Cellular microbiology is a discipline that bridgesmicrobiology andcell biology.
The term "cellular microbiology" was coined by the authors of the book of the same title published in 1996.[1] Cooperation and mutual dependency between microbiology and cell biology had been increasing in the years before that, and the emergence of a new discipline had been suggested and discussed in several scientific conferences.
Cellular microbiology attempts to usepathogenicmicroorganisms as tools for cell-biology research, and to employ cell-biology methods to understand the pathogenicity of microorganisms.Toxins andvirulence factors from microbes have been used for decades to influence processes ineukaryoticcells and to study them. It has increasingly appeared that applying a purified toxin on a cell does not always provide the complete picture, and that understanding the role of the toxin in pathogenicity, the way the toxin promotes the microbe, the way the toxin is produced and theco-evolution of the toxin and itshost-cell counterparts, is crucial.
Numerous eukaryotic cellular processes have been clarified using microbial "tools". A major subject in this category is thecytoskeleton. Many microbes modify and influence the synthesis or degradation of the host-cell cytoskeleton, in particular theactin network.[2] Intracellular microbes, such as thebacteriaSalmonella andShigella, elicit actinpolymerization in host cells that otherwise do not internalize microbes (non-phagocytes). This causes the formation of projections that eventually engulf the bacteria. Bacteria such asYersinia inhibit actin polymerization in phagocytes, thereby preventing their uptake. Cellular microbiology tries to understand these processes and how they promoteinfection. Other eukaryotic processes that microbes influence and that are researched using microbes aresignal transduction,metabolism,vesicle trafficking,cell cycle andtranscriptional regulation, to name but a few.
Recently, the field of Cellular Microbiology has been expanded to incorporate investigation of thecell biology ofmicrobes themselves.[3][4] "The field of cellular microbiology is a coalescence of two fields: molecular microbiology and cell biology," said Professor Jacek Hawiger, Chair of Microbiology and Immunology at Vanderbilt University.[4] Particularly in the case of bacterial cells, new technology is starting to be used to reveal a high level of organization within the bacterial cells themselves. For example,high-resolution fluorescence microscopy[5] and atomic force microscopy[6] are both being used to show just how sophisticatedbacterial cells are.