Craig Stephens

TL;DR: C. crescentus is, to the authors' knowledge, the first free-living α-class proteobacterium to be sequenced and will serve as a foundation for exploring the biology of this group of bacteria, which includes the obligate endosymbiont and human pathogen Rickettsia prowazekii, the plant pathogen Agrobacterium tumefaciens, and the bovine andhuman pathogen Brucella abortus.

TL;DR: The CcrM adenine DNA methyltransferase, which specifically modifies GANTC sequences, is necessary for viability in Caulobacter crescentus, the first example of an essential prokaryotic DNA methyl transferase that is not part of a DNA restriction/modification system.

TL;DR: Genetic data suggest that the oligotrophic freshwater bacterium Caulobacter crescentus metabolizes D-xylose through a pathway yielding alpha-ketoglutarate, comparable to the recently described L-arabinose degradation pathway of Azospirillum brasilense.

TL;DR: It is demonstrated here that CcrM is an important target of the Lon protease pathway in C. crescentus and compared with a strain whose DNA remains fully methylated as a result of constitutive expression of ccrM suggests that the effect of Lon on DNA methylation contributes to several developmental defects observed in the lon mutant.

TL;DR: Microarray analysis was used to examine gene expression in the freshwater oligotrophic bacterium Caulobacter crescentus during growth on three standard laboratory media, including peptone-yeast extract medium (PYE) and minimal salts medium with glucose or xylose as the carbon source.