Microbe Magazine

As a biologist who is the son of an English teacher, I appreciate Bernard Dixon's desire to see we scientists use language precisely, and personally I even like the fact that English conserves a lot of Latin that even Romance languages like Spanish do not.

The article by Melanie Kaplan entitled “Microbiology Goes Digital” in the November 2010 issue of this magazine (p. 471) presented a description of ways in which our field becomes part of the world of social media. We are particularly pleased by the generous terms used to characterize our own blog... More...

The majority of cystic fibrosis (CF) patients succumb to a chronic, untreatable Pseudomonas aeruginosa infection of the airways. The responsible strains are largely clonal and show evidence of positive selection for mutations leading to adaptation to the airway envi... More...

Vancomycin and daptomycin are two of the limited number of effective antibiotics against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infection. However, strains of MRSA have emerged that have reduced susceptibility to these antibiotics, threatening hospitaliz... More...

Bacteria regulate their metabolism using riboswitches, sequences of RNA that alter gene expression when they bind a small-molecule metabolite. Justin P. Gallivan's laboratory at Emory University, Atlanta, Ga., creates synthetic riboswitches that tune gene expression in response to molecules ... More...

The predatory bacterium Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus eats its prey—larger bacteria, such as Escherichia coli, from the inside, an example of the imaginative lengths to which some prokaryotes will go to make a living. Discovered in 1962, ... More...

Francisella tularensis is considered a select agent by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, due to its low infectious dose—as few as 10 organisms—via the lungs, and its potential as a biological threat agent. Now Thomas Kawula and colleagu... More...

6–9 February 2011.