• A Mold That Changed the Course of His­tory

    by Mercè Pi­queras — Re­cently, 'Na­ture' pub­lished an ar­ti­cle about the genome se­quence and analy­sis of Phy­toph­thora in­fes­tans, the oomycete that caused the potato blight in the 19th cen­tury that changed the course of his­tory. Phy­toph­thora in­fes­tans is the rea­son that to­day about 11% of the pop­u­la­tion of the United States is of Irish ori­gin and...

  • Spe­cial De­liv­ery – Eu­kary­ote Style

    by Merry Youle — Type III se­cre­tion, the mech­a­nism that in­tro­duces bac­te­r­ial pro­teins into eu­kary­ote host cells, rates among the most ex­cit­ing themes of mod­ern path­o­genic mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy. What makes it fas­ci­nat­ing is both its biomechanics(it makes use of a fancy nan­otech­nol­ogy nee­dle-like de­vice) and its strate­gic as­pects (the de­liv­ered pro&shy:teins, termed ef­fec­tor pro­teins, en­able the bac­te­r­ial pathogens to at­tach to or dam­age the host cell).