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Rapid diagnostic tests capable of detecting any potential pathogen are needed to improve the efficacy of antimicrobial therapy and inform antimicrobial stewardship efforts. A new metagenomics-based test that detects microbial DNA in human blood can identify a diverse array of pathogens from any source in the body.
Animal studies have strongly implicated the gut microbiome as a key regulator of brain and behaviour. Recent work using two large population cohorts and bioinformatics tools has strengthened the link between microbial disturbances and depression (or quality of life in general).
Eradicating the viral reservoir remains a formidable barrier to curing human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). The first challenge is to characterize the cells and tissues where HIV hides. In this issue of Nature Microbiology, urethral macrophages are shown to retain infectious HIV particles, prompting us to rethink strategies to eliminate the reservoir.
This Review summarizes recent advances in our understanding of neutralizing antibody responses to enveloped viruses with different pathogenesis and discusses how this information is used to inform design of vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics.
This Review describes the potential opportunities for finding new uses as antimicrobials for existing drugs, the approaches used for screening and the scientific, intellectual property and regulatory challenges to be overcome.
Severe fever with thrombocytopenia virus is an emerging, highly lethal tick-borne pathogen with growing impact. In this issue of Nature Microbiology, two papers make major progress towards a better understanding of its so far incompletely understood mechanisms of virulence.
Bacteria have previously been assumed to cope with environmental stress by tuning their total number of active ribosomes. Instead, a study in this issue of Nature Microbiology shows that from a heterogeneous pool of ribosomes, Vibrio vulnificus uses ribosomes with a particular ribosomal RNA variant to translate upregulated stress response mRNAs.
Molecular players involved in systemic and acute infections are relatively easy to pinpoint, whereas bacterial resilience during chronic infections remains less well understood. Pseudomonas aeruginosa encodes a quorum-regulated virulence factor, TesG, that promotes chronic lung infection by suppressing host inflammatory responses.
Klebsiella pneumoniae isolated from patients with primary sclerosing cholangitis was found to cause intestinal barrier dysfunction resulting in T-helper-17-cell-mediated hepatobiliary injury, providing evidence for specific gut-derived, pore-forming pathogens as triggers for immune-mediated liver disease.
Sterols are a hallmark of eukaryotes. So how do hordes of primitive eukaryotes survive and thrive without a key enzyme for making these crucial lipids? We now learn what solution evolution arrived at — invention of an alternative enzyme that does the same job.
A secreted effector from the plant pathogenic fungus Ustilago maydis has evolved to acquire a new function that contributes to the unique lifestyle of this species, highlighting the utility of using comparative genetic analyses to address current questions in plant–microorganism interactions.
Only a tiny fraction of bacterial species can be cultured and engineered in the laboratory, limiting our ability to deploy bacteria in harsh environments or use them to produce important compounds. Recent work has opened this frontier by developing new methods to characterize and engineer diverse, undomesticated bacterial species.
