Collections
Browse our collections – bringing together peer-reviewed content from across the Society’s publishing platform on a range of hot topics and subject areas.
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Pathogen Genomics in Clinical Practice
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Routine clinical use of pathogen genomics and metagenomics has great potential to improve diagnosis and management of infection. Standard clinical microbiology methods remain slow and frequently yield no results, leading to empirical use of antibiotics which can be inappropriate and thought to be a driver of the antimicrobial resistance pandemic. As evidence linking microbiomes to health also grows, investigating conditions such as bacterial vaginitis, linked to premature labour, bacterial respiratory infections such as HAP and VAP, as well as gastrointestinal infections would logically benefit from a genomics approach. Dysbiosis and reduced microbial diversity are often key features of these conditions. Use of pathogen sequencing and genomic epidemiology are now recognised as an essential part of public health microbiology and virology surveillance. However, in the complex environments of our health service we have not yet seen a similar transformation in routine diagnostic microbiology.
Barriers to adoption of genomic methods in infection include limited sequencing capacity, high prices, complex logistics, and access to computing and bioinformatics resources. Clinical laboratory accreditation and regulatory measures developed for clinical chemistry services are also perceived as being a poorer fit for genomics in infectious disease diagnostics, and development of ethical frameworks around use of pathogen genomics has barely begun. There are clearly many challenges.
The Journal of Medical Microbiology’s Pathogen Genomics in Clinical Practice collection aims to highlight the benefits of a genomics approach to infectious diseases. The collection is now open for new submissions from all researchers and practitioners working in applied public health and clinical pathogen genomics.
Please indicate upon submission that you would like your paper to be considered for the collection.
Editors: Derek Fairley, Peter Coyle, Kalai Mathee
Status: Open for submissions
Image credit: burcu demir
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Pedagogy
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Innovative teaching is now considered a crucial factor when designing and delivering high quality curricula and includes activities such as games, teamwork workshops and problem-solving sessions. In addition, higher education institutions are now expected to build strong bonds with the public via various outreach activities with schools or other community groups. In order to help modern microbiology educators stand up to these challenges, Access Microbiology provides a collection of pedagogical research in the field of microbiology, offering a handy database with all pedagogical papers published in Access Microbiology since 2019, updated regularly as new articles are published. This collection aims to help microbiology educators improve their teaching by introducing new innovative teaching and outreach ideas to their curricula, often generated by members and friends of the Microbiology Society.
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Prokaryotic Stress Responses – their diversity and regulation
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Microorganisms encounter a wide range of stresses and environmental changes in diverse scenarios including infection, ecological and biotechnological scenarios. By definition, stress is a driver of diversity, evolution and phenotypic heterogeneity. There are a wide range of prokaryotic stress responses, including antibiotic, envelope, host-derived, metabolic, starvation, environmental, redox, temperature, solvent and DNA damage stress responses. Microbes are also able to sense chemical stress, either via sensors at the cell surface or by cytoplasmic transcriptional regulators. Systems that have been identified in stress response research have been exploited for new treatments or increased productivity are welcomed. This collection aims to celebrate the responses induced by various stresses on diverse microbial taxa and the enabling technologies allowing their investigation including transcriptomics, metabolomics, biophysics and imaging.
This collection will feature new primary research and review articles arising from the “Prokaryotic Stress Responses – their diversity and regulation” symposium held at the Microbiology Society Annual Conference 2024 in Edinburgh, 8-11 April 2024.
The collection is also open for new submissions from all researchers across the prokaryotic stress responses field. Please indicate within your submission that it is intended for the collection.
Guest Editors: Nick Tucker (University of Suffolk, UK); Dany Beste (University of Surrey, UK)
Status: Open for submissions
Deadline for submissions: 31st January 2025
Journal submissions link: Microbiology Editorial Manager
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Pseudomonas
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This collection brings together original research articles, mini-reviews, and full-length reviews relating to Pseudomonas in conjunction with the International Biennial Pseudomonas Conference.
Guest edited on the occasion of the 2024 Pseudomonas Conference in Copenhagen (Denmark) by Prof Pablo Ivan Nikel, Dr Varsha Singh and Prof Lars Dietrich, the collection will not only be relevant to scientists with an interest in Pseudomonas, but also, due to the widespread use of this genus as a model for studying multiple systems, it will be of general interest to other researchers active in areas such as evolutionary biology, communication systems, genomics and biofilm research. In addition, because P. aeruginosa is a key pathogen associated with both acute and chronic infections, and particularly important in the context of cystic fibrosis and antimicrobial resistance, the collection will be of interest to clinicians and clinical researchers.
The collection was launched on the occasion of the 2019 Pseudomonas Conference in Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) and past guest editors are Dr Joanna Goldberg and Prof Kalai Mathee.
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