Cover photograph (Copyright © 2005, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.): Photograph of a petri dish on which were streaked various Corynebacterium glutamicum mutants engineered to overexpress different fine chemicals. The C. glutamicum-mediated production of l-glutamic acid by fermentation was one of the very first industrial processes developed during the biotechnology era. (See related article on page 7633.)