Editorials

The preponderance of global public health campaigns reflects the ongoing importance of the need to raise awareness of infectious diseases, and their devastating effects.

The publication of the second volume of England's annual health report has increased pressure to prioritize strategies to tackle the antibiotic resistance crisis.

Crowdsourcing efforts, such as those involved in theEscherichia coliO104 outbreak and, most recently, ash dieback disease, reflect a new era of community engagement in genomic analyses.

The publication of a new article type prompts us to have a look back at the evolution and development of the journal over the past decade.

The escalation of violence against public health workers associated with the polio vaccination campaign in Pakistan bodes ill for the global eradication effort and must cease.

Despite the revolutionary advances made through the application of omic approaches, the importance of studying organisms in pure culture should not be forgotten.

In our final Editorial of the year, we take a look back at 2012 and the microbiology-related research that made the news.

Despite low levels of uptake and active engagement, social media and other online tools can be of great benefit to microbiology researchers, and their use is to be encouraged.

A day off in the middle of the schedule of a recent microbial ecology conference highlighted the importance of taking time out.

With funding for the HMP and Meta-HIT consortia now ending, what's next for these large-scale efforts to map the hidden microbial hordes associated with the human body?

Graduate training programmes must provide the tools and information necessary to help trainees make informed decisions about their future career path, whether in science or not.

After 35 years, the US Food and Drug Administration has officially dropped the idea of comprehensive legislation to control the non-medical use of antibiotics in agriculture, and instead is advocating voluntary oversight.

There are signs that the therapeutic successes that have contributed to the downward trajectory for HIV-1 mortality may soon be repeated for HCV.

The campaign to eradicate polio has achieved a 99% decrease in the number of polio cases worldwide, but the remaining 1% is the most important.

A better understanding of the factors that affect children's desire to follow a career in science is vital if we are to inspire the next generation of scientists.

The decision of an independent oversight committee to recommend the redaction of sensitive information from two influenza research papers highlights the complexities of dual-use research.

Microbiological processes have important roles in nearly all stages of food production. Therefore, microbiologists will be key players in making the improvements to food production that are required to feed the growing world population.

It is time that the tremendous contribution made by Carl Woese to microbiology, medicine and biology as a whole is rewarded by the Nobel committee.

The response from the scientific community to two recent controversies has shown that although scientific progress is not always linear, the right answer will emerge in the end.