News & Views in 2018

Bacteria use sophisticated translocation systems to manipulate or kill host cells and competing bacteria. A new study shows that bacteria also deliver anti-fungal effectors.

Commensal bacteria living on the skin can enhance the virulence of a skin pathogen, changing the way we think about the role of healthy skin microbiota in disease susceptibility.

What evolutionary strategies are used by parasites to flourish for long periods within their mammalian hosts? These are questions that have been addressed by Pinger et al. in a recent study that identifies variable O-glycosylation as a novel immune-evasion mechanism employed by African trypanosomes.

Widespread use of antibiotics in animals either as growth promoters or for metaphylaxis may drive the spread of clinically relevant drug resistance genes and pathogens. New work uncovers drug resistance gene patterns from livestock across European farms and finds a correlation with agricultural antibiotic use.

Rare species tend to degrade complex substrates while common species contribute most to biomass and respiration, moving us towards a solution for structure–function mapping in microbial communities.

Antibiotic resistance against β-lactams is of paramount therapeutic importance. Although such resistance is known to involve degradation by hydrolysis, the molecular details of what happens next remain unclear. A new study reveals how soil microbes perform β-lactam catabolism and how this process can support bacterial growth.

The discovery and characterization of a phylum-level archaeal lineage in iron-rich hot springs—the Marsarchaeota—expands the phylogenetic depth and physiological diversity of aerobic archaea.

Comparative genomics of all known Laverania species that infect African great apes reveals interspecies gene transfer and convergent evolution, and identifies features of Plasmodium falciparum, the only human-infective species within this subgenus, that may have led to its speciation and spread globally.

Genetic integration of a humanized chemotaxis receptor unexpectedly reveals that a widely expressed immune protein is targeted by Staphylococcus aureus Panton–Valentine leukocidin in a novel way, changing our fundamental understanding of toxin–receptor biology and host–pathogen interaction.

The small intestine microbiome has been revealed to play a critical role in nutritional signal transduction that enables the host to adapt its fat digestion and absorption capacities, suggesting that this microbial community may serve as a target to improve conditions of over- and undernutrition.

Antibodies that potently neutralize highly diverse HIV-1 variants offer great potential for therapy and prevention. Passive administration of HIV-specific neutralizing antibodies genetically modified to have a long serum half-life has now been shown to confer long-lasting protection from infection in the rhesus macaque model.

The bacterial pathogen Staphylococcus aureus secretes a high-affinity insulin-binding protein that mediates insulin resistance, a major driver of obesity and type 2 diabetes, in a mouse model of infection.

A study of blood-feeding female sand flies has shown how successive blood meals amplify Leishmania infections in the vector’s gut and enhance transmission of the tropical disease leishmaniasis.

Topical administration of aminoglycoside antibiotics has been shown to induce expression of interferon-stimulated genes in dendritic cells, inducing an antiviral state in the vaginal and lung mucosa that increases resistance to infection with herpes simplex virus 1, influenza and Zika viruses.

Bacteria encode many strategies to prevent or escape infection. Through the analysis of metagenomic dark matter, several novel defence systems were identified, some of which were engineered and characterized in vivo, showing that they provide resistance against viruses and plasmids.

The coupling of root nutrient exudation by plants with microbial nutrient utilization preferences helps drive the assembly of rhizosphere microbiomes, enabling the use of metabolite interaction traits to engineer favourable microbial communities on roots.

Bacteria can compete in the environment using antibacterial type VI secretion systems. A recent study reveals that the simultaneous deployment of an arsenal of different toxins promotes both synergy between those toxins and an optimized answer in the face of inconstant environments.

The TRiC chaperonin has been identified as a crucial player in the assembly of reovirus capsids by folding the σ3 outer-capsid protein into its native conformation. These findings provide a functional understanding of TRiC in virus replication and a rationale for the development of TRiC inhibitors as broad-spectrum anti-viral agents.

Metagenomic sequencing, bioinformatic analysis and heterologous expression of an orphan biosynthetic gene cluster widely found in the environment led to the discovery and structural characterization of a novel group of calcium-dependent antibiotics hidden in plain sight.

Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) infects pluripotent haematopoietic progenitor cells, yet it is latent in monocyte/myeloid-lineage cells. A new study reveals that HCMV achieves this by actively reprogramming the infected progenitor cell into a unique monocyte subset, enabling the successful lifelong persistence of HCMV in its host.