Dr. Kevin Foster, from the University of Oxford, visited the Center for Evolution and Medicine at Arizona State University last week to talk about competition and sociability among a variety of bacteria, some of which call our guts home. Using humorous descriptions of...
Iron is a critical metal for essential cellular processes, such as respiration, in both human and microbial cells. Thus, in the context of infection, iron is a high-value cellular commodity and an evolutionist might reasonably expect a metallic tug-of-war between...
An article published online at the Nature web site on November 24 (Chou et al., 2014) presents a fascinating study of examples in which bacterial genes have found their way to a number of distinct eukaryotic lineages including ticks and mites, gastropod (e.g.,...