Intracellular Niches Of Microbes

The book describes the different and exciting pathways which havebeen developed by pathogenic microbes to manage living inside hostcells. It covers intracellular life styles of all relevantpathogenic but also symbiotic microorganisms with respect to thecell biology of the host-microbe interactions and the microbialadaptations for intracellular survival. It features intracellulartrafficking pathways and characteristics of intracellular niches ofindividual microbes. The book also asks questions on the benefitsfor the microbe with regard to physiological needs and nutritionalaspects such as auxotrophy, effects on genome sizes, andconsequences for disease and host response/immunity (and thebenefits for the host in the cases of symbionts). Additionally, the book includes those pathogens that are medicallyless important but represent distinct intracellular niches,trafficking behaviours and virulence traits. The individualchapters also point out future challenges of research for therespective organism.

The book describes the different and exciting pathways which have been developed by pathogenic microbes to manage living inside host cells. It covers intracellular life styles of all relevant pathogenic but also symbiotic microorganisms with respect to the cell biology of the host-microbe interactions and the microbial adaptations for intracellular survival. It features intracellular trafficking pathways and characteristics of intracellular niches of individual microbes. The book also asks questions on the benefits for the microbe with regard to physiological needs and nutritional aspects such as auxotrophy, effects on genome sizes, and consequences for disease and host response/immunity (and the benefits for the host in the cases of symbionts). Additionally, the book includes those pathogens that are medically less important but represent distinct intracellular niches, trafficking behaviours and virulence traits. The individual chapters also point out future challenges of research for the respective organism.

How small can a free-living organism be? On the surface, this question is straightforward-in principle, the smallest cells can be identified and measured. But understanding what factors determine this lower limit, and addressing the host of other questions that follow on from this knowledge, require a fundamental understanding of the chemistry and ecology of cellular life. The recent report of evidence for life in a martian meteorite and the prospect of searching for biological signatures in intelligently chosen samples from Mars and elsewhere bring a new immediacy to such questions. How do we recognize the morphological or chemical remnants of life in rocks deposited 4 billion years ago on another planet? Are the empirical limits on cell size identified by observation on Earth applicable to life wherever it may occur, or is minimum size a function of the particular chemistry of an individual planetary surface? These questions formed the focus of a workshop on the size limits of very small organisms, organized by the Steering .Group for the Workshop on Size Limits of Very Small Microorganisms and held on October 22 and 23, 1998. Eighteen invited panelists, representing fields ranging from cell biology and molecular genetics to paleontology and mineralogy, joined with an almost equal number of other participants in a wide-ranging exploration of minimum cell size and the challenge of interpreting micro- and nano-scale features of sedimentary rocks found on Earth or elsewhere in the solar system. This document contains the proceedings of that workshop. It includes position papers presented by the individual panelists, arranged by panel, along with a summary, for each of the four sessions, of extensive roundtable discussions that involved the panelists as well as other workshop participants.

Microbiology has undergone radical changes over the past few decades, ushering in an exciting new era in science. In The New Microbiology, Pascale Cossart tells a splendid story about the revolution in microbiology, especially in bacteriology. This story has wide-ranging implications for human health and medicine, agriculture, environmental science, and our understanding of evolution. The revolution results from the powerful tools of molecular and cellular biology, genomics, and bioinformatics, which have yielded amazing discoveries, from entire genome sequences to video of bacteria invading host cells. This book is for both scientists and especially nonscientists who would like to learn more about the extraordinary world of bacteria. Dr. Cossart's overview of the field of microbiology research, from infectious disease history to the ongoing scientific revolution resulting from CRISPR technologies, is presented in four parts. New concepts in microbiology introduces the world of bacteria and some recent discoveries about how they live, such as the role of regulatory RNAs including riboswitches, the CRISPR defense system, and resistance to antibiotics. Sociomicrobiology: the social lives of bacteria helps us see the new paradigm by which scientists view bacteria as highly social creatures that communicate in many ways, for example in the assemblies that reside in our intestine or in the environment. The biology of infections reviews some of history's worst epidemics and describes current and emerging infectious diseases, the organisms that cause them, and how they produce an infection. Bacteria as tools introduces us to molecules derived from microbes that scientists have harnessed in the service of research and medicine, including the CRISPR/Cas9 genome-editing technology. The New Microbiology takes us on a journey through a remarkable revolution in science that is occurring here and now.

Infectious diseases have existed longer than us, as long as us, or are relatively newer than us. It may be the case that a disease has existed for many, many years but has only recently begun affecting humans. At the turn of the century the number of deaths caused by infections in the United States had been falling steadily but since the '80s has seen an increase. In the past 30 years alone 37 new pathogens have been identified as human disease threats and 12% of known human pathogens have been classified as either emerging or remerging. Whatever the story, there is currently a "war" on infectious diseases. This war is simply the systematic search for the microbial "cause" of each disease, followed by the development of antimicrobial therapies. The "war" on infectious diseases, however, must be revisited in order to develop a more realistic and detailed picture of the dynamic interactions among and between host organisms and their diverse populations of microbes. Only a fraction of these microbes are pathogens. Thus, in order to explore the crafting of a new metaphor for host-microbe relationships, and to consider how such a new perspective might inform and prioritize biomedical research, the Forum on Microbial Threats of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) convened the workshop, Ending the War Metaphor: The Changing Agenda for Unraveling the Host-Microbe Relationship on March 16-17, 2005. Workshop participants examined knowledge and approaches to learning about the bacterial inhabitants of the human gut, the best known host-microbe system, as well as findings from studies of microbial communities associated with other mammals, fish, plants, soil, and insects. The perspective adopted by this workshop is one that recognizes the breadth and diversity of host-microbe relationships beyond those relative few that result in overt disease. Included in this summary are the reports and papers of individuals participating in the Forum as well as the views of the editors.

Annual Plant Reviews, Volume 5 Our concept of the vacuolar compartment in plant cells has changed radically in recent years. We now know that the traditional view of a vacuole as one multifunctional organelle is incorrect, and that most plant cells contain basically two types of vacuoles - ltyic and protein storage vacuoles. These are served by separate vesicular pathways, which defines them as distinct organelles. Furthermore, it appears that the functions of each type can be modified such that several different vacuoles, each with a somewhat different function, can exist in one cell. This volume examines our current understanding of vacuolar compartments. It is directed at academic and industrial researchers in plant cell biology, biochemistry, physiology, molecular biology and developmental biology.

The cytoskeleton is a highly dynamic intracellular platform constituted by a three-dimensional network of proteins responsible for key cellular roles as structure and shape, cell growth and development, and offering to the cell with "motility" that being the ability of the entire cell to move and for material to be moved within the cell in a regulated fashion (vesicle trafficking). The present edition of Cytoskeleton provides new insights into the structure-functional features, dynamics, and cytoskeleton's relationship to diseases. The authors' contribution in this book will be of substantial importance to a wide audience such as clinicians, researches, educators, and students interested in getting updated knowledge about molecular basis of cytoskeleton, such as regulation of cell vital processes by actin-binding proteins as cell morphogenesis, motility, their implications in cell signaling, as well as strategies for clinical trial and alternative therapies based in multitargeting molecules to tackle diseases, that is, cancer.