Articles in 2016

The Mouse Intestinal Bacterial Collection (miBC) is a public repository of bacterial strains and associated genomes from the mouse gut. A minimal consortium of 18 species covered 50–75% of the known functional potential.

The cryoEM structures of Ebola virus GP and sGP in complex with GP-specific and GP/sGP cross-reactive antibodies provides insight into the oligomeric arrangement of sGP and a comparison of its structure and epitope presentation with GP.

Pseudomonas aeruginosa infection induces host microRNA miR-301b via a TLR4-dependent pathway in order to block c-Myb inflammatory cytokine signalling and neutrophil infiltration.

Spirochaete flagella hooks require a lysinoalanine covalent crosslink for motility.

Label-free, video-rate metabolite imaging of live Euglena gracilis shows spatiotemporal intracellular metabolite distributions under different culture conditions.

Measurements of mercury species and metagenomic analyses of Antarctic snow, brine, sea ice, and seawater suggest that mercury methylation may be conducted by the marine microaerophilic bacterium Nitrospina in Antarctic sea ice.

A new study provides clues to the physiological function of amyloid-β (Aβ), the plaque-forming peptide associated with Alzheimer's disease and finds a role for Aβ in fighting infection in the brain, by entangling pathogens in a web of amyloid fibrils. These data add to a growing appreciation of the role of microorganisms in neurodegenerative disease.

Whole genome sequencing is often used to determine the presence of known antimicrobial resistance genes and identify new resistance mechanisms. However, without phenotypic confirmation of resistance, caution needs to be taken in attributing relevance to any genes hitherto not shown to confer drug resistance.

Scientific analysis of funding support suggests that interdisciplinary research proposals are less successful than those focused on single disciplines. This has negative implications for the development of interdisciplinary research such as microbiology, and may hinder our ability to solve society's grand challenges.

Multi-omic techniques are often seen as the future of microbiome studies. We argue that recent strategies for simplifying complex omic-derived data will need to be combined with improved cultivation techniques to pave the way towards a more targeted approach for understanding microbial communities.

The lead up to the Rio Olympics has been littered with concerns over Zika virus and polluted waterways rich in pathogenic viruses and potentially drug-resistant bacteria. Despite these fears, appropriate precautions should ensure the games are celebrated for their sporting triumphs, not condemned for public health failures.

The surprising discovery of viable mutants that retain a peptidoglycan cell wall but lack the essential director of normal cytokinesis, FtsZ, reveals that Escherichia coli can proliferate in a completely unexpected manner.

Few science writers capture the attention of readers quite like Ed Yong, columnist for The Atlantic, author of soon-to-be-published I Contain Multitudes, and all-round nice guy. We asked Ed a few questions; it felt like taking Lewis Hamilton out for a Sunday drive.

Deep sequencing of hydrothermal vent and upper ocean water samples further implicate the ocean as a microbial ‘seed bank’. Do these data finally reveal that everything is everywhere? To some extent, but questions remain as to whether these ocean-borne microbes are, in fact, viable and colonize distant locales.

Following the success of the inaugural games, the Microbial Olympics return with a new series of events and microbial competitors. The games may have moved to a new hosting venue, but the dedication to training, fitness, competition (and yes, education and humour) lives on.

The interconnected processes in Escherichia coli K12 governing protein transport, folding and membrane insertion are reviewed.

Inspection of more than 286,000 gene families has shed light on the most recent common ancestors of all life. The last universal common ancestor was likely to have been a thermophilic, anaerobic, N₂-fixing organism that used the Wood–Ljungdahl pathway to fix CO₂, using H₂ as an electron donor.