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The use of an in vitro system in which key proteins involved in cell division are attached to supported lipid bilayers reveals that membrane-bound cytosolic peptides of FtsN and FtsQ co-migrate with treadmilling FtsZ–FtsA filaments via a diffusion-and-capture mechanism, elucidating how FtsZ dynamics regulate the distribution of peptidoglycan synthases.
Bacteriophage therapeutics has emerged as one of the few potential beacons that represent possible solutions to the growing global crisis of antimicrobial resistance. Bringing science to the bedside (and vice versa) will maximize the potential of this compelling opportunity.
Resistance to antibiotics is a hot topic in microbiology, but there is much less coverage on resistance to vaccines. The associated risk to disease control has potentially devastating implications, but advances are being made towards smarter vaccine design that reduces the risk of antibiotic-resistant disease.
Alternative σ factors regulate the activity of RNA polymerases under specific conditions and are regulated through various mechanisms, most of which depend on anti-σ factors to regulate their on/off status. This study reports a new mode of σ factor regulation that does not require an anti-σ factor, but instead σ factor phosphorylation in response to the presence of an antibiotic.
The use of an in vitro system in which key proteins involved in cell division are attached to supported lipid bilayers reveals that membrane-bound cytosolic peptides of FtsN and FtsQ co-migrate with treadmilling FtsZ–FtsA filaments via a diffusion-and-capture mechanism, elucidating how FtsZ dynamics regulate the distribution of peptidoglycan synthases.
In an interesting demonstration of how bacterial subcellular organization influences physiology, polar accumulation of PopZ protein in a membraneless microdomain is found to drive asymmetric phosphorylation of CtrA-P, which creates a gradient that is responsible for asymmetric cell division in Caulobacter.
Shotgun metagenomic sequencing (using the MinION platform) of mock microbial communities and faecal samples from healthy and ill preterm infants can be used to identify pathogens and their antimicrobial resistance gene profiles in real time, indicating the potential for translation into clinical settings.
This study describes a new method that improves the sensitivity of viral detection compared with next-generation sequencing and enables the detection of emerging flaviviruses not specifically targeted a priori. Metagenomic sequencing with spiked primer enrichment is simple, low cost, fast and deployable on either benchtop or portable nanopore sequencers, making it applicable for diagnostic laboratory and field use.
Genomic neighbour typing can be used to infer the antimicrobial susceptibility and resistance of a bacterial sample based on the genomes of closest relatives. Combined with MinION sequencing, it can rapidly determine microbial resistance for clinical samples within 4 h.
An observational human clinical trial using a bacteriophage preparation showed that it was well tolerated without major adverse events in human patients with Staphylococcus aureus septicaemia.
Here the authors have developed a framework to predict which Streptococcus pneumoniae serotypes would be best targeted by vaccination, of children and adults, to prevent the post-vaccine emergence of similarly virulent strains, thereby minimizing the pneumococcal disease burden.
Inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) are associated with increased faecal N-acylethanolamines (NAEs), which are primarily host-produced signalling lipids, in patients and a mouse model of colitis. These metabolites can enhance the growth of bacterial species enriched in IBD faecal samples and are associated with the expression of respiratory chain genes necessary for microbial metabolism of NAEs.
This work combines mass spectrometry imaging at high resolution with FISH for the visualization and identification of microorganisms. The authors develop a sample preparation and imaging pipeline called metaFISH to colocalize metabolite patterns with community members and apply it to a host–microbe symbiosis (mussel and its symbionts) to identify symbiosis-specific metabolites.
The murine gut commensal Faecalibaculum rodentium and its human homologue, Holdemanella biformis, are under-represented in tumour development and can reduce tumour progression via short-chain fatty acid production, providing insights into a protective microbial candidate.