Which, when, where, and how?

The past century of microbiological research has produced an impressive understanding of microbial diversity, relevance, and basic metabolism. As a crowning symbol of this progress, today the complete genome sequences of nearly 1000 different bacterial species are available and can be automatically annotated (approximately) and mapped onto metabolic networks to show what pathways are probably accessible to each organism. But even bacterial cells are not just ‘bags of enzymes’, and many aspects of what has been called ‘bacterial cell biology’ have now come to the fore. Very broadly speaking, what we need to know now is how the chromosome/s is/are organized, which genes are transcribed and when, where the gene products go inside the cell, and how all the components work together to perform each task, be it chemical, structural, or mechanical. Fortunately, many new technologies are being developed that should reveal these details. In this issue we focus on recent developments in proteomic and structural techniques