Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
Our ability to control infectious diseases is continuously being eroded by antimicrobial resistance, the decline in industrial antibiotic development and increasing development timelines from discovery to market. There has never been a better time to rediscover the value of vaccination.
The two poultry pathogens discussed in this month's Genome Watch are closely related to well-characterized organisms that infect humans, so scrutinizing their genomes could reveal factors that determine host-specificity.
Shigellause a type III secretion system to deliver effector proteins into the host-cell cytoplasm, where they can usurp host-cell functions and signalling pathways. In this Progress article, Chihiro Sasakawa and colleagues highlight the most recent advances in our understanding of the exact functions of the manyShigellatype III-secreted effectors.
Targeting bacterial virulence is an alternative approach to antimicrobial therapy. This Review considers recent efforts towards antivirulence-based drug discovery in the framework of marketable drugs, and discusses what challenges remain and the factors that are crucial to developing the antivirulence therapeutic approach.
Bacteria have evolved several different mechanisms to target protein complexes, membrane vesicles and DNA to specific positions within the cell. Here, Thanbichler and Shapiro highlight key mechanisms of cellular organization in bacteria, with an emphasis on the role of polymeric protein assemblies in the directed movement and positioning of macromolecular complexes.
Why do we seem to be losing the fight against tuberculosis? In this Review, James Sacchettini, Eric Rubin and Joel Freundlich review the recent and ongoing efforts to produce new antitubercular drugs and the properties of current investigational agents.
Salmonellae cause systemic diseases by invading and replicating inside epithelial cells and macrophages. Two functionally distinct type III secretion systems that are encoded onSalmonella pathogenicity islands 1 and 2 transfer Salmonellaspp. effector proteins into host cells. The dynamic molecular interplay between these bacterial effectors and host responses is discussed in this Review.
Recognition of fungi by the innate immune system depends on 'tasting' several pathogen-associated molecular patterns in the fungal cell wall. In this Review, the authors pull together the availablein vitro and in vivo data to propose an integrated model for Candida albicansrecognition by the innate immune system.
John C. Boothroyd and Jean-Francois Dubremetz review the roles of the apical rhoptry organelles in cell invasion by Apicomplexan parasites such asToxoplasma gondii and Plasmodiumspp. They propose a model in which an expansion of host range might have been the selective pressure for rhoptry-protein evolution.
