'Wild Type'.

In this opinion piece, we consider the meaning of the term 'wild type' in the context of microbiology. This is especially pertinent in the post-genomic era, where we have a greater awareness of species diversity than ever before. Genomic heterogeneity, evolution/selection pressures, definition of 'the wild', the size and importance of the pan-genome, gene-gene interactions (epistasis), and the nature of the 'wild-type gene' are all discussed.

The past, present and future of polymicrobial infection research: Modelling, eavesdropping, terraforming and other stories.

Over the last two centuries, great advances have been made in microbiology as a discipline. Much of this progress has come about as a consequence of studying the growth and physiology of individual microbial species in well-defined laboratory media; so-called "axenic growth". However, in the real world, microbes rarely live in such "splendid isolation" (to paraphrase Foster) and more often-than-not, share the niche with a plethora of co-habitants.

Impact of transient acquired hypermutability on the inter- and intra-species competitiveness of Pseudomonas aeruginosa.

Once acquired, hypermutation is unrelenting, and in the long-term, leads to impaired fitness due to its cumulative impact on the genome. This raises the question of why hypermutators arise so frequently in microbial ecosystems. In this work, we explore this problem by examining how the transient acquisition of hypermutability affects inter- and intra-species competitiveness, and the response to environmental insults such as antibiotic challenge.