Annual Review of Microbiology articles from January 1 2003

Annual Review of Microbiology archives from January 1 2003

Gathering no moss.
January 1, 2003... * Abstract I never imagined that I would be asked to write an autobiography in a microbiology tome. For that matter, little did I think that I would consider microbiology the most intriguing subject in the life sciences and the only field I...

Molecular pathogenicity of the oral opportunistic pathogen Actinobacillus actinomycetemcomitans.
January 1, 2003... * Abstract Periodontitis is mankind's most common chronic inflammatory disease. One severe form of periodontitis is localized aggressive periodontitis (LAP), a condition to which individuals of African origin demonstrate an increased...

Brucella stationary-phase gene expression and virulence.
January 1, 2003... * Abstract The capacity of the Brucella spp. to establish and maintain long-term residence in the phagosomal compartment of host macrophages is critical to their ability to produce chronic infections in their mammalian hosts. The RNA binding...

How bacteria assemble flagella.
January 1, 2003... * Abstract The bacterial flagellum is both a motor organelle and a protein export/assembly apparatus. It extends from the cytoplasm to the cell exterior. All the protein subunits of the external elements have to be exported. Export employs a...

A salvage pathway for protein synthesis: tmRNA and trans-translation.
January 1, 2003... * Abstract Transfer-messenger RNA (tmRNA, or SsrA), found in all eubacteria, has both transfer and messenger RNA activity. Relieving ribosome stalling by a process called trans-translation, tmRN[A.sup.a1a] enters the ribosome and adds its...

Assembly dynamics of the bacterial cell division protein FtsZ: poised at the edge of stability.
January 1, 2003... * Abstract FtsZ is a prokaryotic tubulin homolog that assembles into a ring at the future site of cell division. The resulting "Z ring" forms the framework for the division apparatus, and its assembly is regulated throughout the bacterial...

Nitrogen assimilation and global regulation in Escherichia coli.
January 1, 2003... * Abstract Nitrogen limitation in Escherichia coli controls the expression of about 100 genes of the nitrogen regulated (Ntr) response, including the ammonia-assimilating glutamine synthetase. Low intracellular glutamine controls the Ntr...

On the trail of a cereal killer: exploring the biology of Magnaporthe grisea.
January 1, 2003... * Abstract The blast fungus Magnaporthe grisea causes a serious disease on a wide variety of grasses including rice, wheat, and barley. Rice blast is the most serious disease of cultivated rice and therefore poses a threat to the world's most...

Bacterial membrane lipids: where do we stand?
January 1, 2003... * Abstract Phospholipids play multiple roles in bacterial cells. These are the establishment of the permeability barrier, provision of the environment for many enzyme and transporter proteins, and they influence membrane-related processes...

Spatial and temporal control of differentiation and cell cycle progression in Caulobacter crescentus.
January 1, 2003... * Abstract The dimorphic and intrinsically asymmetric bacterium Caulobacter crescentus has become an important model organism to study the bacterial cell cycle, cell polarity, and polar differentiation. A multifaceted regulatory network...

Bacterial motility on a surface: many ways to a common goal.
January 1, 2003... * Abstract When free-living bacteria colonize biotic or abiotic surfaces, the resultant changes in physiology and morphology have important consequences on their growth, development, and survival. Surface motility, biofilm formation, fruiting...

Transposable elements in filamentous fungi.
January 1, 2003... * Abstract The past 10 years have been productive in the characterization of fungal transposable elements (TEs). All eukaryotic TEs described are found including an extraordinary prevalence of active members of the pogo family. The role of...

Bacteriophage-induced modifications of host RNA polymerase.
January 1, 2003... * Abstract Bacteriophages have developed an impressive array of ingenious mechanisms to modify bacterial host RNA polymerase to make it serve viral needs. In this review we summarize the current knowledge about two types of host RNA...

