Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

BACTERIAL EVOLUTION

Fitting into your niche

Nature Reviews Microbiology volume 20, page 382 (2022)Cite this article

Subjects

Uropathogenic Escherichia coli (UPEC) is the primary cause of urinary tract infections (UTIs). Once the infection is resolved, UPEC can adapt and persist in the intestine and the urinary tract, leading to recurrence of UTIs. To gain a clearer understanding of how pathogens adapt within the host, several genomic studies have previously reported pathoadaptive mechanisms of persistence, but these have been mostly limited to specific niches of the human body, thus underscoring the need to understand the impact of different physiological conditions between niches in within-host bacterial adaptation. Now, Thänert, Choi et al. characterize UPEC adaptation in multiple body sites — the gastrointestinal tract and the urinary tract — and show that mobile genetic element (MGE)-mediated genomic plasticity is key for habitat adaptation and persistence.

Your institute does not have access to this article

Access options

Buy article

Get time limited or full article access on ReadCube.

$32.00

Buy

All prices are NET prices.

References

Original article

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Editor, Nature Microbiology http://www.nature.com/nrmicro/

    Agustina Taglialegna

Authors
  1. Agustina Taglialegna
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Agustina Taglialegna.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Taglialegna, A. Fitting into your niche. Nat Rev Microbiol 20, 382 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41579-022-00748-3

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41579-022-00748-3

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing