Guest commentary

GUEST COMMENTARY Descriptive Science

The Instructions to Authors for Infection and Immunity state that “IAI will not consider papers that are . . . purely descriptive” (3). When applied to science, the word “descriptive” has acquired dismissive or pejorative connotations and is frequently provided as justification for rejection of a manuscript or grant application. Given the widespread use of this adjective and its profound implic...

GUEST COMMENTARY (Genome) Size Matters

The quotation above (http://www.tufts.edu/med/apua /Practitioners/ABRcontrol.html) has led to the commonly held view that all bacteria will eventually become resistant to any antibiotic, given enough time and exposure. However, not all bacteria develop resistance to antibiotics at the same rate (and perhaps some species of bacteria may never develop resistance to certain antibiotics). And some ...

GUEST COMMENTARY It Is All about Metabolic Fluxes

GUEST COMMENTARY Bacterial Development in the Fast Lane

Timing is everything—in love, in war, in sports, and in politics—but what about during multicellular development of Myxococcus xanthus bacteria? In this issue, Higgs et al. (9) report that loss of a single protein kinase can radically change the timing of aggregation and sporulation of 100,000 cells as they race to build a fruiting body when faced with starvation. Key transcription factors accu...

GUEST COMMENTARY Quorum Sensing “Flips” the Acetate Switch

The term “acetate switch” refers to the transition from acetate production (dissimilation) to acetate utilization (assimilation). Best studied with the enteric bacterium Escherichia coli, the acetate switch takes place as cells deplete their environment of acetate-producing (acetogenic) carbon sources, such as D-glucose or L-serine, and begin to scavenge for the previously produced and excreted...