• Cover: Background image: Marine microbes are so plentiful, they resemble the stars in the night sky (Jed Furhman, University of Southern California). Floating microbes: Palmodictyon, Peridinium, Acanthocystis, cyanobacteria, Melosira, Leptosiropsis torulosa, diatom, Dunaliella (David Patterson, provided by micro*scope, http://microscope.mbl.edu, copyright Marine Biological Laboratory)
  
  
• Inside front cover:
  • Leptosiropsis torulosa (David Patterson, provided by micro*scope, http://microscope.mbl.edu, copyright Marine Biological Laboratory)
  • Pamela Hinkle (Pam Oldham)
    
    
• Table of contents: Small chimneys on the floor of Nikko caldera. The venting is so prolific that the smoke often impedes visibility on the seafloor (Courtesy of Submarine Ring of Fire 2006 Exploration, NOAA Vents Program); Microbial Diversity course students watching swamp experiment (Diana Kenney)
  
  
• Pp. 2-3: Chlamydophrys, Coscinodiscus radiatus, cyanobacteria, Lyngbya, Acantharea, Prorocentrum redfieldii, Stylonychia, Chrysochromulina, Ceratium macroceros, Stentor; background image of emerald pool (micro*scope)
  
  
• Pp. 4-5:
  • Mitchell Sogin (Tom Kleindinst)
  • Cyanobacteria from Yellowstone National Park (micro*scope)
  • Collosphaera huxleyi (Ernst Haeckel)
  • Wolbachia bacteria (stained in green) inhabit millions of animal species, transmit themselves directly through the mother's eggs (egg nuclei stained in blue), and can profoundly influence the ecology, evolution, reproduction, and development of their hosts (Michael Clark and Seth Bordenstein, 2007)
  • Cyanobacteria: Filamentous blue-green algae with several morphologies (Michelle Bahr and David Patterson, micro*scope)
  • Giardia (Barb Davis, UCSD)
  • Micrasterias (micro*scope)
    
    
• Pp. 6-7:
  • Lake Pontchartrain (Louisiana State University)
  • Giardia lamblia trophozoite (Joel Mancuso. Created by Digital Micrograph, Gatan Inc. This the form the parasite takes while living in the intestine of a human or other animal. Scanning electron micrograph, false color.)
  • The starlet sea anemone (Nematostella vectensis) can reproduce in different ways, including (left) asexually, by developing a second head and splitting in two; and (right) sexually, by releasing eggs. (Adam Reitzel, courtesy of John R. Finnerty)
  • Red-winged blackbird (Terry Spivey, USDA Forest Service, Bugwood.org)
  • Hair cells from the cochlea of a mouse (Jason Meyers, Colgate University)
    
    
• Pp. 8-9:
  • Julie Huber (Mark Kurz, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
  • Small chimneys on the floor of Nikko caldera. The venting is so prolific that the smoke often impedes visibility on the seafloor (Courtesy of Submarine Ring of Fire 2006 Exploration, NOAA Vents Program)
  • Rio Tinto, Brazil (Courtesy of Linda Amaral Zettler)
  • Linda Amaral Zettler (Erik Zettler)
    
    
• Pp. 10-11:
  • Microbial Diversity swamp experiment (Diana Kenney)
  • Microbial Diversity field class (Tom Kleindinst)
    
    
• Pp. 12-13:
  • David Patterson (Brett Leigh Dicks)
  • EOL banner (NASA)
  • Song sparrow (U.S. Fish & Wildlife Services)
  • Amanita phalloides, death cap mushroom (Franck Richard)
  • Coscinodiscus (David J. Patterson and Daniel Lahr, courtesy of micro*scope http://microscope.mbl.edu)
  • Nasonia vitripennis (Seth Bordenstein)
  • Kiwa hirsuta, yeti crab (Copyright Ifremer/A. Fifis)
  • Tiger (U.S. Fisheries & Wildlife Services National Digital Library)
    EOL sample page (http://www.eol.org/demonstration.html)
    
    
• Pp. 14-15:
  • Holistica (David Patterson, provided by micro*scope, http://microscope.mbl.edu, copyright Marine Biological Laboratory)
  • MBL summer course student (Tom Kleindinst)
  • Sciences Journalism Fellows (Richard Friebe)
  • Hilary Morrison (Tom Kleindinst)
  • Giardia (Barb Davis)
    
    
• Pp. 16-17: Gary Borisy (Dan Cutrona)
  • Spumellaria (Ernst Haeckel)
    
    
• Back Cover: MBL course (Tom Kleindinst)
  

Out of Sight!

