: Microbiology Articles
Review: The curious case of the tumour virus: 50 years of Burkitt's lymphomaBurkitt's lymphoma (BL) was first described 50 years ago, and the first human tumour virus Epstein–Barr virus (EBV) was discovered in BL tumours soon after. Since then, the role of EBV in the development of BL has become more and more enigmatic. Only recently have Nature Reviews Microbiology, vol. 6 #12, pp913-924 |
Review: Super-shedding and the link between human infection and livestock carriage of Escherichia coli O157Cattle that excrete more Escherichia coli O157 than others are known as super-shedders. Super-shedding has important consequences for the epidemiology of E. coli O157 in cattle — its main reservoir — and for the risk of human infection, particularly owing to environmental exposure. Nature Reviews Microbiology, vol. 6 #12, pp904-912 |
Perspective: e-Science: relieving bottlenecks in large-scale genome analysesThe development of affordable, high-throughput sequencing technology has led to a flood of publicly available bacterial genome-sequence data. The availability of multiple genome sequences presents both an opportunity and a challenge for microbiologists, and new computational approaches are needed to extract the knowledge that is Nature Reviews Microbiology, vol. 6 #12, pp948-954 |
Perspective: Virus evolution: how far does the double β-barrel viral lineage extend?During the past few years one of the most astonishing findings in the field of virology has been the realization that viruses that infect hosts from all three domains of life are often structurally similar. The recent burst of structural information points to a need Nature Reviews Microbiology, vol. 6 #12, pp941-948 |
Research Highlight: Symbiosis: Squid sort the wheat from the chaff...Crypts in the light-emitting organ of the Hawaiian squid Euprymna scolopes are colonized by the luminous marine bacterium Vibrio fischeri. According to a paper published in Environmental Microbiology, the maintenance of specificity in the exclusive symbiotic partnership between E. scolopes and Nature Reviews Microbiology, vol. 6 #12, pp875-875 |
Research Highlight: Fungal biology: SEX and the parasitic fungiMicrosporidia are obligate, intracellular parasites of animals, which makes them difficult to culture in the laboratory. Originally thought to be an ancient lineage of eukaryotes owing to their lack of true mitochondria, they are now known to be related to fungi. Writing in Current Biology Nature Reviews Microbiology, vol. 6 #12, pp873-873 |
Research Highlight: Viral immunity: Persistent viruses help opportunistsPersistent viral infections make the host more susceptible to opportunistic infections by decreasing the production of type I interferons (IFNs) by plasmacytoid dendritic cells (pDCs) according to a study by Oldstone and colleagues.Viral infections induce a strong innate immune response that is orchestrated by Nature Reviews Microbiology, vol. 6 #12, pp876-877 |
Research Highlight: Host response: Keeping the lid on herpes simplex virusHerpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1) establishes a lifelong association with infected hosts, often causing severe disease when the host is immunocompromised. In a recent issue of Science, Knickelbein and colleagues report the identification of part of the mechanism that the host uses to keep Nature Reviews Microbiology, vol. 6 #12, pp876-877 |
Research Highlight: In BriefBacterial geneticsRegulated secretion of a protease activates intercellular signaling during fruiting body formation in M. xanthus.Rolbetzki, A.et al. Dev. Cell15, 627–634 (2008)Starved Myxococcus xanthus cells aggregate to form fruiting bodies Nature Reviews Microbiology, vol. 6 #12, pp874-874 |
Review: From bench to bedside: stealth of enteroinvasive pathogensBacterial enteric infections are often associated with diarrhoea or vomiting, which are clinical presentations commonly referred to as gastroenteritis. However, some enteric pathogens, including typhoidal Salmonella serotypes, Brucella species and enteropathogenic Yersinia species are associated with a clinical syndrome that is characterized Nature Reviews Microbiology, vol. 6 #12, pp883-892 |
Research Highlight: Techniques: Hunting WMDs in pathogen genomesBioinformatics algorithms are becoming increasingly successful for the functional annotation of genomes, but they cannot replace experimental approaches when searching for the highly specialized genes responsible for virulence in pathogens. Such approaches usually involve screening pathogens containing loss-of-function mutations, which can be both time-consuming and Nature Reviews Microbiology, vol. 6 #12, pp875-875 |
Research Highlight: Bacterial physiology: New shears for SsrAStalled ribosomes are a problem for a cell: they deplete the pool of available ribosomes and lead to the formation of truncated proteins. Such ribosomes are rescued by SsrA (also called tmRNA), an RNA with properties of both tRNA and mRNA, which adds a small Nature Reviews Microbiology, vol. 6 #12, pp874-874 |
Research Highlight: Bacterial secretion: Surfing the channelMost bacterial proteins that are inserted into, or translocated across, the plasma membrane are targeted to the evolutionarily conserved SecY translocon complex. Three papers published in Nature now provide insight into how the cytoplasmic ATPase SecA moves polypeptides through the SecY channel.A single Nature Reviews Microbiology, vol. 6 #12, pp877-877 |
Review: The porin and the permeating antibiotic: a selective diffusion barrier in Gram-negative bacteriaGram-negative bacteria are responsible for a large proportion of antibiotic-resistant bacterial diseases. These bacteria have a complex cell envelope that comprises an outer membrane and an inner membrane that delimit the periplasm. The outer membrane contains various protein channels, called porins, which are involved in Nature Reviews Microbiology, vol. 6 #12, pp893-903 |