It will be evident that the large body of molecular
information that is progressively becoming accessible will
explain many hitherto mysterious characteristics of pathogenic
bacteria and their interaction with their hosts. It
should also be clear that deductions from molecular biology
alone are not sufficient to explain many features of
microbial behaviour; a complete understanding of this
will ultimately depend on the reintegration into ‘whole
organism’ biology of the information obtained by molecular
biological analysis.