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Despite the fact that fungi are biochemically and ecologically suited to the degradation of a range of hazardous environmental chemicals, they have rarely been exploited for bioremediation. Here, Harms and colleagues describe the features that make fungi suitable for bioremediation and discuss their potential applications in this field.
Bacteraemia caused byStaphylococcus aureusinfections can lead to life-threatening metastatic infections. Thwaites and Gant propose that neutrophils form a privileged site that is poorly accessible to antibiotics and that plays an important part in transporting the bacteria to distant sites.
In this Review, Armitage and colleagues describe how some bacterial species, as typified byRhodobacter sphaeroides, have evolved to contain complex chemotaxis signalling networks that integrate sensory information from the environment with metabolic information from within the cell to produce a balanced response at the flagellar motor.
RNA polymerase is an ancient enzyme that is present in all cellular life. Werner and Grohmann provide an evolutionary view of this enzyme by describing the differences and similarities in the three domains of life, and propose a hypothesis for the evolution of transcriptional regulation.
Dormancy is a bet-hedging strategy used by microorganisms to generate a seed bank that helps bacteria survive adverse conditions. Lennon and Jones describe some of the mechanisms of dormancy and explain how dormancy affects the stability of ecosystems.
Viruses have traditionally been thought of as pathogens, but many confer a benefit to their hosts and some are essential for the host life cycle. In this Review, Marilyn Roossinck describes beneficial viruses that are found in a range of hosts, including bacteria, insects, plants and animals.
