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Resistance to antibiotics in microorganisms predates the use of these drugs. This Review examines why antibiotic resistance is inevitable and where it originates from.
HIV-1 and some other retroviruses can infect cells that are not dividing, so the viral DNA must cross the intact nuclear envelope to integrate into the host chromatin and persist. This Review teases apart the different threads of research to try and identify the mechanisms that underlie the nuclear entry of retroviruses.
This Review describes how single-virus tracking can be used to monitor the journey that viruses make through cells in exquisite detail. With specific examples of the entry, cellular transport and exit of selected viruses, the technicalities and benefits of this approach are revealed.
The application of microtechnology to the discipline of microbiology is poised to transform the study of microbial physiology and behaviour. Here, Weibel and colleagues review the tools and techniques of microfabrication and how it is now possible to physically manipulate individual cells and their local environments.
Cannibalism and fratricide refer to the killing of genetically identical sibling cells that was recently identified inBacillus subtilis and Streptococcus pneumoniae, respectively. Here, Claverys and Håvarstein describe the investigations to characterize the scene of these crimes and identify the murderers, the victims, the murder weapons and the motives.
In this Opinion, Burkhard Hense, Jan-Ulrich Kreft and colleagues discuss quorum sensing and diffusion sensing, an alternative explanation for autoinducer signalling, and the problems they feel are associated with each explanation, before going on to propose efficiency sensing as a unifying functional hypothesis.
