Spiroplasma is a genus of pretty odd bacteria. Most bacteria can be classified as either Gram-positive or Gram-negative. That is, they’re either surrounded by a cell wall and plasma membrane ...

Maternally inherited symbionts are common in arthropods and many have important roles in host adaptation. The observation that specific symbiont lineages infect distantly related host species implies ...

Fruit flies across North America are evolving at breakneck pace -- and it has nothing to do with their genes. Instead they've acquired a bacterial infection that protects against the sterilizing ...

Bacteria of the Spiroplasma genus produce toxic, ribosome-inactivating proteins (RIPs) that appear to protect their symbiotic host flies against parasitic wasps. Bacteria of the Spiroplasma genus ...

An endosymbiotic bacterium, Spiroplasma, specifically kills the males of its fruit-fly host (Drosophila). This has perplexed biologists since the 1950's, but scientists have now solved the mystery by ...

The process, mechanism and origin of sex determination have been focal topics in genetics, cell biology, developmental biology and evolutionary biology 1,2,3. Sex determination systems are strikingly ...

Osaka Metropolitan University researchers have made the mobile lifeforms that have the smallest genome so far. They introduced seven proteins, thought to let Spiroplama bacteria swim by spiraling, ...