RachelM

While investigating some of the research I do in the lab, I came across this article by Dr. Hibbett at Clark University;
Mycorrhizae, the symbiotic associations of plant roots and fungal hyphae, are classic examples of mutualisms. In these ecologically important associations, the fungi derive photosynthetic sugars from their plant hosts, which in turn benefit from [...]

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Podcast “Bacterial Infection Defy Treatment” 4/16/2010
Look up in the sky!
Ok, so you really can’t see these superbugs but they are everywhere. On science Friday, 4/16/2010, a group of researchers and academics from all over the nation discuss the problems associated with antibiotic resistant. Antibiotic resistant strains, such as MRSA, are prevalent in hospitals. Other strains [...]

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Alizon et al. in their review “Virulence evolution and the trade-off hypothesis: history, current state of affairs and the future” investigate the problems associated with the trade-off hypothesis in measuring and quanitfying factors such as virulence (and various definitions). Below is a outline of the history of virulence.
History of virulence
Pasteur and Koch (1881) looked into [...]

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If you’re going to cheat, you have to do it right. Cheating is a problem for any social system, Velicer explains in his article “Developmental cheating in the social bacterium Myxococcus xanthus.” Cheating isn’t something new to just bacteria. Ectomycorrhizal fungi, for example, assist trees in nutrient uptake but often “cheaters” or saprotrophic [...]

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