Planctomycetes and macroalgae, a striking association

Planctomycetes and macroalgae, a striking association

Planctomycetes are part of the complex microbial biofilm community of a wide range of macroalgae. Recently, some studies began to unveil the great diversity of Planctomycetes present in this microenvironment and the interactions between the two organisms. Culture dependent and independent methods revealed the existence of a great number of species but, so far, only less than 10 species have bee...

Striking a Balance

In recent years there has been an increased interest in investigating how technology can be used to aid the millions of people living in low-income countries [2]. Mobile phones are emerging as powerful, affordable and pervasive computing devices that can serve the needs of widely deployed applications in resource-constrained environments. Previous work has emphasized the importance of working c...

Pseudopyropoikilocytosis: a striking artefact.

The blood films both of patients with hereditary pyropoikilocytosis and of those with severe thermal burns are characterised by budding erythrocytes and the presence of microspherocytes. Recently, a fourth example of similar morphological features, caused by overheating of a blood specimen in a motor vehicle during transport to the laboratory, has been observed. It is important to be aware of t...

Planctomycetes Comparative Genomics: Identification

Planctomycetes do possess a peptidoglycan cell wall

Most bacteria contain a peptidoglycan (PG) cell wall, which is critical for maintenance of shape and important for cell division. In contrast, Planctomycetes have been proposed to produce a proteinaceous cell wall devoid of PG. The apparent absence of PG has been used as an argument for the putative planctomycetal ancestry of all bacterial lineages. Here we show, employing multiple bioinformati...