Articles from the first PVC workshop

Most of the article from Special Issue of the publication Antonie van Leeuwenhoek dedicated to the first PVC workshop are now available on the pre-publication page of the AvL. Articles are available freely for a short time, so get them while you can. I have just been told that the SI will be freely available for the rest of the year. That is a very good news. Summary of the workshop and of the articles in the SI can be found in Introduction article by Devos, Jogler and Fuerst. The whole special issue is in production phase and should be available soon. Stay tuned.

First book on PVC published

The first book entirely dedicated to Planctomycetes bacteria is eventually out. It is published by Springer and is entitled Planctomycetes: Cell Structure, Origins and Biology, Editor: Fuerst JA. It is the first book on planctomycetes focused on their cell biology. It provides details on the significant ecology and enviromental significance of planctomycetes. And it is valuable for those in the field of planctomycetology and those entering it for the first time. Here is the introduction:

"Planctomycetes, and their relatives within the PVC superphylum of domain Bacteria, including verrucomicrobia and chlamydia, challenge our classical concept of the bacterium and its modes of life and provide new experimental models for exploring evolutionary cell biology and the full diversity of how living cells can be organized internally. Unique among Bacteria they include species possessing cells with intracellular membrane-bounded compartments and a peptidoglycan-less cell wall, and bacteria such as the anammox organisms performing unique anaerobic ammonium oxidation significant for global nitrogen cycle. The book introduces these fascinating and important bacteria and deals in detail with their unusual structure, physiology, genomics and evolutionary significance. It is a definitive summary of our recent knowledge of this important distinctive group of bacteria, microorganisms which challenge our very concept of the bacterium."

The book is limited to Planctomycetes, but there is also some considerations of the other PVC members, mainly the Verrucomicrobia and Chlamydiae.

ISBN 978-1-62703-502-6

Quick guide to Gemmata obscuriglobus

A beginner's guide to our favorite bacterium has just been released in Current Biology. This is the perfect starting point if you are interested in microbiology's platypus. Current Biology's Quick Guides aim to give readers 'everything you need to know about...' for topics they're likely to see fairly regularly in major journals but aren't up to speed with. This one starts like this "What is Gemmata obscuriglobus? Gemmata obscuriglobus is the standard bearer of a group of bacteria that has recently been the focus of interest in cellular, environmental, medical and evolutionary biology. G. obscuriglobus bacteria have been dubbed the ‘platypus of microbiology’ because of their peculiar characteristics usually not observed in bacteria, including some that are more commonly associated with eukaryotes and archaea."