Microbe Magazine

Cover: Fruiting bodies of Dictyostelium discoideum. These eukaryotic slime molds use prokaryote-like signaling to coordinate multicellular development (see p. 198). (Image courtesy of Scott Solomon, Rice University, Houston, Tex.)
Cover: Fruiting bodies of Dictyostelium discoideum. These eukaryotic slime molds use prokaryote-like signaling to coordinate multicellular development (see p. 198). (Image courtesy of Scott Solomon, Rice University, Houston, Tex.)
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FEATURES
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The Soviet Biological Warfare Program and Its Uncertain Legacy
On 22 March 2012, Russian president-elect Vladimir Putin promised to develop new weapons based on advanced technologies, including genetics. Having just completed a history of the Soviet biological warfare (BW) program with Milton Leitenberg, I found Putin's promise exceedingly threatening. ...
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Prokaryote-Like Signaling Controls Eukaryote Development
By far, the greatest genetic and species diversity resides in microscopic organisms, and multicellular forms arose from this diversity many times. However, unlike animals, plants, and fungi whose cells remain together after repeated divisions, the newly divided cells of other multicellular forms ...
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CRISPR-Cas Systems: Making the Cut
The first restriction enzyme, an endonuclease capable of cutting double-stranded DNA in a site-specific fashion, was isolated from Escherichia coli in 1968. Four decades later, researchers identified another system for cleaving foreign DNA—one that acts as an adapti...
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