Reminder: This is the final PHYLUM round. Winner goes on to classes!
Magnoliophyta (aka angiosperms, flowering plants): A large, diverse phylum with over 300,000 known species. Two of the more well-known sub-divisions are monocots (including grains, onion-like plants, and irises and lilies) and eudicots (including most leafy trees, a wide variety of flowers such as sunflowers and roses, and many food plants from coffee to cabbages.)
Bryophyta (aka mosses): Small but mighty, and among the most ancient of land plants. 95% of all moss species are in the class Bryopsida, while Sphagnopsida contains the bog-loving peat mosses.
I’ve noticed something with accommodations / recommendations for disabled people who use specific aids or are in specific situations(so like. Wheelchair users or bedbound people) and they just kind of assume that it’s the same as an able bodied person who spends all their time in a wheelchair or spends all their time in bed. Rather than a disabled person whose disability continues to affect them
like those lists of "exercises for bed bound people" when most bedbound people are bedbound for a reason. my bed mobility exercises, the ones i'm supposed to do while lying down, are the ones that make me the most dizzy and exhausted and lightheaded. if i were still at my lowest point, like i was back in november/december? i remember seeing a list of exercises for bedbound people back then, and i got really upset because i didn't even have the strength to shrug my shoulders. i was getting dehydrated because i didn't have the strength to lift my water bottle to my mouth. when i'm having a Bad Day(tm) an d have to spend the day in bed? i'm basically floating between sleep and wake, and can't even form a coherent sentence due to fatigue/brain fog.
or how so many ramps rely on having insane upper body strength, when most wheelchair users have disabilities that affect the entire body. and even with paraplegia, which is stereotyped as "totally fine from the waist up", spinal cord injury usually causes severe chronic pain that affects a person's entire bodymind.
or like "self defense for wheelchair users" that is the same as "self defense for an able. bodied person who is sitting down" rather than "self defense for a person with chronic pain, fatigue, joints that don't work, limited range of motion, brain fog" etc that is yknow. the reality of the vast majority of wheelchair users
I had a tattoo client ask if I ever used AI to design tattoos for me. Man I spent the better part of a decade doing shitty bit work as a graphic designer and now that I have the space to do whatever I want, I'm gonna let the computer generate random garbage for me? What next should I have a computer that eats my dinner and fucks my wife?
I feel like people get so hung up on the results of a thing that they don't appreciate that the process of making it is, actually, enjoyable.
It's like if you have a friend who likes to bake, asking if they'd like to just buy cupcakes from the store instead of making them. The end result of the cupcake is secondary to the joy you get from having made cupcakes.
Art isn't a slog or a chore or something I want to avoid. Art is fun. It's rewarding. It feels good to do it. You may as well be asking me if I want the AI to watch television for me, it doesn't make any sense, I'm not participating and would gain nothing from it.
It was stupid good. So good in fact that the bbc filmed a version and put it on dvd when it debuted. I bought that dvd after I saw the show and put it up on the Internet Archive. The audio is not great but the dancing is spectacular. Ever see a pas de deux around an anatomical dissection? You will.
Listen. I can't speak outside of my profession — people in human medicine, please feel free to chime in — but what I can say is this: Pseudomonas aeruginosa is the bane of my existence in veterinary medicine.
You can smell a P. aeruginosa infection from across the room. It's the most distinctive scent. I am the only one in our hospital who volunteers to clean the ears of a patient infected with it, because my sense of smell is so poor... But this bacterium doesn't care — despite it all, it's scent still reaches me, and clings to my scrubs for the entire day. In particularly bad cases, I am barred from taking rooms for the rest of the day, lest I scare the clients away. I can only imagine the Hell that my coworkers must go through.
This is the only time I'll ever say this, but you don't even have to run a cytology to know what it is. But you know what we do run? Cultures. Because this son of a bitch is resistant to EVERYTHING. And it NEVER wants to go away. We have a patient who has had P. aeruginosa otitis externa for years, because it just keeps coming back. This bacterium strikes fear into the heart of every technician and veterinarian in the whole wide world.
And the worst part is? The owners never believe us on the first go. And so they don't come back for continued treatment... Until it returns in full force with a newfound resistance to the one antibiotic that actually worked well. And this infection is painful, beyond belief. There have been times where we've had to use lidocaine, while the patient is sedated -- to even clean the visible portion of the ear canal... Nevermind the inner canal.
I nominate Pseudomonas aeruginosanot because I love the bacterium, but because it's the only bacterium that has Demanded my respect and commanded my fear in such a way.
There are four main distinctions that are made when discussing the metabolism of bacteria. One is about whether or not they use oxygen for cellular respiration; those that do are called "aerobic", while those that use other chemicals are "anaerobic". But this is a matter for a different post: this post will be about the other three distinctions.
Often grouped together, these categories describe the methods organisms use to gain energy. They are all independent, and knowing where a bacteria falls on one of the distinctions is not nearly enough to tell you where it falls on the others. Also, all of these distinctions are spectra, and many organisms use methods from both sides.
