The peptidoglycan (PG) cell wall is a defining feature of the bacteria. It emerged very early in evolution and must have contributed significantly to the success of these organisms. The wall features prominently in our thinking about bacterial cell function, and its synthesis involves the action of several dozen proteins that are normally essential for viability. Surprisingly, it turns out to b...

Myxococcus xanthus is a gram-negative bacterium that develops in response to starvation on a solid surface. The cells assemble into multicellular aggregates in which they differentiate from rod-shaped cells into spherical, environmentally resistant spores. Previously, we have shown that the induction of beta-lactamase is associated with starvation-independent sporulation in liquid culture (K. A...

The extracytoplasmic function sigma M of Bacillus subtilis is required for normal cell growth under salt stress. It is expressed maximally during exponential growth and is further induced by the addition of 0.7 M NaCl. The promoter region of the sigM operon contains two promoters; one (P(A)) is sigma A dependent, and the other (P(M)) is sigma M dependent. These have been placed separately at th...

In mosquitoes, spirochetes were first detected in 1907, when Jaffé reported a spirochete in Culex sp. and named it Spirochaeta culicis (Arch. Protistenkd. 9: 100-107.). Spirochetes were also detected in Anopheles funestus and A. maculipennis (Sinton J.A., Shute P.G. 1939: J. Trop. Med. Hyg. 42: 125-126) and in the salivary glands of Anopheles gambiae (Masseguin A., Palinacci A. 1954: Bull. Soc....