Microbe Magazine

Cryptococcus gattii has been recognized as a new etiologic agent of a severe emerging disease. There has been an endemic area in Oregon and British Columbia, Canada for the past 10 years (Morbid. Mortal. Weekly Report 59:28, July 23, 2010). More...

Leprosy is a chronic mycobacterial infection caused by Mycobacterium leprae that damages tissue and nerves and causes an extraordinary spectrum of skin lesions, peripheral neuropathy, and anesthesia with the subsequent development of disfigurement, deformity, and disability if not properly... More...

Archaea are a treasure trove of novel features. This is true for the pili of Methanococcus maripaludis, according to Ken Jarrell of Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, and his collaborators. “We identified the major pilin structural protein, MMP1685, by u... More...

Quinine was the first drug, and remains among the most important drugs for treating malaria, the cause of a million deaths and hundreds of millions of illnesses annually in the developing world. Frederick N. Baliraine of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and colleagues at UCSF an... More...

Telomeres are hourglasses of life, shortening with every cellular replication. They do so despite the fact that telomerases extend the truncated telomeres during replication. The extension is not enough to fully compensate for the truncation. But in what is thought to be an anticancer adaptation,... More...

Ampicillin-sulbactam is a β-lactam-β-lactamase inhibitor combination that has activity against a broad range of bacteria, including gram-positive, gram-negative, and anaerobic organisms. But resistance has increased during the last decade, with susceptibility declining from 55.5% in 2002 to 46.3%... More...

7–11 March 2011.