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Crowdsourcing efforts, such as those involved in theEscherichia coliO104 outbreak and, most recently, ash dieback disease, reflect a new era of community engagement in genomic analyses.
Two studies reveal that optimizing codon usage in bacterial and fungal circadian clock proteins is maladaptive, indicating that non-optimal codons are essential for circadian gene regulation.
The discovery of an essential ATP-binding-cassette transporter that is used for the secretion of an entire family ofStaphylococcus aureuscytolytic toxins.
The gut microbiota, traditionally studied in the context of disease, has emerged as a key regulator during normal homeostasis. Here, Sommer and Bäckhed discuss how the gut microbiota promotes the development and homeostasis of the immune system and orchestrates several aspects of human physiology, including tissue morphogenesis, metabolism and even behaviour.
The ability of human papillomaviruses (HPVs) to cause disease is strongly dependent on the strict coordination of viral gene expression with the differentiation state of the infected cell. Here, Johansson and Schwartz summarize the role of splicing and polyadenylation in the regulation of HPV gene expression and discuss the viral and cellular factors that control these processes.
Many plants engage in symbiotic associations with microorganisms, in which the interactions are beneficial to both partners. Two of the best studied partnerships are rhizobial and mycorrhizal colonization. Giles Oldroyd highlights the commonalities in the symbiosis signalling pathways involved in these associations and how, despite these commonalities, sufficient specificity is maintained to ensure appropriate responses to each symbiont.
In recent years, nine new human polyomaviruses have been discovered, including Merkel cell polyomavirus, which has been linked to Merkel cell carcinoma, a lethal skin cell cancer. DeCaprio and Garcea compare and contrast these new human viruses and discuss how they might interact with their human host.
Perturbations in the gut microbiota can lead to a state of dysbiosis, which may involve 'blooming' of potentially harmful bacteria. Here, Hardt and colleagues propose that such bacteria blooms promote horizontal gene transfer between members of the gut ecosystem, thereby facilitating pathogen evolution.
In this Opinon article, Cornforth and Foster argue that several of the major bacterial stress responses detect ecological competition directly through competition sensing, a physiological response that detects harm caused by other cells and that evolved, at least in part, for that purpose. In support of this argument, they show that bacteriocins and antibiotics are frequently upregulated by stress responses to nutrient limitation and cell damage but not by responses to abiotic stress.
