Andrew Jermy explores the work of a bacteriologist who championed basic research and reproducibility.

Following the success of the inaugural games, the Microbial Olympics return with a new series of events and microbial competitors. The games may have moved to a new hosting venue, but the dedication to training, fitness, competition (and yes, education and humour) lives on.

Colossal microbes taking over the world sounds like a B-movie plot, rather than the business plan of a stuffed toy manufacturer. We asked Drew Oliver, the creator and CEO of Giant Microbes, about how the company came about, how their products have been received and his plans for the future.

Michele Banks (also known as @artologica ) is a US-based painter and collage artist whose works are based on scientific and medical themes, and who has a particular fascination with all things microbial. We caught up with Michele to ask about her art and the inspiration behind it.

Few science writers capture the attention of readers quite like Ed Yong, columnist for The Atlantic, author of soon-to-be-published I Contain Multitudes, and all-round nice guy. We asked Ed a few questions; it felt like taking Lewis Hamilton out for a Sunday drive.

Andrew Jermy travels with Hugh Pennington on the arc of humanity's long, troubled relationship with microorganisms.

On exposure to a cell wall synthesis inhibitor, Mycobacterium smegmatis persisters enter a dynamic state of balanced cell division and death.

report on replacing the native regulation mechanisms of the nitrogen fixation gene cluster from Klebsiella oxytoca with synthetic genetic components.

Isolation and characterization of a novel greigite-producing magnetotactic bacterium.

single T3SS effector protein from S . Typhimurium can expand the narrow host range of S . Typhi by targeting the RAB32-dependent trafficking pathway, which controls the composition of the SCV.

Phage T4 encodes an antitoxin that is active against multipleEscherichia colitoxins.

The right place at the right timeThe positioning of bacterial genes within the cell had previously been proposed to depend on the function of the proteins that they encode -for example, genes encoding membrane proteins would be positioned close to the membrane.This study tests this hypothesis in Escherichia coli, examining the dynamics of two loci carrying genes encoding membrane proteins.The authors found that both the lac (lactose metabolism) locus and an inducible locus carrying the tetracycline efflux pump TetA fused to mCherry (tetA-mCherry) shifted towards the membrane following induction.This relocalization was rapid, occurring within 1-3 minutes of induction for tetA-mCherry, and required ongoing transcription and translation.Moreover, the authors detected repositioning of loci that were 90 kb away from tetA-mCherry, indicating that large regions of the genome relocalize during gene expression.It is therefore likely that membrane protein expression has an integral role in determining the conformation of the bacterial chromosome.