American Academy Of Microbiology Research Articles

A Message to Our Readers

Previous articleNext article FreeA Message to Our ReadersPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreWe are proud to announce that Dr. Daniel E. Dykhuizen has been promoted to Editor Emeritus of The Quarterly Review of Biology, effective 1 September 2021. With Dr. Dykhuizen’s designation as Editor Emeritus, Dr. Liliana M. Dávalos will assume the responsibilities of Editor-in-Chief, joined with James D. Thomson, Gregory A. Wray, and John J. Wiens as Editors.Dr. Dykhuizen has been associated with the QRB since 1992, first as a Book Review Consultant (1992–2002), second as an Editor (2002–2005 and 2007–2010), and then as Editor-in-Chief (2010–2021).Dr. Dykhuizen is an expert in population genetics, having received a Ph.D. under the mentorship of Professor Richard Lewontin from the University of Chicago in 1970. He joined the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, now Stony Brook University, in 1987. He has served as Editor of Genetica, Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, and Journal of Bacteriology, and was on the editorial board of Infection, Genetics and Evolution, and PLOS Pathogens. He has also served on numerous grant panels. Dr. Dykhuizen is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Microbiology. In 2009, the State University of New York Board of Trustees appointed Dr. Dykhuizen to the rank of Distinguished Professor. He was also the winner of the Award for Faculty Mentoring, presented by the University President in 2011. A symposium entitled “Experimental Evolution and DNA” was held in honor of Dr. Dykhuizen’s professional scientific achievements in 2012.It gives us great pleasure to thank Dr. Dykhuizen for his long service to The Quarterly Review of Biology. We wish him health and happiness in his future endeavors.The Editors and Staff of The Quarterly Review of Biology Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Quarterly Review of Biology Volume 96, Number 3September 2021 Published in association with Stony Brook University Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/716164 Views: 235 © 2021 The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

How Climate Change affects Microbial Ecosystems (and Vice Versa)

The American Academy of Microbiology (AAM) periodically hosts colloquia that bring together experts on important topics in microbial sciences. The conclusions are published in short reports (FAQs) that explain the issues in language that is accessible to the general public. These FAQs are often used by teachers, politicians, and others who are interested in the topics.

Making the Leap from Research Laboratory to Clinic: Challenges and Opportunities for Next-Generation Sequencing in Infectious Disease Diagnostics.

ABSTRACTNext-generation DNA sequencing (NGS) has progressed enormously over the past decade, transforming genomic analysis and opening up many new opportunities for applications in clinical microbiology laboratories. The impact of NGS on microbiology has been revolutionary, with new microbial genomic sequences being generated daily, leading to the development of large databases of genomes and gene sequences. The ability to analyze microbial communities without culturing organisms has created the ever-growing field of metagenomics and microbiome analysis and has generated significant new insights into the relation between host and microbe. The medical literature contains many examples of how this new technology can be used for infectious disease diagnostics and pathogen analysis. The implementation of NGS in medical practice has been a slow process due to various challenges such as clinical trials, lack of applicable regulatory guidelines, and the adaptation of the technology to the clinical environment. In April 2015, the American Academy of Microbiology (AAM) convened a colloquium to begin to define these issues, and in this document, we present some of the concepts that were generated from these discussions.

Obituaries: Edwin E. Geldreich

Edwin. E. Geldreich, Jr., a long time member of ASM and a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, died at age 92 on 7 October 2014. A native Cincinnatian, he received both his undergraduate and masters' degrees in biological sciences from the University of Cincinnati. He served in the U.S. Army in the European campaign during the Second World War. Initially hired by the noted bacteriologist C. T. Butterfield, his entire professional career was spent with various federal agencies working on water-related programs. He was a charter employee of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), where he served as both Chief Microbiologist and Senior Advisor for drinking water research activities.

American Academy of Microbiology

American Academy of Microbiology

Editorial introductions

Editorial introductions

American Academy of Microbiology

American Academy of Microbiology

Profile of Beatrice H. Hahn

Over the years, Hahn has earned numerous honors, from receiving a National Institutes of Health R37 Merit Award in 2008 to election to both the American Academy of Microbiology and the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies. In 2002, Discover magazine named her one of “The 50 Most Important Women in Science.” Hahn credits “a lot of luck, good health, a talented team, and a good husband” for her success. Together with her husband George Shaw, another international leader in human and simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) research, Hahn continues to make impressive contributions to this field of medical science. Both Hahn and Shaw are now based at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine.

Petroleum microbiology

This brief encyclopedia entry provides a succinct but useful definition of the field of study known as petroleum microbiology. This blog provides a good overview of microbial enhanced oil recovery history, methods, successes and needs for further research. Sintef, the largest independent research organization in Scandinavia, provides an excellent resource on the general topic of petroleum microbiology. There are links to original research papers. This site provides elementary information about the different facets of petroleum microbiology. This report is well referenced and contains some general information on enhanced recovery techniques and biosurfactants. This Wikipedia entry is a good starting point for information on oil spills. Parts of it deal with bioremediation and the addition of dispersants. This report, although a bit dated, is a useful compilation of issues relevant to microbiological treatment of oil spills in the oceans. This site is self-described as the ‘Little black book for oil spill contractors’. This booklet is published by the American Academy of Microbiology and contains general information pertaining to oil spills, organized in a frequently-asked-questions format. This page contains photos pertaining to the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico in the summer of 2010. This page focuses on microbiological aspects of oil spills. This page maintained by the US Environmental Protection Agency contains broad-based information on oil spills. It provides links to protocols and recommended practices. This page provides information on the microbial biodegradation reactions known for benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylenes (BTEX). Isooctane is an example of a branched, aliphatic hydrocarbon and its biodegradation metabolism is shown at this site. Fluorene is an example of a fused-ring aromatic/aliphatic compound representative of a large group of compounds found in petroleum. Dibenzothiophene is a representative heterocyclic compound. Microbes catalyse an interesting and useful set of reactions with these compounds that result in the removal of the organic sulfur. This page provides a good list of papers relevant to oil spills. Most of the papers focus on microbiological or analytical chemical aspects. This book is a comprehensive resource on the microbiological aspects of well biofouling. This Wikipedia entry provides an excellent overview of microbial enhanced oil recovery. This site emphasizes how microbiology plays a key role in petroleum industry operations. Claude ZoBell was a pioneer in petroleum microbiology and his work laid the groundwork for subsequent studies on hydrocarbon metabolism, biosurfactants and concepts of enhanced oil recovery.

American Academy of Microbiology

American Academy of Microbiology

MBio ’s First Birthday

The 2011 ASM General Meeting in New Orleans will mark the first-year anniversary of the official launching of mBio . It has been a remarkable year that witnessed the growth and success of the first ASM open-access online-only general-type journal. Since its launch, mBio has published 100 articles, of which 51 were contributed by members of the American Academy of Microbiology (AAM) through the direct contribution track (1). The support of mBio by AAM members has been a critical element in the initial success of the journal, as Academy members have provided a constant stream of superb papers that helped establish a high standard for scientific excellence. mBio has achieved many indexing successes in its first year. mBio is now indexed in at least 36 journal indexes, including Chemical Abstracts Service, Current Contents/Life Sciences, Directory …

Peer Review of Manuscripts Submitted Via the Academy Fellowship Track

When the American Society for Microbiology set out to create a topflight entry into the new world of online, open-access journals, it had a number of assets in its favor. Endorsement by the American Academy of Microbiology (AAM), ASM’s honorific branch, was one of the critical assets. The AAM is home to more than 2,000 Academy Fellows, each of whom has been identified by a highly selective election process as an outstanding, internationally respected scientist. When mBio was launched, AAM Fellows were given the opportunity to submit their research findings on a privileged track (see http://mbio.asm.org/site/misc/fellows.xhtml for complete details), similar to that provided to members of the National Academy of …

