Articles in 2012

TwoMolecular Cellpapers reveal the mechanism by which the type I-E CRISPR–Cas system targets and degrades double-stranded DNA.

After 35 years, the US Food and Drug Administration has officially dropped the idea of comprehensive legislation to control the non-medical use of antibiotics in agriculture, and instead is advocating voluntary oversight.

A report on replacing the native regulation mechanisms of the nitrogen fixation gene cluster fromKlebsiella oxytocawith synthetic genetic components.

This month's Genome Watch reviews a recent paper that used a metagenomics approach to characterize the plasmid content of bovine rumen samples.

Our monthly round up of infectious diseases news, which this month includes the identification of a new virulence gene that is on the rise in MRSA strains in China, studies describing the emergence and probable genetic basis of artemisinin resistance in malaria parasites in Thailand and an update on the controversial H5N1 influenza virus articles.

The public health community worldwide has struggled with tuberculosis (TB) control for many years. Here, Christian Leinhardt and colleagues review the evolution of global TB control policies, including the Stop TB Strategy, and discuss the challenges and obstacles associated with control of this ancient disease.

Dissolved oxygen concentration is a crucial organizing principle in marine ecosystems. In this Review, Hallam and colleagues describe recent advances in our understanding of the ecological and microbial features of oxygen-starved regions of the ocean, known as oxygen minimum zones.

Like larger organisms, microorganisms display distinct distributions in space and time. Martiny, Hanson and colleagues propose that four processes — selection, drift, dispersal and mutation — can shape such microbial biogeographic patterns, and analyse the literature to assess the evidence for their importance in shaping one pattern, the distance–decay relationship.

VSP-1 identified as a pathogenicity island in the El TorVibrio choleraestrains.

Ecological divergence ofVibriospp. is instigated by niche-specific gene sweeps followed by recombination within ecologically partitioned populations.

With the advent of high-throughput sequencing, the genomes of many economically important filamentous fungal and oomycete plant pathogens have been sequenced, revealing a trend in several lineages for repeat driven expansion. Sylvain Raffaele and Sophien Kamoun review the genomic features of these pathogens, with a particular focus on genome structure and plasticity.

Retroviral integration into the genome of a germ cell can lead to colonization of the germ line, giving rise to an endogenous retrovirus (ERV). This Review describes the intimate evolutionary relationship between these viruses and their vertebrate hosts.

Confirmation that initiation of DNA replication in bacteria is controlled by divergent methods in two model organisms.

During their life cycle, trypanosomes must overcome conflicting demands to ensure their survival and transmission. In this Opinion article, Matthews and colleagues suggest that infection chronicity and transmissibility result from an interplay between programmes of antigenic variation and development.

Protein-coding sequences that resemble the Shine–Dalgarno sequence are major determinants of translation rate and drive codon selection in bacteria.

Persistence inEscherichia coliis induced in part by the stationary phase signalling molecule indole.