Amir Aharoni, Department of Life Sciences and the National Institute for Biotechnology in the Negev (NIBN), Ben-Gurion University, Beer-Sheva, Israel. The size of the microbial world is beyond our imagination. In last year’s crystal ball article, Tom Curtis compared the size of the microbial world to the size of the universe pointing out that the number of microorganisms in the world is billion...

Pathogens and their hosts have been in an evolutionary arms race for millions of years, and much has been learned about the strategies each has developed to stay on top. This Select focuses on recent papers reporting new insights into the mechanisms used by pathogens to stay in the race, either by hijacking host proteins and cellular pathways or, in one case, by hitching a ride on an insect vec...

Microbial pathogens have evolved strategies to live and multiply within their hosts, who in turn have evolved surveillance systems that detect such pathogens and trigger countermeasures. This Microbiology Select highlights recent papers that reveal new aspects of these host and microbial strategies. The bacterial pathogen that causes typhoid fever in humans, Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi (S...

The infectious agent of transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE) was assumed to be the aggregate of abnormal prion protein isoform (PrPsc). We observed that lowering the pH of 3% SDS-inoculated plasma or brain homogenate after PK digestion to 4.5 (acidic SDS condition) enabled to precipitate proteinase K-resistant prion protein (PrPres) in plasma as well as PrPres in the brain with synthet...

I N T H E E F F O R T of devising ways and means of studying the existence of living organisms on other planets, attention must be focussed on microorganisms. This is not entirely due to professi,onal prejudice of microbiology, but is the consequence of accepted realization that microorganisms are responsible for the major amount of turnover of matter on earth and that life of the higher plants...

and strong emphasis are given to the role of gravity as a major designing agent of body structures. The author refutes the widely held idea that man gained his upright posture through an intermediate period of semi-erectness as may be observed in the gorilla and other anthropoid apes. This latter he regards as a reversion from the arboreally acquired vertical body posture of the primitive brach...