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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.
Our monthly round up of infectious diseases news, which this month includes the identification of a new virulence gene that is on the rise in MRSA strains in China, studies describing the emergence and probable genetic basis of artemisinin resistance in malaria parasites in Thailand and an update on the controversial H5N1 influenza virus articles.
Dissolved oxygen concentration is a crucial organizing principle in marine ecosystems. In this Review, Hallam and colleagues describe recent advances in our understanding of the ecological and microbial features of oxygen-starved regions of the ocean, known as oxygen minimum zones.
Retroviral integration into the genome of a germ cell can lead to colonization of the germ line, giving rise to an endogenous retrovirus (ERV). This Review describes the intimate evolutionary relationship between these viruses and their vertebrate hosts.
The public health community worldwide has struggled with tuberculosis (TB) control for many years. Here, Christian Leinhardt and colleagues review the evolution of global TB control policies, including the Stop TB Strategy, and discuss the challenges and obstacles associated with control of this ancient disease.
With the advent of high-throughput sequencing, the genomes of many economically important filamentous fungal and oomycete plant pathogens have been sequenced, revealing a trend in several lineages for repeat driven expansion. Sylvain Raffaele and Sophien Kamoun review the genomic features of these pathogens, with a particular focus on genome structure and plasticity.
During their life cycle, trypanosomes must overcome conflicting demands to ensure their survival and transmission. In this Opinion article, Matthews and colleagues suggest that infection chronicity and transmissibility result from an interplay between programmes of antigenic variation and development.