• Josephine Bay Paul Center for Comparative Molecular Biology and Evolution:
  http://jbpc.mbl.edu/
• Laboratory of Mitchell Sogin: http://jbpc.mbl.edu/labs-sogin.html
• International Census of Marine Microbes: http://icomm.mbl.edu/
• Woods Hole Center for Oceans and Human Health: http://www.whoi.edu/science/cohh/whcohh/
• Brown-MBL Graduate Program in Biological and Environmental Sciences: http://www.mbl.edu/brown/
• Workshop on Molecular Evolution: http://workshop.molecularevolution.org/
• Living in the Microbial World: http://www.mbl.edu/education/courses/other_programs/teachers.html
• Discover the Microbes Within! http://jbpc.mbl.edu/~sbordenstein/workshop.html

Sogin, M.L., H.G. Morrison, J.A. Huber, D. Mark Welch, S.M. Huse, P.R. Neal, J.M. Arrieta, and G.J. Herndl. 2006. Microbial diversity in the deep sea and the underexplored “rare biosphere.” Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 103:12115-12120.

Bordenstein, S.R. 2007. Evolutionary genomics: Transdomain gene transfers. Current Biology 17:R935.

Gladyshev, E.A., and I.R. Arkhipova. 2007. Telomere-associated endonuclease-deficient Penelope-like retroelements in diverse eukaryotes. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, Epub May 4, 10.1073/pnas.0702741104

News & Notes

Sinigalliano, C.D., M. L. Gidley, T. Shibata, D. Whitman, T. H. Dixon, E. Laws, A. Hou, D. Bachoon, L. Brand, L. Amaral-Zettler, R. J. Gast, G. F. Steward, O. D. Nigro, R. Fujioka, W. Q. Betancourt, G. Vithanage, J. Mathews, L. E. Fleming, and H. M. Solo-Gabriele. 2007. Impacts of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita on the microbial landscape of the New Orleans area. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, #06-10552.

Morrison, H.G., A.G. McArthur, F.D. Gillin, S.B. Aley, R.D. Adam, G.J. Olsen, A.A. Best, Z. Cande, F. Chen, M.J. Cipriano, B.J. Davids, S.C. Dawson, H.G. Elmendorf, A.B. Hehl, M.E. Holder, S.M. Huse, U.U. Kim, E. Lasek-Nesselquist, G. Manning, A. Nigam, J.E. Nixon, D. Palm, N.E. Passamaneck, A. Prabhu, C.I. Reich, D.S. Reiner, J. Samuelson, S. G.Svard, M.L.Sogin. 2007. Genomic Minimalism in the Early Diverging Intestinal Parasite Giardia lamblia. Science 317:1921-1926.

Putnam, N.H., M. Srivastava, U. Hellsten, B. Dirks, J. Chapman, A. Salamov, A. Terry, H. Shapiro, E. Lindquist, V. V. Kapitonov, J. Jurka, G. Genikhovich, I.V. Grigoriev, S.M. Lucas, R.E. Steele, J.R. Finnerty, U. Technau, M.Q. Martindale, and D.S. Rokhsar. 2007. Sea Anemone Genome Reveals Ancestral Eumetazoan Gene Repertoire and Genomic Organization. Science 317: 86-94.

Valiela, I., and P. Martinetto. Changes in Bird Abundance in Eastern North America: Urban Sprawl and Global Footprint? 2007. BioScience 5 (4): 360-370.

Hu, Z., and J.T. Corwin. Inner Ear Hair Cells Produced In Vitro Via A Mesenchymal-To-Epithelial Transition. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, #07-4576.

