Microbial pathogens have evolved strategies to live and multiply within their hosts, who in turn have evolved surveillance systems that detect such pathogens and trigger countermeasures. This Microbiology Select highlights recent papers that reveal new aspects of these host and microbial strategies. The bacterial pathogen that causes typhoid fever in humans, Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi (S...

The infectious agent of transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE) was assumed to be the aggregate of abnormal prion protein isoform (PrPsc). We observed that lowering the pH of 3% SDS-inoculated plasma or brain homogenate after PK digestion to 4.5 (acidic SDS condition) enabled to precipitate proteinase K-resistant prion protein (PrPres) in plasma as well as PrPres in the brain with synthet...

I N T H E E F F O R T of devising ways and means of studying the existence of living organisms on other planets, attention must be focussed on microorganisms. This is not entirely due to professi,onal prejudice of microbiology, but is the consequence of accepted realization that microorganisms are responsible for the major amount of turnover of matter on earth and that life of the higher plants...

and strong emphasis are given to the role of gravity as a major designing agent of body structures. The author refutes the widely held idea that man gained his upright posture through an intermediate period of semi-erectness as may be observed in the gorilla and other anthropoid apes. This latter he regards as a reversion from the arboreally acquired vertical body posture of the primitive brach...

This edition of Select highlights recent papers that explore some of the ever-evolving strategies that are used by microbes to subvert eukaryotic immune systems, and by host cells to fight off bacterial and viral pathogens. A number of intracellular pathogens, including Shigella flexneri, the causative agent of dysentery, co-opt the cytoskeletal elements of their host cells. These bacterial pat...

Aerial plant surfaces harbor large numbers of microbes, some of which are deleterious to plants whereas others are benign or beneficial. Commercial formulations of bacteria antagonistic to plant pathogenic microbes and ice nucleation active bacteria have been utilized as an environmentally safe method to manage plant disease and to prevent frost damage. Molecular genetic tools, microscopic exam...

3 Rina de Zwaan, Jakko van Ingen, and Dick van Soolingen 4 5 National Mycobacteria Reference Laboratory, National Institute for Public Health and the Environment 6 (RIVM), Bilthoven, the Netherlands 7 Department of Medical Microbiology, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, the Netherlands 8 9 10 #Corresponding author: Prof. Dr. D. van Soolingen, [email protected] 11 12 13 Runni...