热烈祝贺新现微生物与感染杂志顺利启动

We are excited to announce EMI has now launched on nature.com
A message from Co-Editors-in-Chief — Yu-Mei Wen and Hans-Dieter Klenk

Since the rise of civilization, something that has been a constant is the existence of infectious diseases. In earlier times, so little was known about infectious diseases that the outbreak and spread of certain maladies, such as the plague, influenza and smallpox, went largely unchecked and, as a result, were responsible for the deaths of millions. While the advancements in medicine and general public health in the last century have served to control many infectious diseases, the world is now facing the threat of EMERGING infectious diseases, which are caused by previously unknown microbes or existing pathogens with unfamiliar mechanisms.

One important challenge for the control of emerging infections is the global nature of today's society. An emerging infection may be discovered in a certain part of the world and then, within a very short time interval, can also be found in distant regions. Previously, natural borders, such as the sea or mountain ranges, would have played an integral role in the containment of certain diseases. Not only have the advances in transportation allowed people and goods to be easily and swiftly moved from place to place, but such advances have also augmented the spread of certain diseases. For this reason, it is essential that the identification of emerging microbes for the diagnosis and control of infectious diseases is tackled in a worldwide collaboration, in addition to the rapid dissemination of any new findings to the community.

One of the primary reasons for the launch of Emerging Microbes & Infections (EMI) is to facilitate such collaboration and rapid sharing of knowledge, especially with those from developing countries where many emerging pathogens are being discovered. As an open access journal, it is envisioned that these collaborations would not only be geographical in nature, but would also see researchers, clinicians and epidemiologists using each other's expertise in addressing the present-day infectious disease threats on our society.

EMI is an online journal with the ability to publish manuscripts on a weekly basis as manuscripts become available. In the first month of EMI, scientists from US, Canada, Germany, Britain, Hong Kong and mainland China have contributed their findings and opinions covering topics such as the re-emergence of a scarlet fever as a public health problem as well as the use of pyrazinamide susceptibility as a mechanism to develop treatment for multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (TB). EMI has published a cluster of papers focusing on TB, including papers on TB drug development by Ying Zhang from Johns Hopkins, TB vaccines by Douglas B. Lowrie, who currently is a faculty member of Fudan University in Shanghai, and TB research policy analysis by US NIH program administrators led by Dr. Carole Heilman.

In partnership with Nature Publishing Group, EMI will make the published manuscripts available to the global audience through hosting on nature.com and readers can be kept up to date with the latest papers through registering for regular e-mail updates. EMI will also regularly select key manuscripts as Featured Articles to be highlighted on its website.

We are living in a challenging time as we face the threat of emerging infections, but we can make a difference by working together to understand and deal with such threats. To facilitate this, we invite you to join the EMI community by becoming a reader and an author of EMI.

Yu-Mei Wen & Hans-Dieter Klenk
Co-Editors-in-Chief
EMI