Featured
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Article |
Decoy exosomes provide protection against bacterial toxins
In response to infection with Staphylococcus aureus in vitro and in vivo, host cells increase their secretion of exosomes containing ADAM10—vesicular structures that can provide protection by sequestering bacterial toxins.
- Matthew D. Keller
- , Krystal L. Ching
- & Ken Cadwell
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News Round-Up |
AI antibiotics, wild-animal ban and the state of India’s birds
The latest science news, in brief.
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News |
Powerful antibiotics discovered using AI
Machine learning spots molecules that work even against ‘untreatable’ strains of bacteria.
- Jo Marchant
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Article |
Evolution-guided discovery of antibiotics that inhibit peptidoglycan remodelling
The glycopeptide antibiotic-related compounds complestatin and corbomycin function by binding to peptidoglycan and blocking the action of autolysins—peptidoglycan hydrolase enzymes that remodel the cell wall during growth.
- Elizabeth J. Culp
- , Nicholas Waglechner
- & Gerard D. Wright
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Editorial |
The trick that could inject new life into an old tuberculosis vaccine
The BCG vaccine is nearing its centenary. A new delivery method could protect more people from one of the world’s biggest killers.
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News & Views |
New antibiotics target the outer membrane of bacteria
A double membrane protects certain bacteria from antibiotics, but compounds have now been generated that can overcome this obstacle, seemingly by targeting a crucial protein in the outer membrane.
- Marcelo C. Sousa
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Research Highlight |
Machine learning leads to speedy screening for drug-resistant microbes
A highly accurate tool slashes the time needed to detect resistant pathogens.
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Nature Podcast |
Podcast: A new antibiotic from nematode guts, grant funding ‘lotteries’, and butterfly genomes
Benjamin Thompson brings you the latest science news.
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Article |
A new antibiotic selectively kills Gram-negative pathogens
Bacterial symbionts of animals may contain antibiotics that are particularly suitable for development into therapeutics; one such compound, darobactin, is active against important Gram-negative pathogens both in vitro and in animal models of infection.
- Yu Imai
- , Kirsten J. Meyer
- & Kim Lewis
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Article |
Chimeric peptidomimetic antibiotics against Gram-negative bacteria
A class of chimeric synthetic antibiotics that bind to lipopolysaccharide and BamA shows potent activity against multidrug-resistant Gram-negative bacteria, with the potential to address life-threatening infections.
- Anatol Luther
- , Matthias Urfer
- & Daniel Obrecht
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News |
Alarm as antimicrobial resistance surges among chickens, pigs and cattle
Drug-resistant bacteria are gaining a stronghold in developing countries where meat production has soared.
- Emiliano Rodríguez Mega
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Nature Podcast |
Podcast: Persistent antibiotic resistance, and modelling hot cities
Hear the latest science news, with Nick Howe and Benjamin Thompson.
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Letter |
Salmonella persisters promote the spread of antibiotic resistance plasmids in the gut
The re-seeding of antibiotic-resistant persister subpopulations of Salmonella enterica into the gut lumen favours the transfer of resistance plasmids to gut-resident enterobacteria, showing that even small reservoirs of persister bacteria facilitate the spread of antibiotic resistance.
- Erik Bakkeren
- , Jana S. Huisman
- & Wolf-Dietrich Hardt
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Letter |
Microbiota-derived lantibiotic restores resistance against vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus
The gut commensal Blautia producta secretes a lantibiotic that reduces colonization of the gut by the major pathogen vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium, and transplantation of microbiota with high abundance of the lantibiotic gene enhances resistance to colonization in mice.
- Sohn G. Kim
- , Simone Becattini
- & Eric G. Pamer
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Career Q&A |
A battle against antibiotic resistance
Epidemiologist Maya Nadimpalli focuses on developing nations where meat consumption is rising.
