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Fungi from the Neocallimastigomycetes taxonomic class break bonds in lignin during the anaerobic deconstruction of whole plant cell walls. This finding challenges the paradigm that only certain aerobic organisms break down lignin.
Characterization of a contractile injection system (CIS) in the Gram-positive multicellular model organism Streptomyces coelicolor finds that CIS mediate cell death in response to stress that impacts cellular development.
Eighty-nine percent of the Trypanosomabrucei proteome is mapped using fluorescence microscopy and cell lines expressing endogenously tagged proteins, and presented in a resource for the community named TrypTag.org.
Phage-encoded endolysins released from neighbouring infected bacterial cells can confer a temporary resistance to phage infection by mediating the reversible loss of the cell wall.
Mycobacterium abscessus requires high levels of biotin biosynthesis during infection, because this vitamin enables key adaptations to the alkaline lung airway environment through fatty acid remodelling that increases fluidity of the cell envelope.
The extent and diversity of exposures to microbial stimuli have a crucial role in regulating the capacity of a host to mount an immune response to a challenge, such as vaccination, making exposure history an important factor to optimize in rodent models.
Stable isotope-labelled amino acid incorporation into proteins reveals that genetically homogeneous yeast colonies contain metabolically distinct subpopulations that cross-feed each other and are phenotypically diverse.
Deployment of some CRISPR-Cas systems stunts host growth by degrading all transcripts, but Listeria seeligeri reverses dormancy using restriction-modification-based phage DNA targeting.
Systems genetics reveals interactions between host and microbial phenotypes in the murine gut, including a role for Akkermansia muciniphila in the production of immunomodulatory ornithine lipids.
Single-cell imaging, metabolomics and modelling quantify metabolic exchanges between cyanobacteria and heterotrophic bacteria, showing transient nutritional exchanges facilitated by chemotaxis of the heterotroph.
Application of reprogrammed bacteriophage to functional metagenomics in clinically relevant bacterial strains improves identification of antibiotic resistance genes, including those against recently developed or approved antibiotics.
Resource allocation in bacteria and adaptation to nutritional downshifts are characterized using a combination of quantitative proteomics and coarse-grained physiological modelling.
Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) has two modes of infection: productive and latent. Tracking HCMV infection with single-cell transcriptomics revealed that infection outcome (productive or latent) is based on viral gene expression levels at early stages of infection. Moreover, intrinsic levels of interferon-stimulated genes affect viral gene expression and the outcome of infection.