Bright Lights, Abundant Operons—Fluorescence and Genomic Technologies Advance Studies of Bacterial Locomotion and Signal Transduction: Review of the BLAST Meeting

• Main Authors: Robert B. Bourret, Nyles W. Charon, Ann M. Stock, Ann H. West, West Virginia, Umdnj-robert Wood, Johnson Medical School, Howard Hughes
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2001
• Subjects: Antarc*; Antarctica
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.501.2635; http://stock.cabm.rutgers.edu/mem/stock/review.pdf

In the merciless world of natural selection, microorganisms have turned their most obvious characteristic, their small size, into their greatest advantage. Small size results in a large surface-to-volume ratio, which facilitates exchange of chemi-cals between the interior of bacterial cells and the external environment. The hallmark of prokaryotes is their metabolic diversity. Virtually every conceivable energy or nutrient source can be utilized by one microbial species or another, and viable microorganisms can be found practically anywhere on our planet that one bothers to look, whether at the bottom of the ocean, on the frozen landscape of Antarctica, or a mile under-ground. One measure of the remarkable success of prokaryotes is that bacteria are conservatively estimated to outnumber hu-mans by an astronomical factor of at least 1021 (93). It is therefore not surprising that prokaryotes (Archaea and Bacte-