The biochemical challenge of microbial pathogenicity.

In the past decade there has been a revival of interest in microbial pathogenicity. The reasons for this revival are two-fold. First, infectious disease is still with us despite the impact of the antibiotic era; for example, the rise of bacterial and fungal infections in compromised patients and the lack of a good general antiviral drug. Second, the subject of microbial pathogenicity is ripe for application in techniques of biochemistry, molecular biology and genetics that have developed in other areas of biology over the past twenty years; and the potential of these techniques is particularly attractive to young people, who are entering the field in increasing numbers. In this lecture I shall survey the methods and difficulties of investigating microbial pathogenicity and what we know of the main aspects of the subject at the molecular level. I shall use bacteria as examples because more is known about them than other types of microbes. Lack of space prevents quoting original papers in such a wide-ranging task; in most cases reference is made to authoritative reviews.