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Nature 432, 811-813 (16 December 2004) | doi:10.1038/432811a; Published online 15 December 2004

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Cell biology:  Iron thievery

Jonathan Barasch1 & Kiyoshi Mori1

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Bacteria have many ways of stealing iron from the organisms they infect. But this thievery is not one-sided, and a newly discovered device in the mammalian tool kit does a good job of keeping bacteria in check.

A fierce battle rages between man and microbe over iron. The breakthrough reported by Flo and colleagues1 on page 917 of this issue exemplifies the lengths to which microorganisms must go to obtain iron — and the remarkable ingenuity of our own natural countermeasures for denying them this essential metal.

  1. Jonathan Barasch is in the Departments of Medicine and of Cell Biology, and Kiyoshi Mori is in the Department of Medicine, Columbia University, New York City, New York 10032, USA.
    e-mails: Email: jmb4@columbia.edu Email: km2112@columbia.edu

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