TWiM #100: Omnis cellula e cellula

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Michael Schmidt, Elio Schaechter and Jo Handelsman.   The TWiM team celebrates 100 episodes with a Talmudic question, and discussion of how a single mutation alters bacterial host tropism. Subscribe to TWiM (free) on iTunes, via RSS feed, by email or listen on your mobile device with the Microbeworld app. Links for this episode A single mutation alters bacterial tropism (Nat Gen) Talmudic question #104 (Small Things Considered) Principles of Microbial Diversity (ASM Press) Journal of Microbiology & Biology Education Letters read on TWiM 100 Send your microbiology questions and comments (email or mp3 file) to [email protected], or call them in to 908-312-0760. You can also post articles that you would like us to discuss at microbeworld.org and tag them with twim. Image: Yellow colonies of S. aureus on a blood agar plate, note regions of clearing around colonies caused by lysis of red cells in the agar By: HansN. on wikimedia. From the study (Nat Gen) "...only a single naturally occurring nucleotide mutation was required and sufficient to convert a human-specific S. aureus strain into one that could infect rabbits."