The History of Microbial Model Systems

EDITORIAL

In late 2021, Jordan Barrows, a Ph.D. student in Erin Goley’s laboratory at Johns Hopkins University, approached Yves Brun, a Journal of Bacteriology (JB) Editor at the time, with a terrific idea—Jordan wanted to write an article detailing the history of the development of Caulobacter crescentus as a model system. Yves connected me to Jordan and Erin, and I was really excited about this idea. So excited, in fact, that I have solicited ~30 articles highlighting various microbial model organisms that will appear in JB over the next 2 to 3 years. To date, articles covering Escherichia coli (1), C. crescentus (2), and Mycobacterium smegmatis (3) have been published.

The articles in this series will not be typical minireviews but rather will detail how particular microbial model systems emerged as experimental workhorses. These articles will include an introduction to the model organism, the story behind its discovery, initial observations that drove early work, studies that resulted in the microbe becoming recognized and used as a model organism, highlights of unique features of the microbe and/or associated notable discoveries, and ongoing studies or future directions that paint a vision for the types of questions that will drive the use of the model microbe going forward.

With the new publishing platform adopted by ASM, we have the opportunity to gather all of these articles into an easy-to-access digital collection. If you don’t see your favorite organism in the collection—don’t worry—you can always make a suggestion to me for a future article.

I envision this collection as being useful as a teaching resource. I also like to imagine that the piece describing your laboratory’s favorite model organism might be the first paper you give a new postdoc, a rotating graduate student, or an undergraduate joining the lab—an article that gives a sense of the history of the field, how far the field has come, and where it is going. I like the idea of a short article that brings the “lore” of a model system together in one place—I hope you do, too.