scispace - formally typeset
Search or ask a question

Showing papers in "Trends in Microbiology in 2002"


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Dengue fever/dengue hemorrhagic fever is now one of the most important public health problems in tropical developing countries and also has major economic and societal consequences.

1,494 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This work argues for a more direct function of autoinducer secretion and response - the ability to determine whether secreted molecules rapidly move away from the cell.

520 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A large, genetically related group of Mycobacterium tuberculosis strains, variously called W or Beijing, is distinguished by specific molecular markers and referred to as the W-Beijing family strains.

505 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Mutants susceptible to CAMPs are more efficiently inactivated by phagocytes and are virulence-attenuated, indicating that CAMP resistance plays a key role in bacterial infections.

466 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: It is concluded that vertebrate hosts rather than tick species are the key to Lyme borrelia burgdorferi s.l. spirochaete diversity.

412 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: There are common themes among bacteriophage-encoded virulence factors, which include the well-characterized bacterial toxins and proteins that alter antigenicity as well as several new classes of bacteriophysical proteins such as superantigens, effectors translocated by a type III secretion system, and proteins required for intracellular survival and host cell attachment.

378 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: It is speculated that the ESAT-6-like and YukA-like proteins form a novel Gram-positive secretion system potentially driven by the FtsK/SpoIIIE ATPase domains in the YukA to investigate this hypothesis in organisms that are easier to manipulate than pathogenic mycobacteria.

340 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Differences in the absorption properties and cellular costs between chlorophyll a(2)/b(2) and phycobilisome antennas in extant Prochlorococcus and Synechococcus appear to play a role in differentiating their ecological niches in the ocean environment.

334 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Surveillance is a key defence against emerging pathogens but will often need to be integrated across human, domestic animal and wildlife populations.

319 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A global analysis of the surface-protein-encoding genes of Listeria monocytogenes revealed genes encoding proteins potentially anchored in the cell membrane by a hydrophobic tail as well as genes encoding P60-like proteins and lipoproteins.

305 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The ability of such viral functions to successfully 'face off' against the host immune system ensures the success of this pathogen in the human population and could provide key insights into disease mechanisms.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: These initial studies suggest that a wide diversity of small eukaryotes remains to be discovered not only in the ocean but also in other environments, and it is predicted that environmental molecular identification of eucaryotes will have a profound impact in the immediate future.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: It is argued that the evolutionary consequences of multiple infection depend critically on whether the exploitation rate of an individual parasite is governed directly by the behaviour of the individual, or whether it is limited by the collective behaviour of a coinfecting group.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Preliminary evidence suggests that MLA and a chemically distinct family of lipid A mimetics - the aminoalkyl glucosaminide 4-phosphates - act on Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) and have potent immunomodulatory effects when used both as vaccine adjuvants and as stand-alone products.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: These studies demonstrate the advantages of combining experimental and computational approaches, and they yield new insights into TTSS effectors and virulence regulation in P. syringae, potential effector targeting signals in all T TSS-dependent pathogens, and strategies for finding TTSs effectors in other bacteria that have sequenced genomes.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: How microorganisms regulate sialic acid metabolism to ensure an adequate supply of free sugar for surface remodeling is a new area of research interest to basic scientists and those focused on the clinical outcome of the host-pathogen interaction.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The integration of biological information, along with analytical procedures, makes it possible to assess the total impact of lateral gene transfer on microbial genomes.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Accumulating evidence suggests that TTPs are components of oligomeric protein channels that are inserted into the host cell membrane by the TTSS.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: It is argued that focusing on a single aspect of a complex life cycle, or a single measure of fitness (e.g. the number of asexual spores) is appropriate, and choosing which aspect of fitness to measure can be facilitated by an understanding of how fitness measures are correlated.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Chronic infection with other bacteria, notably Salmonella typhi, can also facilitate tumour development, and several bacterial toxins interfere with cellular signalling mechanisms in a way that is characteristic of tumour promoters.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Many picornaviruses use cell-surface molecules belonging to the immunoglobulin superfamily (IgSF) as their cellular receptors, which destabilizes the virus and thus initiates the uncoating process.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Early evidence suggests that proteins encoded by certain members of this gene family could be present in the mycobacterial cell wall, impact antigen-presentation pathways and the ensuing host immune responses, and also provide a mechanism for generating antigenic diversity in myc Cobacteria.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The latency period and persistence of the disease and the apparent lack of efficacy of humoral immunity are consistent with P. brasiliensis existing as a facultative intracellular pathogen.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Comparison of the similarities and differences between the five publicly available Salmonella genome sequences reveals extensive sequence conservation among the Salmoneella serovars.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Recent studies of coatAssembly in the model organism Bacillus subtilis are reviewed, and the implications of these findings for coat assembly in B. anthracis and for defense against biological weapons are explored.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Evidence is provided that temporally and geographically distinct epidemics, and the complex array of GAS clinical presentations, might be related in part to the acquisition or evolution of phage-encoded virulence factors.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The different modelling exercises that were developed over the course of the foot-and-mouth disease epidemic are reviewed, describing the difficulties in interpreting the available data and the appropriateness of the various assumptions.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The existence of mammalian Toll-like receptors (TLRs) and the recent identification of two mammalian nucleotide-binding site leucine-rich repeat (NBS-LRR) proteins (NOD1 and NOD2) as intracellular sensors of bacterial products bring new insights into the possibility of extracellular versus intrACEllular pathogen recognition and signal transduction depending on the nature of the infection.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: It is proposed that cytoplasmic ammonia generated by the action of urease is protonated by H(+) ions leaking in from the acidic medium and that the NH(4)(+) formed is extruded from the cy toplasm via an as-yet-unidentified transport system.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Novel approaches used over the past two decades, including new designs for field experiments, repeat field observations and remote-sensing capabilities, together with updated methods of sample analysis, have led to a revolution in thinking about the mechanisms and controls of nutrient dynamics in the deep blue sea.