From Deep Sea to Deep Space

• NASA Astrobiology Institute: http://nai.nasa.gov/
• MBL Astrobiology: http://astrobiology.mbl.edu/
• Background on Julie Huber: http://jbpc.mbl.edu/labs-jhuber.html
• Background on Linda Amaral Zettler: http://jbpc.mbl.edu/labs-amaral.html

Wells, L.E, J.A. Armstrong, and J.A. Huber. 2007. Disciplinary aspirations and educational opportunities. In W.T. Sullivan III and J.A. Baross (eds.), 547-557. Planets and Life: The Emerging Science of Astrobiology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.

Baross, J.A., M.O. Schrenk, and J.A. Huber. 2007. Limits of Carbon Life on Earth and Elsewhere. In W.T. Sullivan III and J.A. Baross (eds.), 275-291. Planets and Life: The Emerging Science of Astrobiology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.

Huber, J.A., D.B. Mark Welch, H.G. Morrison, S.M. Huse, P.R. Neal, D.A. Butterfield, and M.L. Sogin. 2007. Microbial population structures in the deep marine biosphere. Science 318: 97-100.

Amaral-Zettler, L.A., C. Palacios, E.R. Zettler, R. Amils, and M.L. Sogin. 2006. A Three-Domain Approach to Microbial Diversity and Population Structure in the Rio Tinto. Astrobiology 6(1):256.

Starting Off With A Bang: The MBL Microbial Diversity Course Jumps Right In

• MBL Microbial Diversity Course: http://www.mbl.edu/education/courses/summer/course_micro_div.html

Bennett, J.W., and H. J. Phaff. 1993. Early biotechnology: the Delft connection. ASM News 59(8): 401-404.

Spath, S. 2004. Van Niel’s course in general microbiology. ASM News 70(8): 359-363.

Schmidt, T.M. 2006. The maturing of microbial ecology. Intl Microbiol 9: 217-223.

MBL Moment with David Patterson: Grander than Life Itself

• Encyclopedia of Life: http://www.eol.org
• Biodiversity Informatics Group of the EOL: http://eolinformatics.mbl.edu
• Background on David Patterson: http://jbpc.mbl.edu/labs-patterson.html
• UBio (Universal Biological Indexer and Organizer): http://www.ubio.org/
• micro*scope, a database of images and information on microbes: http://starcentral.mbl.edu/microscope/portal.php

Wilson, E.O. 2003. The Encyclopedia of Life. Trends Ecol. Evol. 18:77-80.

Cool Tool: On the Fast Track

• W. M. Keck Ecological and Evolutionary Genetics Facility: http://jbpc.mbl.edu/facilities-keck.html
• Background on Hilary Morrison: http://jbpc.mbl.edu/labs-morrison.html

Huse, M.S., J.A. Huber, H.G. Morrison, M.L. Sogin, and D. Mark Welch. 2007. Accuracy and quality of massively-parallel DNA pyrosequencing. Genome Biology 8: R143.

Scientist’s Eye View: The Micro-Eco Vision

• Background on Gary Borisy: http://www.mbl.edu/about/details/what_director.html

Hobbie, J.E., M. Bahr, and A.-L. Reysenbach. 2007. "Ecology at long-Term Research Sites: Integrating Microbes and Ecosystems" in Manual of Environmental Microbiology, 3rd Ed., ASM Press. Editors: C. J. Hurst, R. L. Crawford, J. L. Garland, D. A. Lipson, A. L. Mills, and L. D. Stetzenbach. pp. 182-189.

National Academy of Sciences (2007) The New Science of Metagenomics: Revealing the Secrets of Our Microbial Planet: http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11902&page=R3

Memorabilia: Nature is Greatest in the Smallest Things

• The MBLWHOI Library (http://www.mblwhoilibrary.org/) holds more than 30 books and monographs by Ernst Haeckel, including his H.M.S. Challenger reports on the Radiolaria, Siphonophorae, and Medusae. Others include:
• Radiolarian: Eine Monographie (1862-1888)
• Art Forms from the Ocean: The Radiolarian Atlas of 1862 (2005)
• Monographie der Medusan (1879-1881)
• Systematische Phylogenie (1894-96)
• Art Forms in Nature: The Prints of Ernst Haeckel (1998)