Organic aggregates provide a favorable habitat for aquatic microbes, are efficiently filtered by shellfish, and may play a major role in the dynamics of aquatic pathogens. Quantifying this role requires understanding how pathogen abundance in the water and aggregate size interact to determine the presence and abundance of pathogen cells on individual aggregates. We build upon current understand...

During the last decade, Clostridium difficile infection showed a dramatic increase in incidence and virulence in the Northern hemisphere. This incessantly challenging disease is the leading cause of antibiotic-associated and nosocomial infectious diarrhea and became life-threatening especially among elderly people. It is generally assumed that all human bacterial pathogens are heterotrophic org...

A lthough Escherichia coli is a prototypic commensal bacterial species of the mammalian intestine and a laboratory workhorse for molecular biology, certain strains of this species are capable of causing significant human disease. The spectrum of disease caused by E. coli includes enteric/diarrheal disease, urinary tract infections, renal failure, and sepsis/meningitis (1). The different pathoty...

Bacterial pathogens impose a heavy burden of disease on human populations worldwide. The gravest threats are posed by highly virulent respiratory pathogens, enteric pathogens, and HIV-associated infections. Tuberculosis alone is responsible for the deaths of 1.5 million people annually. Treatment options for bacterial pathogens are being steadily eroded by the evolution and spread of drug resis...

Bacterial toxins are virulence factors that manipulate host cell functions and take over the control of vital processes of living organisms to favor microbial infection. Some toxins directly target innate immune cells, thereby annihilating a major branch of the host immune response. In this review we will focus on bacterial toxins that act from the extracellular milieu and hinder the function o...

Toxin-antitoxin (TA) modules contribute to the generation of non-growing cells in response to stress. These modules abound in bacterial pathogens although the bases for this profusion remain largely unknown. Using the intracellular bacterial pathogen Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium as a model, here we show that a selected group of TA modules impact bacterial fitness inside eukaryotic ce...

10 Central to the pathogenesis of many bacterial pathogens is the ability to deliver effector 11 proteins directly into the cells of their eukaryotic host. EspF is one of many effector proteins 12 exclusive to the attaching and effacing pathogen family that includes enteropathogenic 13 (EPEC) and enterohemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC). Work in recent years has revealed EspF to be 14 one of the most m...

Several human pathogens bind and respond to host cytokines, which can be considered a virulence mechanism that communicates defensive actions of the host to the pathogen. This review summarizes the current knowledge of bacterial cytokine-binding proteins, with a particular focus on their functional and structural characteristics. Many bacterial cytokine-binding proteins function in the developm...