Bacterial translocation articles from across Nature Portfolio

Chemotaxis is one of the best studied bacterial behaviours, but the underlying mechanisms are much better understood than the reasons and consequences of chemotaxis. In this Review, Keegstra et al. discuss the costs and benefits both for individual bacteria and whole populations.

In the outer membrane, trimeric porins control the cellular uptake of small molecules, including nutrients and antibacterial agents. In this Review, Pagès and colleagues discuss advances in our understanding of the roles of general porins in small-molecule translocation in Enterobacteriaceae and consider the crucial contribution of porins in antibiotic resistance.

Current approaches to manage decompensated cirrhosis are based on targeted strategies aimed at preventing or treating specific complications of the disease. Here, Bernardi and Caraceni discuss the shift in focus from individual treatments targeting individual complications to disease-modifying agents able to slow the progression of decompensation.

Nonalcoholic steatohepatitis is the progressive form of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, one of the most common chronic liver diseases. In this Review, the authors comprehensively discuss the key factors that trigger hepatic inflammation, as well as the pathways involved in inflammation resolution.

Carriage of Streptococcus pneumoniae on the mucosa of the upper respiratory tract is the prerequisite for transmission and tissue invasion. In this Review, Weiser, Ferreira and Paton summarize the mechanisms that allow pneumococci to transmit and progress from colonizer to pathogen.

The data of the study suggest that bacteria possess a physiological iron memory that persists over multiple generations.

This study reports that Listeria monocytogenes interferes with a cell death pathway involved in cell-mediated immunity to promote neuroinvasion and persistence.

Two studies now provide structural insights into the stator–rotor interaction, stator assembly and stator maintenance of the bacterial flagellum.

A supercomputing study determines the optimal cell shape of free-swimming bacteria.

Two recent studies provide novel mechanistic and structural insights into lipid and lipoprotein transport between the inner and outer bacterial membranes, across the periplasmic space.

This study shows that the bacterial effector Sca4 promotes intercellular spread of the obligate intracellular pathogenRickettsia parkeriby disrupting the transmission of intercellular tension at cell–cell adherence junctions.