J. Craig Venter—The Human Genome Project

American-born biochemist-geneticist J. Craig Venter is acknowledged, along with geneticist Francis Sellers Collins (1950-), as being a primary force behind the Human Genome Project. Venter, with private funding, and Collins, with public funding, independently mapped and sequenced human DNA. Their reports appeared in 2001 (one in Nature and the other in Science). A sheet of 5 stamps (Scott No. 561) issued by Palau in 1999 provides an opportunity to honor J. Craig Venter indirectly. The sheet was issued to commemorate advances in science and medicine in the 20th century. One of the stamps representing the Human Genome Project shows the overall structure of DNA. J. Craig Venter was born on October 14, 1946, in Salt Lake City, UT. He spent his youth in San Francisco, CA, where he attended high school. After high school, he joined the US Naval Medical Corps and served in Vietnam, where he provided medical care at an orphanage. After Venter returned to the United States, he enrolled as a premedical student at the University of California, San Diego. However, he soon decided to pursue a career in research. He received a BS degree in biochemistry in 1972 and a PhD degree in physiology and pharmacology in 1975, both from the University of California, San Diego. In 1976, Venter became an assistant professor of pharmacology and therapeutics at the State University of New York at Buffalo and also worked at the nearby Roswell Park Memorial Institute. His research focused primarily on the elucidation of the structure and function of adrenergic receptors and muscarinic cholinergic receptors. Venter was promoted to professor in the early 1980s. For his work on receptors, he received the Boehringer Ingelheim Muscarinic Receptor Research Award. In 1984, he became a section chief at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, MD, where he worked until 1992. His work at the NIH concentrated on neurotransmitters, specifically on genes that encode for enzymes involved in the synthesis of neurotransmitters and receptors. In July 1992, Venter left the NIH and became founder and chairman of the board of The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR), a not-for-profit genomics research institution in Rockville, MD. He served as its president until 1998. In 1998, Venter joined Applera Corporation and became president and chief scientific officer of the newly founded Celera Genomics. The goal of Celera Genomics was to become the definitive source of genomic and related medical and biological information. In January 2002, Venter stepped down as president of Celera Genomics but continued to chair its scientific advisory board. Currently, he is serving as president of J. Craig Venter Institute. Venter pioneered the use of automated gene sequencers, and in 1990, he developed “expressed sequence tags” (ESTs), a new strategy for the discovery and tagging of genes that revolutionized biological science. In this approach, complementary DNA is partially sequenced, or “tagged,” using an automated DNA sequencing machine. The resulting sequences (ESTs) are long enough for one to be distinguished from another. Venter has published more than 160 research articles and has received many awards, including being elected a fellow of several societies, such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Microbiology. In 1999, he received the Beckman Award and the Chiron Corporation Biotechnology Research Award. Efforts to bring Collins and Venter together to complete the mapping of the human genome began in late 1999. In March 2000, US President Bill Clinton (1946-) and British Prime Minister Tony Blair (1953-) made a joint declaration that all genome information should be free to the public. This announcement led to cooperation between Collins and Venter, and on June 26, 2000, Venter and Collins jointly announced that, after nearly a decade of work, both the public Human Genome Project headed by Collins and Celera Genomics headed by Venter had deciphered essentially all the genes in human DNA. The importance of the cooperation between the 2 geneticists and the genome sequencing effort is far-reaching and may result in the discovery of keys to the diagnosis and treatment of numerous diseases, from diabetes to heart disease to Alzheimer disease.

