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This Progress article looks at recent developments in our understanding of the role of the host factor Alix in both retroviral and cellular membrane budding and fission events.
Almost all bacteria can adapt efficiently to different nutritional environments by using global regulators that link gene expression to the available intracellular pools of a small number of key metabolites. Here, Abraham L. Sonenshein reviews howBacillus subtilisuses global regulators to manage traffic through two metabolic intersections that determine the flow of carbon and nitrogen to and from crucial metabolites.
How is it that biofilms are less susceptible to metal toxicity than exponentially growing planktonic cell populations? Here, Harrison and colleagues propose a multifactorial model of biofilm multimetal resistance and tolerance by which biofilms can withstand metal toxicity by an ongoing process of cellular diversification within the microbial population.
Acinetobacterstrains have become a cause for concern — particularly among critically ill, hospitalized patients — owing to the spread of multidrug resistance and risk of epidemics. Here, the authors discuss the current knowledge of the genusAcinetobacter, with the emphasis on the clinically most important species, Acinetobacter baumannii.
The reduction in the incidence of poliomyelitis has stalled in the past 7 years, and an urgent re-assessment of the polio-eradication and post-eradication campaign strategies is needed. We propose that vaccination programmes are crucially important for the maintenance of high levels of population immunity against polio and should be continued into the foreseeable future.
Accurately predicting the emergence of antibiotic resistance will be crucial to prolonging the clinical life of new antimicrobial molecules. Here, the authors propose methodological guidelines that should allow researchers to predict the development of resistance to an antibiotic before its therapeutic introduction.
