Nature Reviews Microbiology 6, 477 (2008). doi:10.1038/nrmicro1845

Authors: Nicholas C. Grassly & Christophe Fraser

Mathematical analysis and modelling is central to infectious disease epidemiology. Here, we provide an intuitive introduction to the process of disease transmission, how this stochastic process can be represented mathematically and how this mathematical representation can be used to analyse the emergent dynamics of observed

Nature Reviews Microbiology 6, 431 (2008). doi:10.1038/nrmicro1872

Authors: Mark Achtman & Michael Wagner

The earth contains a huge number of largely uncharacterized Bacteria and Archaea. Microbiologists are struggling to summarize their genetic diversity and classify them, which has resulted in heated debates on methods for defining species, mechanisms that lead to speciation and whether microbial species even exist.

Nature Reviews Microbiology 6, 455 (2008). doi:10.1038/nrmicro1887

Authors: Fabienne F. V. Chevance & Kelly T. Hughes

The assembly of large and complex organelles, such as the bacterial flagellum, poses the formidable problem of coupling temporal gene expression to specific stages of the organelle-assembly process. The discovery that levels of the bacterial flagellar regulatory protein FlgM are controlled by its secretion from

Nature Reviews Microbiology 6, 441 (2008). doi:10.1038/nrmicro1892

Authors: Gerard Muyzer & Alfons J. M. Stams

Sulphate-reducing bacteria (SRB) are anaerobic microorganisms that use sulphate as a terminal electron acceptor in, for example, the degradation of organic compounds. They are ubiquitous in anoxic habitats, where they have an important role in both the sulphur and carbon cycles. SRB can cause a

Nature Reviews Microbiology 6, 488 (2008). doi:10.1038/nrmicro1893

Authors: Jed A. Fuhrman, Michael S. Schwalbach & Ulrich Stingl

Metagenomic analyses have revealed widespread and diverse retinal-binding rhodopsin proteins (named proteorhodopsins) among numerous marine bacteria and archaea, which has challenged the notion that solar energy can only enter marine ecosystems by chlorophyll-based photosynthesis. Most marine proteorhodopsins share structural and functional similarities with archaeal bacteriorhodopsins,

Nature Reviews Microbiology 6, 466 (2008). doi:10.1038/nrmicro1900

Authors: Ken F. Jarrell & Mark J. McBride

Prokaryotic cells move through liquids or over moist surfaces by swimming, swarming, gliding, twitching or floating. An impressive diversity of motility mechanisms has evolved in prokaryotes. Movement can involve surface appendages, such as flagella that spin, pili that pull and Mycoplasma 'legs' that walk.

Nature Reviews Microbiology 6, 419 (2008). doi:10.1038/nrmicro1901

Authors: Duccio Medini, Davide Serruto, Julian Parkhill, David A. Relman, Claudio Donati, Richard Moxon, Stanley Falkow & Rino Rappuoli

Genomics has revolutionized every aspect of microbiology. Now, 13 years after the first bacterial genome was sequenced, it is important to pause and consider what has changed in microbiology research as a consequence of genomics. In this article, we review the evolving field of bacterial

Nature Reviews Microbiology 6, 412 (2008). doi:10.1038/nrmicro1911

Author: Asher Mullard

According to the prevailing view of DNA replication, DNA is delivered to, and then replicated in, fixed cellular 'replication factories'. However, the movement of replisomes (the replication machinery that is located at the replication forks) in live Escherichia coli cells, report David Sherratt and

Nature Reviews Microbiology 6, 413 (2008). doi:10.1038/nrmicro1914

Author: Susan Jones

Understanding how viruses spread from the initial site of infection to become systemic and cause symptoms in a host is an important aspect of viral pathogenesis. Reporting in Cell Host & Microbe, Sacher et al. reveal that although murine cytomegalovirus (MCMV) replicates to

Nature Reviews Microbiology 6, 412 (2008). doi:10.1038/nrmicro1915

SymbiosisFree-living tubeworm endosymbionts found at deep-sea ventsHarmer, T. L.et al. Appl. Environ. Microbiol.11 Apr 2008 (doi: 10.1128/AEM.02470-07)Bacterial symbionts can be transmitted by vertical (parent to offspring), horizontal (between individuals in the same niche) or environmental (acquisition

Nature Reviews Microbiology 6, 414 (2008). doi:10.1038/nrmicro1917

Author: Rachel Smallridge

The catalytic mechanism of iterative polyketide synthases (IPKSs) is now more clearly understood thanks to the work of Townsend, Kelleher, Crawford and colleagues. Reporting in Science, they describe how — by using product analysis and mass spectrometry to characterize the intermediates that were bound

Nature Reviews Microbiology 6, 413 (2008). doi:10.1038/nrmicro1920

Author: Sheilagh Molloy

Reporting in a recent issue of PLoS Biology, Andrew Grant and colleagues describe a new method of modelling the within-host spatiotemporal dynamics of an infection with an intracellular bacterial pathogen.Grant et al. chose to study Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium (S.

Nature Reviews Microbiology 6, 415 (2008). doi:10.1038/nrmicro1921

Author: Asher Mullard

Human cells rely on various antimicrobial peptides, including defensins, to prevent the spread of pathogenic bacteria. For example, defensins can induce chemotaxis of dendritic cells, and expression of defensins correlates with inhibition of bacterial RNA, DNA and protein synthesis, as well as with reduced bacterial

Nature Reviews Microbiology 6, 410 (2008). doi:10.1038/nrmicro1922

The advent of Web 2.0 applications, which enable information sharing and virtual networking, could revolutionize science. But are microbiologists taking advantage?

Nature Reviews Microbiology 6, 411 (2008). doi:10.1038/nrmicro1923

Author: Arianne Heinrichs

Vaccinia virus is a large, complex, enveloped DNA virus that belongs to the Poxviridae family of viruses, which includes variola, the causative agent of smallpox. The infectious mature virus (MV) form of vaccinia has been shown to bind to actin-containing finger-like protrusions (filopodia) of the

Nature Reviews Microbiology 6, 414 (2008). doi:10.1038/nrmicro1924

Author: Sheilagh Molloy

The coordination of bacterial cell-wall synthesis has been hotly debated for almost 40 years. A recent paper in Molecular Microbiology now sheds new light on this topic by revealing how the cell elongation–division cycle is controlled in Bacillus subtilis.In rod-shaped bacteria, such

Nature Reviews Microbiology 6, 409 (2008). doi:10.1038/nrmicro1925

Bacteria and archaea are able to move both in liquids and on solid surfaces, and the mechanisms that they use to do so have long been a fascination of many microbiologists. On page 466, Ken Jarrell and Mark McBride describe the many different methods

Nature Reviews Microbiology 6, 416 (2008). doi:10.1038/nrmicro1926

New fungicide foundInsects such as Drosophila spp. produce a range of antimicrobial peptides to protect against infection. One of the antimicrobial peptides that is produced by Drosophila spp. is drosomycin, which has been shown to be highly active against filamentous fungi and