#bacteriophages

[librarycomic]

Club Microbe by Elise Gravel. Drawn & Quarterly, 2024. 9781770467026. 56pp. https://www.powells.com/book/-9781770467026?partnerid=34778&p_bt

Every book of Gravel's feels like a party, and this one celebrates microbes by showcasing facts about them and how fun they are to draw. My favorite illustration is the one about useful germs that live in our intestines, which features a toothy grin and a fart. I loved Gravel's enthusiasm for bacteriophages, prochlorococcus ("We're superheroes!"), hand washing, and cool Latin names. The book swept me along and made me want to draw.

If you've never heard Gravel's name, you may recognize her art from the USPS's Message Monsters postage stamps. https://www.painted-words.com/2020/11/elise-gravels-message-monsters-are-among-the-u-s-postal-services-new-stamps-for-2021/

And if her drawings in this book leave you wanting more, check out The Mushroom Fan Club, If Found… Please Return to Elise Gravel (her sketchbook), and my favorite of her books, The Great Antonio.

[noisytenant]

let's fuck this thing

[chronically-enthusiastic]

OKAY BUT ALSO THE FACT THAT WE KNEW ABOUT PHAGES *BEFORE* WE HAD ANTIBIOTICS! LIKE THIS STUFF IS OLDER THAN ANTIBIOTICS! IF ONLY WE HADNT BEEN AFRAID TO INJECT PEOPLE WITH THE INVISIBLE CELL KILLING POTION!

[wtfearth123]

Bacteriophages are viruses that infect and kill bacteria by injecting their genetic material into them. When the bacteriophage DNA or RNA takes over the bacterial cell, it produces more bacteriophages and causes the cell to burst open, releasing the new viruses. This is called lysis.

[teachersource]

Alfred Hershey was born on December 4, 1908. An American Nobel Prize–winning bacteriologist and geneticist, he began performing experiments with bacteriophages with Italian-American Salvador Luria, German Max Delbrück, and observed that when two different strains of bacteriophage have infected the same bacteria, the two viruses may exchange genetic information. He and Martha Chase performed the famous Hershey–Chase experiment in 1952, which provided additional evidence that DNA, not protein, was the genetic material of life.

[scientificinquirer-blog]

Unexpected beauty, major antimicrobial power boost as phages form into surprising flower shapes

A group of McMaster researchers who routinely work with bacteriophages – viruses that eat bacteria – had a pleasant and potentially very important surprise while preparing slides to view under a powerful microscope. After treating samples of what are informally called phages so they could be viewed alive under an electron microscope, the researchers were surprised to see they had joined together…

[macmanx]

You’ve got trillions of viruses inside you – right now! But these aren’t the viruses you fear. Some of them are your body’s secret protectors, keeping deadly bacteria in check and even killing cancer cells. But what happens when they turn against you? Let's look at the wild world of the human virome.

[feefal]

me and my bacteriophage friends on our way to wreak havoc on your gut health by injecting ourselves into your good bacteria

[prose2passion]

exciting stuff, but it's about phages using the quorum sensing of bacteria, so not at all about how "to infect us" - unless the writer identifies as a bacterium.

[chronically-enthusiastic]

I LOVE BACTERIOPHAGESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

[bloggerpaul]

Revival of a Wonder Drug: The Remarkable Comeback of an 80-Year-Old Antibiotic Against Resistant Bacteria. The discovery of antibiotics in the early 20th century revolutionized medicine and helped save countless lives.

[sustainableyadayadayada]

April 2023 in Review

I made several posts with numbers on crime, suicide, and poverty. The U.S. is a violent, unequal country. I’ve talked about these issues a lot, so far without any noticeable effect on our political class. So I’ve picked some other things below. Most frightening and/or depressing story: Chemicals, they’re everywhere! And there were 20,000 accidents with them in 2022 that caused injuries,…

[odetoscavengers]

microscopic friends

(tardigrade design by @crazysodomite !)

[whydousernamesevenexist]

It's still so weird to me that this is what a bacteriophage actually looks

Like, tf do you mean it's not just a diagram, and it really looks like this

[t00thpasteface]

hershey and chase (1952)

[parageist]

currently thinking about bacteriophages

(yes those are all real photos of them)

WHY DO THEY LOOK LIKE THAT

little alien robot guys that inject their dna into bacteria in order to hijack their replication systems to generate more phages until the bacteria fucking Explode and release them everywhere

theyre also highly specialized and efficient at doing their job, and if you had a lethal bacterial infection, scientists are working on a cure by injecting you with bacteriophages (sounds like a bad idea but trust me it works) who only target the harmful bacteria!

silly lil friends :)