Essay

In this Microbiology Pioneers Essay, Salomon Bartnicki-Garcia pays tribute to two pioneers of fungal cell ultrastructure, Manfred Girbardt and Charles Bracker.

In this Essay in our Microbiology Pioneers series, Hilary Lappin-Scott, Sara Burton and Paul Stoodley pay tribute to Bill Costerton, who was the founding father of biofilm research, and trace his development of the biofilm concept.

In this Essay, Alberset al. discuss the remarkable achievements of two leaders of the archaeal research field: the late Carl Woese and the late Wolfram Zillig. They highlight how the discoveries of these two researchers have inspired the current and upcoming generations of microbiologists.

Fungal taxonomy has recently undergone its biggest shake-up and embraced the modernization of its nomenclatural rules. Here, Hibbett and Taylor describe these changes and what their implications might be for fungal researchers.

The emergence of new microbial infections is ever more likely with the globalization of trade and travel, changes to agricultural practices and climate change. However, as Lipkin describes in this Essay, this threat is being met by dramatic technological advances in pathogen discovery, surveillance and modelling.

Competition is fierce in the microbial world, making evolutionary training and fitness essential for a microorganism to survive and thrive. To honour this spirit, in this Essay an expert panel has selected seven special events to make up the inaugural Microbial Olympics.

The increasing levels of antibiotic resistance observed in clinical isolates, coupled with a lack of new drugs coming through the development pipeline, make the problem of antibiotic resistance a global crisis. In this Essay, Davies and colleagues draw up a priority list of urgent steps and future research directions that are needed to tackle this growing problem.

The increase in allergic diseases that has occurred in developing countries in recent years has been attributed to a decrease in exposure to the microorganisms in the environment. Blaser and Falkow reflect that this increase, as well as the ongoing obesity epidemic and increased susceptibility to infectious disease, might instead be the result of changes in the human microbiota.

New and improved technologies are helping us to detect and characterize symbiotic microorganisms, whereas model symbiosis systems are revealing the molecular basis for partnerships. In this Essay, Margaret McFall-Ngai provides the historical context for the study of symbiosis and discusses the challenges that this emerging field faces.

In recent years microbial ecology has experienced a renaissance. In this Essay, a group of leading microbial ecologists argue that the key to realizing the full potential of this renaissance lies in theory.

In this Essay, Karen-Beth Scholthof posits that wider use of the disease triangle concept, largely confined to the analysis of plant diseases, would encourage researchers to consider more closely the role of the environment in human health and disease.