When cells of rapidly moving Listeria monocytogenes bacteria collide with a potential host cell, a protuberance from the bacterial membrane induces that target cell to engulf the pathogen, according to Keith Ireton at the University of Central Florida in Orlando and his collaborators.

Following exposure to ultraviolet (UV) radiation, the ObgE protein of Deinococcus radiodurans apparently acts in concert with elevated levels of nitric oxide (NO) "as a general checkpoint system for telling cells to go forward and divide," enabling them to recover from the stresses of that exposure, says Brian Crane of Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y.

The distribution of Mycobacterium bovis and Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the agents of tuberculosis in animals and humans, is far more jumbled among host species than many people realize, according to participants of the symposium, "Transmission of Tuberculosis: Is TB more of a Zoonosis than We Thought?" convened as part of the 49th Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy (ICAAC), held during September 2009 in San Francisco, Calif.