Antimicrobial responses articles from across Nature Portfolio

Faecal microbiome transplant has been shown to be able to reduce Clostridioides difficile infection. Here the authors show that an intestinal commensal protozoan reduces C. difficile infection by inhibiting neutrophil recruitment and affecting arginine-ornithine metabolism.

Infusion of virus-specific T (VST) cells is used for treating drug-resistant viremia. Here the authors report, as part of the clinical trial, NCT03475212, a lethal case of unexpected bone marrow graft loss and chimerism reversal that is induced by the infusion of third-party VST intended to treat transplantation-related cytomegalovirus viremia.

Toll-interacting protein (TOLLIP) prevents inflammation and lipid accumulation in alveolar macrophages to limit integrated stress response activation, macrophage necrosis and promote control of Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

Autophagy in CD11c⁺ phagocytes prevents myeloid-derived suppressor cell recruitment and promotes protective T cell responses during high-dose Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection in mice.

T cell- and antibody-based immunological protection are generally considered to function together, but data now show how T cells conferred by previous SARS-CoV-2 infection or two-dose vaccination can elicit heterologous protection in mice against subsequent SARS-CoV-2 infection, even in the absence of antibodies.

In this study, Simonis et al. show that chronic infection with Pseudomonas aeruginosa leads to development of neutralizing antibodies that could be exploited to fight against this pathogen.

In contrast to its role in promoting immune responses to viral and bacterial infections, STING inhibits SYK-dependent cytokine production in response to fungal infection.

We identified an abundant macrophage population with a distinct transcriptomic signature in the murine mammary gland and milk during lactation. These macrophages are monocyte-derived, depend on colony-stimulating factor (CSF-1) and reside adjacent to alveoli. Human milk also contains macrophages comprising three subsets with a partial resemblance to the murine counterparts.