American Academy of Microbiology

American Academy of Microbiology

American Academy of Microbiology

American Academy of Microbiology

American Academy of Microbiology

American Academy of Microbiology

A Model for Protein Turnover: the Work of Robert T. Sauer

The Structural Stability of a Protein Is an Important Determinant of Its Proteolytic Stability in Escherichia coli(Parsell, D. A., and Sauer, R. T. (1989) J. Biol. Chem. 264, 7590–7595)Identification of C-terminal Extensions That Protect Proteins from Intracellular Proteolysis(Bowie, J. U., and Sauer, R. T. (1989) J. Biol. Chem. 264, 7596–7602) The Structural Stability of a Protein Is an Important Determinant of Its Proteolytic Stability in Escherichia coli (Parsell, D. A., and Sauer, R. T. (1989) J. Biol. Chem. 264, 7590–7595) Identification of C-terminal Extensions That Protect Proteins from Intracellular Proteolysis (Bowie, J. U., and Sauer, R. T. (1989) J. Biol. Chem. 264, 7596–7602) Robert T. Sauer grew up in the Hudson River Valley in New York. He attended Amherst College and received his B.A. in biophysics in 1972. Before and after graduating from Amherst, he worked as a research technician at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Eventually, Sauer enrolled in graduate school at Harvard University. His Ph.D. research focused on how the modular structure of phage λ repressor allowed it to act as a regulator of gene expression. A year before receiving his Ph.D. in 1979, Sauer joined the biology department at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He worked his way up through the academic ranks and eventually became Salvador E. Luria Professor of Biology, a title that he continues to hold today. When he started his lab at MIT, Sauer continued his research on the regulation of gene expression, studying the mechanisms that allow transcription factors to recognize their specific binding sites in chromosomal DNA. Over the years, his interests shifted to protein folding and how amino acid sequence dictates the three-dimensional structure, stability, and susceptibility of proteins to degradation. Some of his findings are detailed in the two papers reprinted here that were published back to back in the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC). At the time the papers were published, it was believed that the proteolytic susceptibility of a protein was related to the thermodynamic stability of its native structure. However, it was difficult to prove this hypothesis because experiments inevitably ended up altering more than one property of the protein being studied. For example, a side chain modification meant to alter protein stability could also affect degradation if it acted as a recognition signal. As detailed in the first Classic, Sauer and his graduate student Dawn Parsell came up with a system in which they could alter protein stability without changing other variables. They constructed a set of variants of the N-terminal DNA-binding domain of λ repressor with a wide range of melting temperatures. Pulse-chase experiments showed that the most thermally stable proteins had the longest intracellular half-lives. The pair also showed that second-site mutations that increased the thermodynamic stability of the native N-terminal domain also suppressed intracellular degradation. This paper was followed by one in which Sauer and his graduate student James Bowie showed that intracellular degradation can also be affected by mechanisms independent of a protein's thermodynamic stability. The scientists isolated revertants of defective mutants in the Arc repressor of bacteriophage P22 and found that five of the six reverting mutations were frameshifts resulting in C-terminal extensions. The mutations prolonged the half-lives of the proteins but did not alter their thermodynamic stability, structure, oligomeric form, or DNA-binding properties. Furthermore, fusion of one of these tails to the C-terminal end of a mutant form of the N-terminal domain of λ repressor prevented proteolysis of the protein. Sauer hypothesized that the C-terminal sequences prevented degradation by blocking the proteins' recognition by the cell's proteolytic machinery. From these experiments, Sauer proposed a bipartite model for protein turnover in which the thermodynamic stability of a protein determines the fraction of the protein that will be in an unfolded and proteolytically susceptible state, whereas sequence determinants within the unfolded protein chain determine how effectively it will act as a substrate for proteolytic enzymes. Most recently, Sauer's research has focused on the structure and function of the molecular machines that disassemble macromolecular complexes and unfold native proteins. Sauer has received many honors and awards in recognition of his contributions to science and teaching. These include the MIT School of Science Prize for Excellence in Graduate Teaching (1998), the Protein Society's Amgen Award (2001) and Hans Neurath Award (2007), and election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1993), the National Academy of Sciences (1996), and the American Academy of Microbiology (1996). He also served as president of the Protein Society (1997–1999) and head of the MIT Department of Biology (1999–2004).

American Academy of Microbiology (AAM) 2009 Election Results

American Academy of Microbiology (AAM) 2009 Election Results

American Academy of Microbiology

American Academy of Microbiology

Prime Suspect: Does Cattle-Associated Bacterium Cause Crohn's Disease?

Because the bacterium Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis (MAP) causes a Crohn's-like gastrointestinal disease in cattle, it is now considered a prime suspect for causing Crohn's disease in humans, according to a recent report, MAP: Incidental Pathogen or Public Health Threat?, from the American Academy of Microbiology (AAM). From a public health standpoint, research evaluating whether bacteria that cause this disease in cattle can be transmitted through the food chain to humans should be given high priority, according to that report, which derives from a colloquium convened by AAM in June 2007. The report also summarizes studies that have explored links between MAP and human disease, offering specific recommendations for research.