Without further ado, I present:
Phototrophs vs. Chemotrophs
This distinction is about an organism's energy source: light, or chemical reactions? Phototrophic bacteria gain energy from photons, while chemotrophic bacteria gain energy through the oxidation of chemical compounds. In both cases, energy is gained through the transfer of an electron -- but in phototrophic organisms, this is triggered by light, while in chemotrophs it is triggered by the breaking of a chemical bond.
It's important to note that if an organism can do photosynthesis, it must be a phototroph, but not necessarily the other way around: photosynthesis requires a little something extra. All plants are phototrophs, and almost all animals are chemotrophs (and I'm pretty sure the phototrophic animals are cheating by using symbiotic bacteria).
Autotrophs vs. Heterotrophs
This distinction is about whether or not an organism can synthesize its own organic compounds. Life is carbon-based, and everyone needs to get that carbon from somewhere. Autotrophic bacteria synthesize organic compounds out of simple sources of carbon, such as carbon dioxide. Heterotrophic bacteria must source these compounds from the environment, and ultimately other forms of life.
Phototrophs can be autotrophic or heterotrophic, and likewise for chemotrophs. Remember that "something extra"? Photoautotrophs are the organisms that photosynthesize, because photosynthesis is the process of storing light energy (phototroph behavior) by converting it into chemical energy with the creation of organic compounds (autotroph behavior). Photoautotrophs form the basis of many ecosystems, with heterotrophic life relying on their by-products. They put energy into the food chain.
Organotrophs vs. Lithotrophs
This distinction is about whether or not the chemical sources of energy for an organism are organic or inorganic. Because cells get energy through electron transfer, even phototrophic organisms need chemicals to steal them from. Organotrophs source electrons from organic compounds, while lithotrophs use inorganic compounds. Both organotrophs and lithotrophs can be either autotrophic or heterotrophic.
Photolithotrophs are far more common than chemolithotrophs, and in fact, only microorganisms can be chemolithotrophs (i.e. capable of extracting energy from inorganic compounds, without the use of light). Plants are photolithotrophs; they get their energy from carbon dioxide, a simple inorganic molecule.
Lithotrophs are diverse, and while each species tends to be highly specialized, there is a wide range of chemicals on which they can feed. Various lithotrophic bacteria use ions such as sulfur, hydrogen, ammonia, iron, and carbon monoxide as their source of energy. Meanwhile, the energy sources for organotrophs are more familiar, including protein, fatty acids, and carbohydrates.
Bonus fact: human beings are chemoheteroorganotrophic! We source our energy, and our carbon molecules, from complex organic compounds that we consume.
Please enjoy this graphic that I made in MS Paint.
Keep an eye out for these terms when I make the bacteria propaganda posts!
When researching your favorite species of bacteria, the first characteristic you're guaranteed to find is whether or not your bacteria is gram-positive or gram-negative. This is in reference to the Gram stain, a method of staining bacteria with dye, such that certain bacteria retain it and become purple (gram-positive), while others do not -- and after an alcohol wash, can be tinted pink with a counterstain (gram-negative). This staining procedure is almost always the first step in figuring out what kind of bacteria you're working with, and is used constantly for both clinical and research purposes.
Okay, but why? And why does the color of a dyed bacterium even matter?
The answer to these questions... lies in the structure of the cell wall. Gram-positive bacteria retain dye because their cell walls are much thicker. The typical gram-positive bacteria has one cell membrane, covered by a thick layer of peptidoglycan, which is a polysaccharide that gives structural strength to the cell. In contrast, the typical gram-negative bacteria has two cell membranes, separated by a thin layer of peptidoglycan: this layered structure is thinner and more flexible. Gram-negative bacteria can be counterstained because this outer membrane is porous, and is degraded by the alcohol wash, losing its ability to retain the original dye.
This difference in cell structure may not seem earth-shattering, but it does have some serious implications. For example, in medicine, you want to know if you're dealing with a gram-negative bacteria, because they are less susceptible to antibiotics that target the cell wall (such as penicillin): in essence, the outer membrane protects the cell. Penicillin can easily fit between the gaps in the peptidoglycan layer surrounding gram-positive cells, but not through the outer membrane of gram-negative cells, which selectively blocks the passage of toxic substances. In general, gram-negative bacteria are less vulnerable to environmental toxins.
Gram-positive bacteria have their own strengths. In fact, they have an extremely powerful tool at their disposal: unlike (almost all) gram-negative bacteria, some gram-positive bacteria are capable of forming endospores. Endospore formation is an intense survival mechanism where a bacterium creates a dormant structure inside itself (called an endospore), which is extremely durable but cannot self-replicate. When conditions have improved, the endospore transforms into a bacterium, and begins to metabolize and reproduce. Endospores can lie dormant for thousands -- and some argue, millions -- of years, and remain viable.
To summarize: what at first may seem like a simple question of microbial dye-jobs is actually a way to peer into the structure of a bacteria, and hopefully start to unravel the unique strategies and adaptations that the species employs for survival.
ALT
plant-taxonomy-showdown
sadhoc
old-manrupee
moonroses4u
zooophagous
hugh-lauries-bald-spot
clickerpunk
stsebastiens
kaijutegu
monstercumhrt
bacteriashowdown
anthonyhurd
brucespringsteendotcom
akiragatr
but-the-library-of-alexandria
