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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.
Co-housing mice is shown to induce resistance against enterobacterial infection after antibiotic treatment through the ability to retain or share Klebsiella michiganensis, which is necessary and sufficient to prevent infection through competition for nutrients.
The PLate Coverage Algorithm (PLCA) determines the culture plates required for culture-enriched metagenomics and enables the recovery of greater taxonomic diversity, better quality metagenome-assembled genomes and improved functional annotations compared to metagenomics alone, indicating its utility for other microbiomes, especially those dominated by host DNA.
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.
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.
This study tracks emergent ciprofloxacin-resistant Shigella sonnei in Vietnam, showing displacement of sensitive strains by others that acquired beta-lactam-antibiotic-resistance plasmids from commensal E. coli in infected individuals.
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.
Bacterial cell wall amidases typically hydrolyse crosslinked peptidoglycan between daughter cells so they can separate. An amidase that cleaves uncrosslinked peptidoglycan and its regulator are identified here and shown to regulate cell growth, rather than separation. This enzyme regulates the density of peptidoglycan assembly sites, ensuring coordination between cell expansion and cell division.
Commensal-colonization-factor-producing Bacteroidetes protect against Klebsiella pneumoniae colonization and infection in the gut via IL-36 signalling and macrophages, and these commensals can limit transmission between hosts, whereas Proteobacteria are important for colonization resistance in the upper airway.