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The increasing problem of antibiotic resistance is regarded as a serious threat to public health. Can education help to preserve the effectiveness of antibiotics?
In this Review, the authors evaluate the strategies that the intracellular pathogenLegionella pneumophilauses to establish growth inside cells and probe why this microorganism has accumulated an unprecedented number of translocated substrates that are targeted to host cells.
Metalloproteins constitute up to one-third of the total cellular cohort of proteins, and cells have evolved elaborate mechanisms for scavenging and storing metal atoms. In this Review, the authors summarize the homeostatic mechanisms by which bacteria and archaea ensure that metalloproteins receive and bind the correct metal.
In the filamentous bacteriaStreptomyces, morphological differentiation is closely integrated with fundamental growth and cell-cycle processes, as well as with truly complex multicellular behaviour. Important progress is being made towards understanding the intriguing processes that underlie growth and morphogenesis in Streptomyces.
Humans contract Buruli ulcer following infection withMycobacterium ulcerans, a slow-growing toxin producer that evolved from Mycobacterium marinum. Both M. ulcerans and M. marinum are waterborne, but M. ulceransis associated with various insects that might serve as vectors. This Review summarizes recent findings and explains how the toxin, a polyketide called mycolactone, acts on immune cells.
The human gut microbiota contain health-promoting indigenous species (probiotic bacteria) that are commonly consumed as live dietary supplements. The genomics of probiotic bacteria — or probiogenomics — could shed light on how beneficial gut bacteria adapt to the gut environment and promote better gut health.
UsingSalmonella enterica infection as a model, Mastroeni and colleagues discuss how developing an understanding of bacterial proliferation and dissemination in a host during infection is a prerequisite for the development of targeted drugs and vaccines. They also highlight a new technique for monitoring the spread of a bacterial population in vivo.
Despite bleak news on the spread of drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) strains in Eastern Europe and southern Africa, there are signs that drug-resistant TB can be controlled. Evidence suggests that good control programmes, using the current suite of anti-TB drugs, can cut the number of multiply resistant TB cases even more quickly than drug-sensitive cases.
