Audio interview with Dr. Ian Lipkin on his work on the film Contagion 

Uropathogenic Escherichia coli cells attach to and invade host cells via sticky type 1 pili, which form when chaperone and usher proteins interact in the bacterial periplasm.

Malaria Tools, a model for tracking this parasitic disease, is robust enough to predict outcomes of interventions now being contemplated, according to its developers, Azra Ghani and colleagues at Imperial College in London, England.

When Atlantis launched in July for the final mission of the U.S. Space Shuttle program, it carried microbial experiments probing bacterial biofilms, the genetic makeup of yeast, microgravity effects in a plant-bacterial model system, and a candidate live-attenuated vaccine for combating Streptococcus pneumoniae infections.

Root endophytic communities in eastern cottonwood trees, Populus deltoids, are distinct assemblages rather than opportunists from the surrounding rhizosphere, according to Christopher W. Schadt at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee and colleagues there as well as at Duke University in Durham, N.C.

Soil bacteria around the roots of sugar beets, specifically members of the Pseudomonadaceae, help to protect the plants against fungal pathogens, according to Jos M. Raaijmakers at Wageningen University in Wageningen, the Netherlands and his collaborators there as well as in Brazil and California.