Vaccinia virus motility.
January 1, 2003... * Abstract Vaccinia virus (VV), the virus smallpox vaccine, replicates in the cytoplasm of infected cells. The intracellular movement of this large virus would be inefficient without specific transport mechanisms; therefore, W uses...

Measles virus 1998-2002: progress and controversy *.
January 1, 2003... * Abstract Despite the extensive media exposure that viruses such as West Nile, Norwalk, and Ebola have received lately, and the emerging threat that old pathogens may reappear as new agents of terrorism, measles virus (MV) persists as one of...

The uncultured microbial majority.
January 1, 2003... * Abstract Since the delineation of 12 bacterial phyla by comparative phylogenetic analyses of 16S ribosomal RNA in 1987 knowledge of microbial diversity has expanded dramatically owing to the sequencing of ribosomal RNA genes cloned from...

Pathways of oxidative damage.
January 1, 2003... * Abstract The phenomenon of oxygen toxicity is universal, but only recently have we begun to understand its basis in molecular terms. Redox enzymes are notoriously nonspecific, transferring electrons to any good acceptor with which they make...

Gene organization: selection, selfishness, and serendipity.
January 1, 2003... * Abstract The apparati behind the replication, transcription, and translation of prokaryotic and eukaryotic genes are quite different. Yet in both classes of organisms, genes may be organized in their respective chromosomes in similar ways...

Multiple sigma subunits and the partitioning of bacterial transcription space.
January 1, 2003... * Abstract Promoter recognition in eubacteria is carried out by the initiation factor sigma, which binds RNA polymerase and initiates transcription. Cells have one housekeeping factor and a variable number of alternative sigma factors that...

Natural selection and the emergence of a mutation phenotype: an update of the evolutionary synthesis considering mechanisms that affect genome variation.
January 1, 2003... * Abstract Most descriptions of evolution assume that all mutations are completely random with respect to their potential effects on survival. However, much like other phenotypic variations that affect the survival of the descendants,...

Archaeal DNA replication: eukaryal proteins in a bacterial context.
January 1, 2003... * Abstract Genome sequences of a number of archaea have revealed an apparent paradox in the phylogenies of the bacteria, archaea, and eukarya, as well as an intriguing set of problems to be resolved in the study of DNA replication. The...

Molecular genetics of Mycobacterium tuberculosis pathogenesis.
January 1, 2003... * Abstract Tuberculosis(TB) has afflicted humankind throughout history. Approximately one third of the world's population is currently infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis and nearly two million people die of TB annually. Although much...

The bacterial RecA protein as a motor protein.
January 1, 2003... * Abstract The bacterial RecA protein plays a central role in the repair of stalled replication forks, double-strand break repair, general recombination, induction of the SOS response, and SOS mutagenesis. The major activity of RecA in DNA...

DNA mismatch repair: molecular mechanisms and biological function *.
January 1, 2003... * Abstract DNA mismatch repair (MMR) guards the integrity of the genome in virtually all cells. It contributes about 1000-fold to the overall fidelity of replication and targets mispaired bases that arise through replication errors, during...

Kaposis's sarcoma--associated herpesvirus immunoevasion and tumorigenesis: two sides of the same coin?
January 1, 2003... * Abstract Kaposi's sarcoma-associated herpesvirus (KSHV) [or human herpesvirus 8 (HHV-8)] is the most frequent cause of malignancy among AIDS patients. KSHV and related herpesviruses have extensively pirated cellular cDNAs from the host...

The secret lives of the pathogenic mycobacteria.
January 1, 2003... * Abstract Pathogenic mycobacteria, including the causative agents of tuberculosis and leprosy, are responsible for considerable morbidity and mortality worldwide. A hallmark of these pathogens is their tendency to establish chronic...

Bacterial biofilms: an emerging link to disease pathogenesis.
January 1, 2003... * Abstract The role of biofilms in the pathogenesis of some chronic human infections is now widely accepted. However, the criteria used to determine whether a given infection is caused by biofilms remain unclear. In this chapter we discuss...