- Virginia Gewin
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Article |
Large-scale chemical–genetics yields new M. tuberculosis inhibitor classes
A high-throughput chemical–genetic screening approach for the discovery of targets and chemicals to treat Mycobacterium tuberculosis yields tenfold more hit compounds than conventional whole-cell screening methods.
- Eachan O. Johnson
- , Emily LaVerriere
- & Deborah T. Hung
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News & Views |
Selective killing of antibiotic-resistant bacteria from within
Some bacteria naturally transfer pieces of their DNA within and between species. Such a piece of DNA has been engineered to act as a molecular ‘Trojan horse’ that unleashes a toxin to selectively kill antibiotic-resistant Vibrio cholerae bacteria.
- Sanna Koskiniemi
- & Petra Virtanen
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Research Highlight |
Super-microbes learn to resist a powerhouse antibiotic
Two newfound genes help to shield bacteria from tigecycline, which doctors use to treat drug-resistant infections.
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Nature Index |
New tools for new treatments
From antibiotics and organoids to CRISPR, improved biomedical methods and apparatus are enabling new therapies.
- Jennifer Cooke
- & Bec Crew
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News Q&A |
UK medical chief: ‘We are in an arms race against microbes’
Britain’s outgoing chief medical officer, Sally Davies, says there are still clear gaps in the fight against antimicrobial resistance.
- Holly Else
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Nature Podcast |
Podcast: Antibiotics in orchards, and rethinking statistical significance
Listen the latest science news, brought to you by Benjamin Thompson and Nick Howe.
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Editorial |
Spraying diseased citrus orchards with antibiotics could backfire
Florida’s efforts to combat citrus greening with widespread drugs could harm the environment and public health.
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News Feature |
Antibiotics set to flood Florida’s troubled orange orchards
A desperate plan to fight a citrus scourge has public-health advocates and scientists concerned.
- Maryn McKenna
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Outlook |
Skin microbiota’s community effort
Each person’s skin carries a unique population of microbes that might help to protect skin from infection, or increase its vulnerability.
- Emily Sohn
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Article |
Optimized arylomycins are a new class of Gram-negative antibiotics
Chemical optimization of arylomycins results in an inhibitor of bacterial type I signal peptidase that shows activity both against multidrug-resistant clinical isolates of Gram-negative bacteria in vitro and in several in vivo infection models.
- Peter A. Smith
- , Michael F. T. Koehler
- & Christopher E. Heise
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Research Highlight |
Skin bacterium learns to shrug off antibiotic of last resort
Microbes that are part of the normal human flora have given rise to drug-resistant strains that are now found in healthcare facilities worldwide.
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Letter |
Species-specific activity of antibacterial drug combinations
Screening pairwise combinations of antibiotics and other drugs against three bacterial pathogens reveals that antagonistic and synergistic drug–drug interactions are specific to microbial species and strains.
- Ana Rita Brochado
- , Anja Telzerow
- & Athanasios Typas
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Letter |
Novel soil bacteria possess diverse genes for secondary metabolite biosynthesis
Metagenomic and soil microcosm analyses identify abundant biosynthetic gene clusters in genomes of microorganisms from a northern Californian grassland ecosystem that provide a potential source for the future development of bacterial natural products.
- Alexander Crits-Christoph
- , Spencer Diamond
- & Jillian F. Banfield
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Article |
Structural basis for dual-mode inhibition of the ABC transporter MsbA
Crystal structures of the ABC transporter MsbA in complex with two selective small-molecule antagonists reveal an unprecedented allosteric mechanism of inhibition.
- Hoangdung Ho
- , Anh Miu
- & Christopher M. Koth
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News |
Giving at-risk children pre-emptive antibiotics reduces deaths
Clinical trial in Africa helps kids, but raises fears about drug resistance.
- Amy Maxmen
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News & Views |
Bacterial persister cells tackled
Chronic infections can be hard to treat because slow-growing bacteria known as persister cells are usually unharmed by antibiotics. The identification of molecules that target such cells might provide a solution.
