Volume 8 Issue 6, June 2010

In this year, the International Year of Biodiversity, we take a look at the mind-boggling scale of microbial biodiversity yet to be uncovered and the potential benefits of increasing our discovery efforts.

Two new articles show how a Kaposi's sarcoma-associated herpesvirus protein reduces tetherin levels, and a third investigates tetherin structure.

Listeria monocytogenesinterferes with host defence pathways by inhibiting host protein sumoylation.

Bacteria present in the gut of Japanese individuals have acquired a carbohydrate-degrading enzyme from marine bacteria that allows them to degrade a polysaccharide only found in seaweed.

New research shows that increased stimulation of neuroendocrine signalling by exposure to nicotine or stress might suppress the innate immune response to infection by reducing the activity of antimicrobial peptides.

Substances that modify macromolecule stability can expand the physiochemical growth window, allowing growth of certain fungal species at temperature and pressure extremes.

A negative regulator that controls the activation threshold for quorum sensing inPseudomonas aeruginosahas been identified.

Three articles describe the regulation of type III secretion by pH and oxygen in three different organisms.

This month's Genome Watch discusses two recent examples of the use of next-generation sequencing techniques in public health settings.

Our monthly round up of infectious diseases news, which this month includes mixed progress for anti-polio campaigns, mechanistic insight into the immune response to co-infection with HIV and non-typhoidalSalmonella, and revelation of the global disease burden for respiratory syncytial virus infection.

In this Progress article, the authors discuss recent advances in our understanding of the molecular mechanisms used by bacteria to evade complement activation, usingStaphylococcus aureus and Neisseria meningitidisas examples of bacteria that avoid complement using mainly secreted and surface-exposed proteins, respectively.

With new technologies enabling researchers to get a better picture of microbial metabolismin vivo, Werner Goebel and colleagues describe our current understanding of the major carbon sources and metabolic pathways used by intracellular bacterial pathogens.

In addition to being a major worldwide contributor to diarrhoeal disease,Giardia intestinalisis a useful model system for studying basic eukaryotic cellular processes owing to its reduced complexity. Here, Svärd and colleagues review the recent advances in our understanding of giardial cell biology and pathogenesis.

Bacterial responses to antibiotics are complex and involve many genetic and biochemical pathways. This Review describes the effects of bactericidal antibiotics on bacterial cellular processes, the associated responses that contribute to killing and recent insights into these processes revealed through the study of biological networks.

Fe–S proteins participate in a wide array of cellular processes, from metabolism to gene regulation and DNA replication. Here, Py and Barras discuss the basic requirements for a bacterial cell to build and insert Fe–S clusters into apoproteins and summarize our current knowledge and understanding of this processin vivo.

To date, three different autotrophic carbon fixation mechanisms have been found in archaea. Here, Georg Fuchs and colleagues describe these mechanisms and their phylogenetic distribution. As most cultivated autotrophic archaea live in conditions that resemble the conditions of early life, these pathways can serve as models for an ancestral autotrophic carbon fixation pathway.