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.
From a new species of β-proteobacteria, an antibiotic called teixobactin that does not generate resistance has been characterized; the antibiotic has two different lipid targets in different bacterial cell wall synthesis components, which may explain why resistance was not observed.
Mannan, a component of yeast cell walls, is shown to be a viable food source for Bacteroides thetaiotamicron, a dominant member of the gut microbiota, which catabolizes the mannan ‘selfishly’—countering the general assumption that multiple members of the gut microbiota take a role in, and benefit from, polysaccharide catabolism.
This study shows that glutathione, a ubiquitous antioxidant, is also a critical signalling molecule that allosterically activates the master virulence regulator in the intracellular pathogen Listeria monocytogenes.
