Bacterial Population Genetics in Infectious Disease

Genetics of susceptibility to human infectious disease.

Before Robert Koch's work in the late nineteenth century, diseases such as tuberculosis and leprosy were widely believed to be inherited disorders. Heritability of susceptibility to several infectious diseases has been confirmed by studies in the twentieth century. Infectious diseases, old and new, continue to be an important cause of mortality worldwide. A greater understanding of disease proc...

The role of genetics in alzheimer’s disease

Alzheimer's disease is a progressive neurological disorder that causes the brain to shrink (atrophy) and brain cells die. Alzheimer's disease is the most common cause of dementia and causes a decrease in thinking skills and social behaviors. Alzheimer's disease is more common in people over 65 years old. The risk of developing Alzheimer's disease and other types of dementia increases with age,...

Multitasking Bacterial Moonlighting Proteins in Bacterial Virulence and Infectious Disease

Men may not be able to multitask, but it seems that proteins can. Although the one gene-one protein-one function hypothesis is well ingrained in the Central Dogma, it has become clear during the past decade that many proteins have one or more unique functions in addition to their primary biological action. These proteins perform multiple independent and often unrelated roles without partitionin...

Bacterial infectious disease control by vaccine development.

Bacterial DNA topology and infectious disease

The gram-negative bacterium Escherichia coli and its close relative Salmonella enterica have made important contributions historically to our understanding of how bacteria control DNA supercoiling and of how supercoiling influences gene expression and vice versa. Now they are contributing again by providing examples where changes in DNA supercoiling affect the expression of virulence traits tha...