Volume 2 Issue 5, May 2017

We spoke with Gary Nabel about research funding, making the move from academia to industry, transformative innovation to improve global health, and the current state of the infectious disease drug pipeline.

The sensor cyclic GMP–AMP synthase (cGAS) is well known to recognize viral DNA. In this issue of Nature Microbiology, infection by dengue virus (DENV), which has an RNA genome, is shown to induce mitochondrial DNA release into the cytosol, leading to cGAS activation. In turn, DENV targets cGAS to evade antiviral immunity.

Bacterial specialized metabolites are bioactive molecules with antibacterial or other activities that are of tremendous clinical use. New work has revealed that transcript elongation is a distinct and widespread point of secondary metabolic gene regulation, which has implications for expanding drug discovery.

A review of Bacteroides mechanisms for gut colonization and persistence, which may also serve as a framework to understand the biology of other microbiota species.

This Perspective describes how lessons learned from traditional probiotics will inform the next generation of probiotics and live biotherapeutic products and the microorganisms suitable for development, and the regulatory framework required to do so.

Antibiotic gene clusters in Bacillus amyloliquefaciens are regulated by a conserved antiterminator protein, LoaP.

The long-term dynamic behaviour of the gut microbiome in inflammatory bowel disease demonstrates increased deviation from the ‘healthy plane’ when compared to the normal variation observed in healthy individuals.

Analysis and annotation of the Listeria monocytogenes proteome identifies a miniprotein that is required for the bacterial stressosome response.

Marine heterotrophic bacteria produce the signalling molecule dimethylsulfoniopropionate (DMSP) via the methyltransferase gene dsyB, implicating bacteria as contributors to the oceanic DMSP pool, in addition to macroalgae and phytoplankton.

An image analysis tool for colony-based phenotypic screening.

Plasmodium falciparum kinase PfCRK4 is a key regulator of DNA replication in schizonts, required both during the intraerythrocytic blood stage of malaria infection and for transmission.

Cytoplasmic incompatibility during insect reproduction is induced by the Wolbachia deubiquitylating enzyme CidB, which is encoded in a two-gene operon with its binding partner CidA.

The gut membrane-associated protein Mesh controls proliferation of gut bacteria by regulating dual-oxidase expression through an arrestin-mediated MAPK JNK/ERK phosphorylation cascade in Aedes aegypti and Drosophila melanogaster.

A transcriptional analysis of Methanocaldococcus jannaschii identifies Spt4/5 as a general elongation factor in Archaea with two modes of recruitment to the RNA polymerase.

This study identifies regulators of the RNA sensor RIG-I. Diverse processes, including the unfolded protein response, Wnt signalling and RNA metabolism, modulate this pathway. The splicing regulator KHSRP is identified as a negative regulator of RIG-I that affects influenza replication in vivo.

Rice dwarf virus capsid protein binds to the outer membrane protein of the obligate symbiont bacterium Sulcia, allowing the virus to hijack the oocyte entry path in rice leafhopper vectors for transovarial transmission.

A screen for outer-membrane permeating compounds finds that the clinically approved antiprotozoal drug pentamidine sensitizes drug-resistant Gram-negative pathogens to new antibiotic classes.

This study shows that mitochondrial DNA leaks into the cytoplasm during dengue virus infection, activating the DNA sensor cGAS. Viral NS2B targets cGAS for lysosomal degradation, inhibiting type I interferon responses in infected cells.