphibians are threatened with extinction.

Salamanders are the most threatened group; three fifths of all salamanders are threatened with extinction!

Climate change is a major driver of amphibian declines globally

Habitat loss, especially due to agriculture, is a problem for the vast majority of amphibians

Chytrid pandemics have caused and continue to cause catastrophic declines of both salamanders and frogs

Protected areas and careful management are working as strategies! They are actively improving the outlook of some species

As many as 222 amphibian species may have gone extinct in recent times; of those, 185 are suspected extinct but not yet confirmed.

Our paper is Open Access, you can read it here!

Photo of Atelopus hoogmoedi by Jaime Culebras, used with permission

this might be a stupid question, but if theres a protein that multiple organisms need, wouldn't the a t g c genetic code for it be the same for different species? or at least closely related species? so theoretically some prompts/sequences should have multiple fitting organisms or closest fitting organisms

(i know it isn't this simple, but im wondering what the exact reason it doesn't work like that is, or what im missing)

not a stupid question, i'll try to answer it to the best of my understanding, but if anyone has anything to add, please do.

put shortly: you're right! if multiple organisms need a certain protein, the code in their DNA is generally the same in that region.

from a genetics perspective, all organisms are actually extremely similar. i'm sure you've heard that we humans share more than half our genetic information with bananas and such.

this is just a factor of how evolution works. every so often, a mutation occurs in an organism's genome, which has a chance to increase the fitness of that organism, which allows it to have more offspring, which changes the mix of alleles in the population. and this is how we get different species of things.

but, because we all share a common ancestor from a long, long, long, long time ago, we do maintain some similarities, especially in regions that code for things essential to life.

those regions where things are *different* is where we're able to tell one species from another, differentiating moths from trees and such. but, overall, all living organisms have a whole lot in common.

Stemonitis sp.

photo source-The MacroClub Project (Myxomycetes)

Slime Mold

(via Myco-heterotrophic plant (Thismia calcarata) | Photo from th… | Flickr)

Lamproderma scintillans on the edge of a leaf via andysandsphotography