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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.
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.
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.
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.
Infectious diseases emerge and spread around the globe. Using the distribution, establishment and spread of anthrax, plague and tularaemia as examples, Keim and Wagner describe the factors that determine the phylogeography of emerging diseases.
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.
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.
