Volume 9 Issue 3, March 2011

Pneumococcal vaccines and rotavirus vaccines will help to reach the goal, set by the United Nations Millennium Project, of a two-thirds decrease in child mortality by 2015.

Some strains ofToxoplasma gondiisecrete a protein into the host cells that activates the host nuclear factor-κB pathway.

Includesde novo-designed proteins for synthetic biology, evidence of shared amino acid metabolism in symbiosis, and the discovery of the first natural viruses of nematodes.

Researchers have discovered the long-elusive fungal compounds that signal to the plant in the initiation of the arbuscular mycorrhiza.

A dynamin-like protein found inBacillus subtilis localizes to the septum of dividing cells and can mediate nucleotide-independent membrane fusion in vitro.

A KSHV protein is a NLR homologue that inhibits inflammation by blocking formation of the inflammasome.

Dictyostelium discoideumexhibits a primitive farming symbiosis that includes dispersal and harvesting of its bacterial food source.

A new study shows that bacteria can tailor their responses to different neighbouring bacteria, including the production of antibiotics.

In marine cyanobacteria, the circadian clock is directly entrained by changes in energy metabolism, and enzymes involved in photosynthesis and nitrogen fixation share a common pool of iron atoms.

Our monthly round up of infectious diseases news, which this month includes immunity to influenza, a new vaccine against TB and a potential new treatment for HIV.

In this Review, Armitage and colleagues describe how some bacterial species, as typified byRhodobacter sphaeroides, have evolved to contain complex chemotaxis signalling networks that integrate sensory information from the environment with metabolic information from within the cell to produce a balanced response at the flagellar motor.

Sortases are enzymes that produce transpeptide bonds which can either link proteins to the cell wall or introduce intermolecular bonds in pili. Schneewind and colleagues describe how these enzymes function on a molecular level and provide an overview of the pili on which they function.

Despite the fact that fungi are biochemically and ecologically suited to the degradation of a range of hazardous environmental chemicals, they have rarely been exploited for bioremediation. Here, Harms and colleagues describe the features that make fungi suitable for bioremediation and discuss their potential applications in this field.

Cryptococcus neoformansis generally considered to be an opportunistic pathogen of immunocompromised individuals. However, as discussed here, this view has been challenged by recent evidence of specialized host–pathogen interactions, and by the emergence of the related speciesCryptococcus gattiias a primary pathogen of immunocompetent populations.

An accurate test for diagnosing active tuberculosis at the point of care is greatly needed, as it would substantially decrease associated death rates and could reduce disease transmission. In this Review, McNerney and Daley outline the status of research into such diagnostic tests and discuss barriers to their further development.

Bacteraemia caused byStaphylococcus aureusinfections can lead to life-threatening metastatic infections. Thwaites and Gant propose that neutrophils form a privileged site that is poorly accessible to antibiotics and that plays an important part in transporting the bacteria to distant sites.