Microbial ecology comes of age and joins the general ecology community

摘要

The article by Boles et al. (1) in a recent issue of PNAS is profoundly important because it addresses a major change in the etiology of human bacterial diseases that has passed unnoticed during the last half of the past century. Acute diseases caused by mobile cells of specialized pathogens have largely disappeared because we have identified the pathogens and countered with vaccines and antibiotics. Diphtheria, typhoid fever, and posttraumatic gangrene have ceased to threaten us. However, these acute epidemic diseases have been largely replaced (2) by environmental organisms that gain a foothold in the human body, especially in compromised organs (like the lung in cystic fibrosis), and initiate the invidious twin processes of inflam-mation and chronic disease. The new mi-crobial enemies are common and ubiquitous in nature, they live in protected biofilms where they resist antibiotics and host defenses, and they can mount small or large acute attacks on the host that may eventually succeed when his or her defenses are depleted.