Reviews & Analysis

Filter By:

Year
  • The endothelium lining blood and lymphatic vessels is a major target for pathogenic bacteria. In this Review, Emmanuel Lemichez and colleagues describe how bacteria and bacterial toxins interact with endothelial cells and modify cellular pathways, thereby altering inflammatory responses and the barrier function of the endothelium.

    • Emmanuel Lemichez
    • Marc Lecuit
    • Sandrine Bourdoulous
    Review Article
  • Although small-animal models have been very useful for the investigation of diseases, disease transmission is difficult to study in these models. Lanzas and colleagues describe how farm animals can be used to study transmission of diseases and how they allow for the design of transmission models.

    • Cristina Lanzas
    • Patrick Ayscue
    • Yrjö T. Gröhn
    Review Article
  • The Shiga toxins are a family of exotoxins that are produced byShigella dysenteriae and enterohaemorrhagic strains of Escherichia coli. In this Review, Johannes and Römer summarize the structural and cellular biology of Shiga toxins, describe the role of apoptosis during intoxication and discuss how Shiga toxins might be exploited as therapeutics.

    • Ludger Johannes
    • Winfried Römer
    Review Article
  • EightEscherichia colipathovars have been well characterized to date. In this Review Matthew Croxen and Brett Finlay discuss recent advances in our understanding of the virulence of these pathovars that cause diseases affecting hundreds of millions of people worldwide annually.

    • Matthew A. Croxen
    • B. Brett Finlay
    Review Article
  • Recombinant viruses can act as vaccine vectors by mediating the delivery of antigens from other infectious agents to a host. In this Review, Draper and Heeney describe how a better understanding of the relationship between viruses and the immune system has benefited the use of such viral vectors in a range of human and veterinary applications.

    • Simon J. Draper
    • Jonathan L. Heeney
    Review Article
  • In this Review, Flores and Herrero describe how some cyanobacteria form multicellular filaments containing cells that are differentiated to carry out specialized functions. This compartmentalization allows the bacteria to overcome the problems that are associated with incompatible metabolic functions such as oxygenic photosynthesis and N2fixation.

    • Enrique Flores
    • Antonia Herrero
    Review Article
  • In the diverse microbial communities that are found in most natural environments, bacteria compete with their neighbours for space and resources. Here, the authors review the many active mechanisms that bacteria use to kill or impair their intra- and interspecies competitors.

    • Michael E. Hibbing
    • Clay Fuqua
    • S. Brook Peterson
    Review Article
  • Rabies virus is a neurotropic virus that travels between neurons to reach the brain. Schnell and colleagues describe the viral life cycle, from entry into the cell to budding of new virions and spread to neighbouring cells, and explain how it interferes with the host immune response.

    • Matthias J. Schnell
    • James P. McGettigan
    • Amy Papaneri
    Review Article
  • Lipopolysaccharide (LPS) from Gram-negative bacteria is a potent activator of the innate immune response. Clare Bryant and colleagues discuss recent exciting data that have revealed the structural basis of the recognition of LPS by the Toll-like receptor 4–MD2 complex.

    • Clare E. Bryant
    • David R. Spring
    • Nicholas J. Gay
    Progress
  • In fungi, nuclei move in a microtubule- and microtubule motor-dependent manner. In this Review, Judith Berman and Amy Gladfelter discuss how fungi use the movement of intact nuclei within and between cells to control the integrity, ploidy and assortment of specific genomes or individual chromosomes.

    • Amy Gladfelter
    • Judith Berman
    Review Article
  • Photo-oxidative stress caused by singlet oxygen, a type of reactive oxygen species that is generated by energy transfer to molecular oxygen, can damage cellular components, leading to cell death. In this Review, Donohue and Ziegelhoffer describe the recent advances made in characterizing the bacterial response mechanisms to photo-oxidative stress.

    • Eva C. Ziegelhoffer
    • Timothy J. Donohue
    Review Article
  • The emergence of drug-resistantPlasmodiumparasites has made the treatment of malaria difficult in some areas. One of the last drugs to which there is no full resistance is artemisinin. Fidock and Eastman describe artemisinin-based combination therapies that aim to decrease the occurrence of drug resistance and that have raised the possibility of malaria eradication.

    • Richard T. Eastman
    • David A. Fidock
    Review Article
  • Latent HIV-1 reservoirs, in which the viral genome becomes permanently integrated into the host chromosome, are established early during primary infection and pose a substantial obstacle to the eradication of HIV-1 infection. Here, José Alcamí and colleagues discuss the mechanisms that are associated with HIV-1 latency and outline strategies for targeting HIV-1 reservoirs.

    • Mayte Coiras
    • María Rosa López-Huertas
    • José Alcamí
    Review Article
  • Not all isolates of a species contain the same set of genes. In this Opinion article, Rodriguez-Valera and colleagues propose the constant-diversity model to account for these differences. In this model, predation by phages promotes bacterial diversity and allows more efficient use of the nutrients in the environment.

    • Francisco Rodriguez-Valera
    • Ana-Belen Martin-Cuadrado
    • Alex Mira
    Opinion
  • Nearly one-third of the world's population is infected withMycobacterium tuberculosis. In this Review, Young and colleagues describe the different forms the infection can take, how imaging techniques can help us understand the range of infections and how these findings can be used for drug discovery approaches.

    • Clifton E. Barry 3rd
    • Helena I. Boshoff
    • Douglas Young
    Review Article
  • Chaperone–usher pili are assembled and secreted by a periplasmic chaperone and a dimeric outer-membrane usher complex. Gabriel Waksman and Scott Hultgren review the structural information that has been gathered over the past decade on the various players that participate in P and type 1 pilus biogenesis.

    • Gabriel Waksman
    • Scott J. Hultgren
    Review Article
  • The flagellar pocket ofTrypanosoma bruceiis a small invagination in the plasma membrane where the flagellum exits the cytoplasm. In this Review, Mark Field and Mark Carrington highlight the importance of this complex organelle for cell polarity, cell division, protein trafficking and immune evasion.

    • Mark C. Field
    • Mark Carrington
    Review Article
  • The mechanisms by which bacteria alter the dynamics of their cell cycle to accommodate changes in nutrient availability have puzzled microbiologists for nearly 50 years. In this Opinion article, Wang and Levin summarize efforts to examine the links between nutrient availability, metabolic status, cell division and cell growth.

    • Jue D. Wang
    • Petra A. Levin
    Opinion
  • A diverse range of pathogens produce molecules that mimic host cell components to subvert host cell functions. Elde and Malik highlight the various types of mimicry used by pathogens and the measures that host cells use to counteract the mimics' effects.

    • Nels C. Elde
    • Harmit S. Malik
    Review Article