- Julian G. Hurdle
- & Aditi Deshpande
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Letter |
A new class of synthetic retinoid antibiotics effective against bacterial persisters
Synthetic retinoid compounds can kill both growing and persister MRSA cells by disrupting the membrane lipid bilayer, and are effective in a mouse model of chronic MRSA infection.
- Wooseong Kim
- , Wenpeng Zhu
- & Eleftherios Mylonakis
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News Feature |
When antibiotics turn toxic
Commonly prescribed drugs called fluoroquinolones cause rare, disabling side effects. Researchers are struggling to work out why.
- Jo Marchant
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Article |
Extensive impact of non-antibiotic drugs on human gut bacteria
A screen of more than 1,000 drugs shows that about a quarter of the non-antibiotic drugs inhibit the growth of at least one commensal bacterial strain in vitro.
- Lisa Maier
- , Mihaela Pruteanu
- & Athanasios Typas
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Outlook |
Four stories of antibacterial breakthroughs
Old drugs and new tricks keep researchers one step ahead of antibiotic resistance.
- Natasha Gilbert
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Comment |
Deploy vaccines to fight superbugs
Immunizations combined with antibiotics could be our best shot at combating drug-resistant microbes, argue Rino Rappuoli, David E. Bloom and Steve Black.
- Rino Rappuoli
- , David E. Bloom
- & Steve Black
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Research Highlight |
Uneaten fish food poses a risk to public health
Antibiotic-resistance genes may transfer between bacteria accumulating on the seabed.
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News |
Untreatable gonorrhoea on the rise worldwide
Non-profit group helps marshal trial of a new antibiotic in an attempt to beat back resistant infections.
- Amy Maxmen
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News |
Modified viruses deliver death to antibiotic-resistant bacteria
Engineered microbes turn a bacterium's immune response against itself using CRISPR.
- Sara Reardon
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News |
Resistance to last-ditch antibiotic has spread farther than anticipated
Emergence of colistin resistance in farm animals around the world takes researchers by surprise.
- Sara Reardon
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News & Views |
Diversity breeds tolerance
A gene has been identified that underpins the capacity of mycobacterial cells to divide to produce physiologically different daughter cells. This finding has implications for drug treatment of tuberculosis. See Letter p.153
- David G. Russell
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Article |
A Cryptosporidium PI(4)K inhibitor is a drug candidate for cryptosporidiosis
The establishment of a drug-discovery screening pipeline for cryptosporidiosis, and identification of pyrazolopyridines as selective ATP-competitive inhibitors of the Cryptosporidium lipid kinase PI(4)K.
- Ujjini H. Manjunatha
- , Sumiti Vinayak
- & Thierry T. Diagana
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Article |
Predictive compound accumulation rules yield a broad-spectrum antibiotic
The authors use computational modelling and a set of chemically synthesized compounds to define the physicochemical properties required for small-molecule accumulation in Gram-negative bacteria.
- Michelle F. Richter
- , Bryon S. Drown
- & Paul J. Hergenrother
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Comment |
Antibiotic resistance has a language problem
A failure to use words clearly undermines the global response to antimicrobials' waning usefulness. Standardize terminology, urge Marc Mendelson and colleagues.
- Marc Mendelson
- , Manica Balasegaram
- & Mike Sharland
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News |
The drug-resistant bacteria that pose the greatest health threats
World Health Organization publishes list that it hopes will focus development of antibiotics.
- Cassandra Willyard
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Letter |
Microcins mediate competition among Enterobacteriaceae in the inflamed gut
Certain commensal enterobacteria secrete small proteins called microcins that suppress the growth of other bacteria in the inflamed gut, conferring an intra- and interspecies competitive advantage.
- Martina Sassone-Corsi
- , Sean-Paul Nuccio
- & Manuela Raffatellu
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News & Views |
The bacterial cell wall takes centre stage
An unexpected function has been assigned to part of the molecular machinery that synthesizes the bacterial cell wall — a dramatic shift in our understanding that may have major implications for antibiotic development. See Article p.634
- Kevin D. Young
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