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S. Typhimurium is resistant to the effects of calprotectin owing to its Zn transporter and thus has a competitive growth advantage in the inflamed host gut.
Lumenal vesicles provide a mechanism for the host innate defences to extend into the gut lumen to attack pathogenic bacteria and their inflammatory products at a distance.
Two different bacterial riboswitches regulate transcription of their associated mRNAs by controlling the activity of the transcription termination factor Rho.
Our monthly round up of infectious diseases news, which this month includes the discovery of a gene that confers susceptibility to influenza A virus, the finding that disturbing the gut microbiota can lead to the development of asthma, and studies on a drug that forces HIV out of latency.
The search for therapeutics to treat infections by ebolaviruses and Marburg virus has focused on identifying compounds that interfere with viral entry into host cells. Here, White and Schornberg discuss recent studies that have identified Niemann–Pick C1 (NPC1), a protein that resides deep in the endocytic pathway, as an important host factor in this process.
In this Review, Martens and colleagues describe how dietary and endogenous glycans shape the composition of the gut microbiota and how individual microorganisms degrade these glycans. They also highlight the potential to influence this ecosystem for better health and nutrition.
Many Gram-negative bacteria use type II secretion systems (T2SSs) to translocate a range of proteins across the outer membrane from the periplasm. In this Review, Hol and colleagues describe how recent structural and biochemical studies have provided insights into the biogenesis and architecture of T2SSs and the mechanism by which they function.
Over the past 30 years researchers have developed a global picture of bacterial evolution by using both laboratory-basedin vivo evolution experiments and in silicoevolution of digital organisms. Schneider and colleagues review the advantages and disadvantages of both approaches and synthesize the contributions of both methods to our understanding of bacterial adaptation.
Understanding how microorganisms interact with other species in a community is a major goal for microbial ecologists. In this Opinion article, Zengler and Palsson describe how successes from systems biology efforts can be used as a road map for the emerging field of community systems (CoSy) biology.
