Microbe Magazine
Cover Image
Cover: Soil contains 109—1010 microbial cells per gram, and researchers are applying metagenomic analyses to analyze the complex and diverse communities that carry out vital functions on a planetary scale (see p. 309). (Image © Mark Wragg/iStockphoto.)
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Microbe Magazine, Cover Image
Cover Image
Cover: Soil contains 109—1010 microbial cells per gram, and researchers are applying metagenomic analyses to analyze the complex and diverse communities that carry out vital functions on a planetary scale (see p. 309). (Image © Mark Wragg/iStockphoto.)
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FEATURES
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Towards “Tera-Terra”: Terabase Sequencing of Terrestrial Metagenomes
From a microbiological perspective, soil is largely unexplored even though we know it has a rich diversity of microbial life. Depending on its physical and chemical properties, soil can contain 109-1010 microbial cells per gram, including tens of thousands of different bacte...
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The Library of Maynard-Smith: My Search for Meaning in the Protein Universe
I'll never forget reading Jorge Luis Borges' short story “The Library of Babel” when I was working in Madrid in the summer of 1976. I was thrilled by Borges' description of this collection of all possible books, and deeply struck by the despair of the librarians, who searched for m...
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Herbert Conn: Mark Twain's Microbiologist Muse
Mark Twain (1835–1910) and the microbiologist Herbert Conn (1859–1917) lived in the heyday of the early bacteriologists, including Pasteur, Koch, Winogradski, Lister, and Tyndall. They and others were discovering the fundamental roles that microbes fulfill in agriculture, public health, and indus...
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