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Published online 9 January 2008 | Nature 451, 124-126 (2008) | doi:10.1038/451124a
News Feature
Cell biology: Bacteria's new bones
Long dismissed as featureless, disorganized sacks, bacteria are now revealing a multitude of elegant internal structures. Ewen Callaway investigates a new field in cell biology.
Nearly a decade ago Jeff Errington, a microbiologist at Newcastle University in England, was toying with a strange bacterial protein known as MreB. Take it away from microbes, and they lose their characteristic cylindrical shape.
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Bacterial bones discovered earlier!!! ------------------------------------------------ Long before Errington began his experiments of identifying bacterial cytoskeleton, a husband-wife team had already tried to find cytoskeleton or cytoskeleton-like components and structures in bacteria. Their search was not any blind action but based on some solid literature review and logical reasoning. They presented a research proposal and get a limited support so that they can perform the research at the graduate student level. They presented their research findings to the University Research Conference. However, their goal of identifying the cytoskeleton-like proteins was not possible at that time due to mainly financial limitation. They couldn't publish any such things because not only their results were considered as "preliminary" but also their whole idea was considered as "radical" if not "non-sense" by the mainstream (at least then). Nevertheless, they managed to publish two publications on this topic, just for the accuracy of a scientific research history. These publications can be found at: 1. "Bacterial Cytoskeleton: From the Non-Sense to a Hot Trend" Logical Biology 5(3) 238-253, 2005. http://im1.biz/albums/userpics/10001/V5_I3_A11_Cytosk.htm http://im1.biz/albums/userpics/10001/V5_I3_A11_Cytosk.pdf 2. "Bacterial Cytoskeleton Discovered Earlier" Pioneer 1(1) 8-9, 2006 http://im1.biz/albums/userpics/10001/P2006V1N1A4_BacterialCytoskeleton.htm http://im1.biz/albums/userpics/10001/P2006V1N1A4_BacterialCytoskeleton.pdf Shi V. Liu (SVL@logibio.com)