John Roth has had a long and very productive career in bacterial genetics and has influenced many in the field through his teaching and research. On the occasion of his 70th birthday, and in the year in which he is to receive the prestigious Thomas Hunt Morgan Award from the Genetics Society of America, a number of his students and colleagues have assembled a collection of essays in bacterial genetics in his honor. These essays are designed to be interesting reading for all those working in or interested in bacterial genetics, and they examine topics in some of the areas in which John Roth has worked, including gene expression and regulation; physiology and metabolism; chromosomes, genomes and evolution; and applications of microbial genetics to such things as antibiotic resistance and the quest for new vaccines.
