Halloween has finally arrived and everyone around you has been busy working on their costumes in anticipation for this glorious day of tricks and treats. Come Halloween night, you may not even recognize the faces behind the costumes. How would you tell apart friends with a sweet tooth from foes ready for some tricks?
For some bacteria, putting on costumes is an everyday event when it comes to tricking the immune system. The immune system distinguishes the body's own cells from those of invading bacteria and viruses. Since the microbe's outer membrane is usually the first thing the immune system sees, the body takes advantage of molecules found on the outer membrane to generate an immune response. This seems like a wise defense mechanism but microbes have several tricks up their sleeves; they disguise themselves from the immune response by changing molecules on their outer membrane (antigenic variation) or by turning on and off expression of genes encoding for surface molecules (phase variation). (more…)