Microbes and their hosts -- exploring the complexity of symbiosis in DNA and ce...( New Rochelle NY July 28 2009The uniq...)

New Rochelle, NY, July 28, 2009The unique association between microorganisms and their hosts, whether insects, plants, or mammals, provides a fascinating view into how microbial symbionts adapt to changing biological environments. Insights into the diversity and complexity of symbiotic relationships are the focus of the current special issue of DNA and Cell Biology, a peer-reviewed journal published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. The issue is available free online at www.liebertpub.com/dna

"Symbiosis is one of the most rapidly growing fields in biology.... After decades of focusing on bacteria in pure culture, it is evident that to manage them for our benefit, we need to understand bacteria in association with the complex biological environments with which they contend in the natural world," write Jo Handelsman, PhD, Editor-in-Chief of DNA and Cell Biology, Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and President of the Rosalind Franklin Society, and Guest Editor Margaret J. McFall-Ngai, Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in their Editorial.

The issue contains articles representative of the broad range of scientific topics and disciplines related to microbial symbiosis. These include "The Oral Microbial Consortium's Interaction with the Periodontal Innate Defense System," which describes a process called "local chemokine paralysis," in which the membership and characteristics of the bacterial community that populates the gingival crevice in the human mouth affect the ability of the natural immune defenses in the mouth to detect the presence of harmful bacteria and orchestrate their destruction. Author Richard Darveau, PhD, from the University of Washington in Seattle, describes this phenomenon as "another mechanism by which the action of a single bacterial member of the oral consortium can affect the host responses to a wide variety of different bacteria."

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