Caister Academic Press Limited

Flagella-dependent motility is widespread throughout prokaryotes and is advantageous when nutrients are limited, as a mechanism to migrate to more favourable environments and to compete with other...

Bacteria pathogenic for plants are responsible for devastating losses in agriculture. The use of antibiotics to control such infections is restricted in many countries due to worries over the...

Plasmids are fascinating entities which can replicate autonomously in bacterial, archaeal, and eukaryotic cells. They profit from the cellular environment of the host but can also carry a rich...

Prions are infectious, self-propagating proteinaceous agents that cause fatal neurodegenerative diseases, including Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) in humans, scrapie in sheep and goats, and bovine...

Composed of nearly a thousand different types of microorganisms - some beneficial, others not - the human gut microbiota plays an important role in health and disease. This is due to the presence of...

Probiotics are products aimed at delivering living bacterial cells to the gut ecosystem of humans and other animals, whereas prebiotics are non-digestible carbohydrates delivered in food to the large...

Targeted proteomics is a technology for detecting proteins of interest with high sensitivity, quantitative accuracy, and reproducibility. The analysis of a pre-defined group of proteins provides...

The bacterial genus Pseudomonas includes the opportunistic human pathogen P. aeruginosa, plant pathogenic bacteria, plant beneficial bacteria, ubiquitous soil bacteria with bioremediation...

Real time quantitative PCR (qPCR) technology has revolutionized almost all areas of microbiology, including clinical microbiology, food microbiology, industrial microbiology, environmental...

Bacterial detection and control are vital aspects of food microbiology. Real-time PCR is one of the most significant advances in this area, providing rapid, reliable, and quantitative results. In...

Real-Time PCR in Microbiology: From Diagnosis to CharacterisationAuthor: Ian MacKayPublisher: Caister Academic Press LimitedPublication Date: Sep 01, 2007Number of Pages: 468 pagesBinding: Hardback...

Real-time PCR technology is an established powerful research tool used in many scientific disciplines and is also utilized for mainstream testing in the regulated markets, such as food, veterinary,...

Real-time PCR (RT-PCR) technology is highly flexible and many alternative instruments and fluorescent probe systems have been developed recently. The decreased hands-on time, increased reliability,...

Retroviruses comprise a diverse family of enveloped RNA viruses, remarkable for their use of reverse transcription of viral RNA into linear double stranded DNA during replication and the subsequent...

Rhabdoviruses are a diverse family of single stranded, negative sense RNA viruses that can successfully utilize a myriad of ecological niches, ranging from plants and insects, to fish and mammals...

RNA and the Regulation of Gene Expression: A Hidden Layer of ComplexityAuthor: Kevin V. MorrisPublisher: Caister Academic Press LimitedPublication Date: Mar 01, 2008Number of Pages: 242 pagesBinding:...

Cellular editing of RNA can lead to the recoding of expressed sequences before they mature to their functional gene products, such as proteins or regulatory RNAs, and represents a hidden layer of...

Since its discovery in 1998, RNA interference (RNAi) has heralded the advent of novel tools for biological research and drug discovery. This exciting new technology is emerging as a powerful modality...

Salmonellae are important pathogens, responsible for an estimated one million deaths and 100 million human infections annually. Their genomes are mosaic puzzles - results of lateral transfer events...

The double-stranded (ds)RNA viruses represent a diverse group of viruses that vary widely in host range (humans, animals, plants, fungi, and bacteria), genome segment number (one to twelve), and...

Bacteria have evolved extraordinary abilities to regulate aspects of their behaviour (such as gene expression) in response to signals in the intracellular and extracellular environment. Key to this...

Members of the genus Shigella are responsible for bacillary dysentery and are of global public health importance. Shigella is one of the leading bacterial causes of diarrhoea worldwide with greatly...

Small DNA tumour viruses are a fascinating group of double-stranded DNA viruses, made up of the polyomavirus, the adenovirus and the papillomavirus families. These viruses continue to provide...

The staphylococci are important pathogenic bacteria responsible for a variety of diseases in humans and other animals. They are the most common cause of hospital-acquired infection. Antibiotic...

Streptomycetes are unusually complex bacteria that are abundant in soil. They grow as branching filaments and form chains of spores. Most importantly, they have an extraordinary ability to make...

To survive adverse and fluctuating conditions, microorganisms possess mechanisms to recognise diverse environmental changes and mount an appropriate response. Microorganisms frequently react...

Systems biology is the study of the dynamic interactions of more than one component in a biological system in order to understand and predict the behavior of the system as a whole. Systems biology is...

Paramyxoviruses are a diverse family of non-segmented negative strand RNA viruses that include many important human, animal, and zoonotic pathogens. Despite their enormous importance, the nature of...

Cyanobacteria are a fascinating and versatile group of bacteria of immense biological importance. Thought to be amongst the first organisms to colonize the earth, these bacteria are the...

A conformational transition of the cellular prion protein (PrPC) into an aberrantly folded isoform designated scrapie prion protein (PrPSc) is the hallmark of a variety of neurodegenerative disorders...