Reviews and Resources:Metabolism and Bacterial Pathogenesis: BOOKS

Abstract

I recently had the pleasure of reading this wonderful book. Metabolism and Bacterial Pathogenesis came at the right time, because I work on a human-exclusive pathogen for which some strains collected from patients are auxotrophic, making me wonder: how is it that a pathogen that is very effective at surviving in humans requires one of the very amino acids that is limiting in humans? Every chapter in this book, directly or indirectly, suggested to me that the answer I am looking for it may be very near, and what I have to do is to dig through some of the numerous references listed. These references are so limited that it made me recall the frequent editorial restrictions on references—clearly, the contributors were encouraged to freely discuss the details in depth. The contributors also suggest provocative and challenging new concepts, e.g. “pathometabolism.” This term encompasses the complex metabolic interactions between host and bacterial pathogen, concepts that could lead to novel antimicrobial therapeutics.