Ways to Go

by Elio
 

The special issue of Science of 27 November 2009 (Vol­ume 326, Issue 5957) focusing on Spatial Cell Biology con­tains a larger than usual number of items with a mi­crobial focus. Although only one¹ of the six featured Re­views on the topic in question is microbial, three of six Perspectives², one of two Research Articles³, and three of twelve Reports⁴ fit the bill.
 

Readers of this blog need not be reminded that if Science reported on the living world in proportion to the num­bers and to the past and present importance of living organisms, the biological portion of each issue would be at least 90% microbial in content!
 

¹ L. Shapiro et al., Why and How Bacteria Localize Pro­teins.
² Norman Letvin, Moving Forward in HIV Vaccine Development; J.F. Banfield and M. Young, Variety – the Splice of Life – in Microbial Communities; H. Ochman and R. Raghvan, Excavating the Func­tional Landscape of Bacterial Cells.
³ S. Kühner et al., Proteome Organization in a Genome-Reduced Bacterium (Mycoplasma).
⁴ E. Yus et al., Impact of Genome Reduction on Bacterial Metabolism and Its Regulation; M. Güell et al., Transcriptome Complexity in a Genome-Reduced Bacterium (Mycoplasma); R.G. Tawar et al., Crystal Structure of a Nucleocapsid-Like Nucleoprotein-RNA Complex of Respiratory Syncytial Virus.

 
 

 
 

Comments

[Welkin]

Since Elio includes viruses in the microbiology coalition, I have the following comment:
Two years ago when I was a guest at the New England regional ASM meeting, i was given an "anti-nucleus" button to wear, which I wore while talking about my favorite subject, retroviruses. This inspires a Talmudic-like query - is the virus the microbe, or is the infected cell the microbe? Because I think my favorite microbe is essentially a eukaryotic cell.