Showing papers in "Current Opinion in Microbiology in 2004"

TL;DR: Analysis of genes in the Spo0A regulon has helped delineate the mechanisms of axial chromatin formation and asymmetric division and there have been considerable advances in the understanding of critical controls that act to regulate the phosphorelay and to activate the sigma factors.

TL;DR: A variety of algorithms for metabolic network reconstruction coupled to suitable modelling algorithms are the ground substances for the development of metabolic network and systems biology.

TL;DR: Using the metagenome sequences to fully understand how complex microbial communities function and how microbes interact within these niches represents a major challenge for microbiologists today.

TL;DR: The role and applications of biosurfactants (mainly glycolipids and lipopeptides) focusing on medicinal and therapeutic perspectives are discussed, likely to become molecules of the future in areas such as biomedicine and therapeutics.

TL;DR: The physiological roles of the basepairing RNAs are summarized, their prevalence in bacteria is examined, and unresolved questions regarding their mechanisms of action are discussed.

TL;DR: The cell envelope of gram-negative bacteria consists of two membranes, the inner and the outer membrane, that are separated by the periplasm, that have to be transported across the inner membrane and through theperiplasm to assemble eventually in the correct membrane.

TL;DR: Observations of bacteria associated with plants increasingly reveal biofilm-type structures that vary from small clusters of cells to extensive biofilms, and the surface properties of the plant tissue, nutrient and water availability, andThe proclivities of the colonizing bacteria strongly influence the resulting biofilm structure.

TL;DR: Several of the limitations inherent in studies of microbial diversity that must be considered when interpreting the results obtained using phylogenetic analyses of small subunit ribosomal RNA sequences are discussed.

TL;DR: The finding of apoptosis in yeast, other fungi and parasites is not only of great medical relevance but will also help to understand some of the still unknown molecular mechanisms at the core of apoptotic execution.

TL;DR: It is posit that global reservoirs of diversity are an important driving force behind patterns in localised diversity seen in leaves, intestines and wastewater treatment reactors and can only be understood, predicted and engineered through an understanding of the source of diversity from which the community is drawn.

TL;DR: Oligonucleotide microarrays offer a fast, high-throughput alternative for the parallel detection of microbes from virtually any sample and future technical and bioinformatics developments will inevitably improve the potential of this technology further.

TL;DR: The understanding of the molecular events induced by anthrax toxin in different target cells at each stage of infection will aid in deciphering the pathogenesis of this bacterium and developing therapies.

TL;DR: The ways in which the most widely studied CPs, designated CPB, influence the interaction between parasite and mammalian host have been elucidated are elucidated.

TL;DR: Cell engineering of biocatalysts for improved desulphurization and steroid biotransformation for Rhodococcus catabolic versatility and efficiency is described.

TL;DR: The cyclic nucleotide cyclic di-guanosine-monophosphate (c-diGMP) was recognized in the 1980s as a signaling compound that is involved in controlling the condensation of glucose moieties into cellulose polymers.

TL;DR: Gene expression of C. albicans is regulated by an interplay between host and pathogen and at least one transcriptional program associated with the yeast-to-hyphal transition, which allows immediate adaptation to changing environmental conditions, but also prepares cells for subsequent steps of infection.

TL;DR: The SARS epidemic prompted a variety of studies on multiple aspects of the coronavirus replication cycle, yielding both rapid identification of the entry mechanisms of SARS-CoV into host cells and valuable structural and functional information on SARS -CoV proteins.

TL;DR: Improved understanding of the molecular regulation of cell shape is providing insights into the relationships between morphogenesis and virulence, and this understanding may improve the ability to develop strategies to combat Candida infections.

TL;DR: The notion of networks between biological entities (including molecular and genetic interaction networks as well as transcriptional regulatory relationships) potentially provides a unifying language suitable for the systematic description of protein function.

TL;DR: Guided by common themes such as modularity, optimality and robustness, iterative model development promises further progress towards a system-level understanding of genotype-phenotype relations brought about by cellular networks.

TL;DR: Antigenic variation allows African trypanosomes to develop chronic infections in mammalian hosts through the alternative occurrence of transcriptional switching and DNA recombination targeted to a telomeric locus that contains the gene of the variant antigen.

TL;DR: Multilocus sequence typing (MLST) has become the most common method for genetically characterizing clones of several bacterial pathogens, allowing the tracking of hypervirulent/antibiotic-resistant lineages and examining the way that bacterial populations evolve.

TL;DR: Most bacterial promoters are regulated by several signals, and this is reflected in the complexity of their organization, with multiple binding sites for different transcription factors.

TL;DR: H-NS plays a dual role in structuring DNA and in regulating transcription, and elucidating the structure and oligomerisation properties of this protein is aiding in the understanding of the molecular relationship between its two major functions.

TL;DR: In the community, Gram-positive bacteria responsible for pneumonia could become totally resistant leading to increased mortality from this common infection, which would have a more immediate impact on the authors' current lifestyles.

TL;DR: A large number of ribosome synthesis factors have been identified using proteomic analyses in yeast, and the patterns of RNA and protein co-precipitation suggest that ribosomes do not proceed via a linear progression of successive steps.

TL;DR: In insights into organization, dynamics and function of the cytoskeleton, which begin to establish the links between signalling, intracellular transport processes and morphology, the components of which have been uncovered by genomic strategies are uncovered.

TL;DR: Current research into innate immune function focuses on the nature of the ligands detected by this system, the cell signaling that occurs downstream of receptor activation and finally, how these signals culminate into a tailored adaptive immune response directed to eradicate a specific infection.

TL;DR: A goal of current research concerning the virulence attributes of C. albicans will be to determine to what extent this species is able to regulate its glycan code as a response to the host.

TL;DR: Following invasion of host cells, Salmonella occupies an intracellular vacuole that superficially resembles a phagosome, but unlike bona fide phagosomes that undergo a maturation process to become microbicidal phago-lysosomes,Salmonella avoid killing by arresting and diverting the maturation program of the invasion vacuoles.