Martin Dworkin

Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology James A Shapiro

James Alan Shapiro

Bacteria as Multicellular Organisms is the first book dedicated to the multicellular behavior of microbes. This work goes beyond the traditional view of bacteria as single, autonomous cells and instead approaches bacteria as sentient, interactive organisms capable of significant collective activity. The cooperative and coordinated behaviors observed in a diverse range of bacteria in the past decade has been quite astonishing. In fact, bacteria possess an unexpectedly broad repertoire of chemical and physical mechanisms for signalling each other and organizing themselves into multicellular aggregates with novel properties. Some of the phenomena discussed in this book include communication, complexity, self-organization and pattern formation within bacterial populations.

Bacteria as Multicellular Organisms

Karl-Heinz Schleifer

Albert Balows

Hans G. Trüper

Wim Harder

For many of us, these simple rewards are suf The purpose of this briefforeword is unchanged from the first edition; it is simply to make you, ficiently gratifying so that we have chosen to the reader, hungry for the scientific feast that spend our scientific lives studying these unusual follows. These four volumes on the prokaryotes creatures. In these endeavors many of the strat offer an expanded scientific menu that displays egies and tools as well as much of the philos the biochemical depth and remarkable physi ophy may be traced to the Delft School, passed ological and morphological diversity of prokar on to us by our teachers, Martinus Beijerinck, yote life. The size ofthe volumes might initially A. J. Kluyver, and C. B. van Niel, and in turn discourage the unprepared mind from being at passed on by us to our students. tracted to the study of prokaryote life, for this In this school, the principles of the selective, enrichment culture technique have been devel landmark assemblage thoroughly documents oped and diversified; they have been a major the wealth of present knowledge. But in con force in designing and applying new principles fronting the reader with the state of the art, the Handbook also defines where more work needs for the capture and isolation of microbes from to be done on well-studied bacteria as well as nature. For me, the "organism approach" has on unusual or poorly studied organisms. provided rewarding adventures.

A Handbook on the Biology of Bacteria: Ecophysiology, Isolation, Identification, Applications

The Prokaryotes

Martin Dworkin

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