Bacteria are everywhere you go. In the case of Caulobacter crescentus—the funky, crescent-shaped star of a recent paper by Assistant Professor of Biology Gaybe Moore ’15 —this is no exaggeration. It’s in the soil, in the water, and around your plants, and it surprisingly produces the world’s stickiest superglue as a biofilm. “For the longest time folks haven’t really paid that much attention to it except for it being this really quirky bacteria,” Moore says, noting that scientists were originally interested in Caulobacter for its unusual crescent shape. In order to help biologists better understand all of the surprising features of Caulobacter—for example, although it’s generally considered a non-pathogen, it’s caused infections in immunocompromised patients—Moore built a library of Caulobacter mutants for researchers to study. Going forward, Moore’s lab at Oberlin—called The Gaybe Lab—is branching out to find and study other bacteria considered low-level pathogens. “We need to study...