Microbial Pathogenesis' Damage-Response Framework

Abstract

Numerous infectious illnesses produced by bacteria that seldom cause disease in normal, healthy immunocompetent hosts emerged in the late twentieth century. The development of these illnesses demonstrates that a conventional notion of pathogenicity and virulence fail to account for the reality that microbial pathogenesis is influenced by both the bacterium and the host. To overcome this barrier to studying host–microbe interactions, we offer the 'damage-response' framework, a novel theoretical paradigm for understanding microbial pathogenesis.