Volume 7 Issue 6, June 2022

Being a postdoctoral researcher opens many doors, but it can also bring feelings of loneliness and uncertainty, which are exacerbated during a pandemic. Making career choices that support and strengthen mental health should be normalized, writes Ann Gregory.

Large-scale CRISPRi chemical genetic screening in Mycobacterium tuberculosis identifies genes altering antibiotic potency and the repurposing of the antibiotic clarithromycin to treat tuberculosis in Southeast Asia.

Bacteria can be engineered to degrade antibiotics in the gut, maintaining colonization resistance against pathogenic bacteria and constraining the expansion of antibiotic resistance genes in mice.

Modelling using metagenomic data has revealed partitioning of the ocean into discrete microbial genomic provinces, but climate change might restructure their global organization.

Specific actions to develop equitable partnerships in microbiome research are proposed.

In this Review, the authors describe the transmission of antimicrobial resistance in low- and middle-income countries from a One Health perspective, as well as the challenges and possible solutions for its containment.

Combined CRISPRi chemical genetics and comparative genomics reveal Mycobacterium tuberculosis drug resistance mechanisms and a potential opportunity to repurpose clarithromycin to treat tuberculosis due to inactivation of the whiB7 resistance factor in an entire Mtb sublineage.

A machine learning framework for integrating multi-omic high-dimensional datasets identified disease-specific and shared host gene–microbiome associations across three gastrointestinal diseases.

Evolution experiments using sequential Acinetobacter baumannii lung infections in immunocompetent and immunocompromised mice treated with ciprofloxacin reveal that neutrophil-depleted hosts enable the outgrowth of drug persisters and serve as reservoirs for antibiotic resistance variants.

Characterization of bacterial microbiomes associated with >1,000 microscopic marine invertebrates reveals that phylosymbiosis is rare across animal lineages.

Analysis of eleven Sulfolobus strains reveals that chromosome organization affects mutation rates in this species.

Antifungal produced by Fusarium perithecium bacterium Pantoea agglomerans is a promising drug lead.

A method that exploits the double-stranded DNA-targeting capability of the bacterial toxin-derived cytosine deaminase, DddA, can map DNA–protein interactions in bacteria in vivo at genome-wide scale.

Bacteria–bacteria interactions and resultant microbiota changes were characterized using a synthetic phyllosphere community in planta.

The development of a high-throughput tagging platform to screen kinases of the parasite Toxoplasma gondii led to the identification of a kinase regulating invasion of and egress from host cells.

A phenotypic screen based on a conditional Cas9-system identifies two Toxoplasma gondii genes, revealing conoid gliding protein (CGP) and signalling linking factor (SLF) that act at different steps in host cell egress.

A platform developed for rapid isolation of SARS-CoV-2 variants also facilitates the characterization of variant immune evasion and viral fitness. The platform enabled rapid detection of the Omicron variant in samples of the first cases in Australia.

An analysis of memory T cells induced by messenger RNA vaccination reveals that they maintain polyfunctionality in response to the Omicron spike protein.

Computational analyses reveal widespread recoding in gut phages, which is hypothesized to control timing of lysis.