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Removal of thiamin (vitamin B1), a compound previously considered essential to all living organisms, does not impact the growth or survival of the Lyme disease pathogen Borrelia burgdorferi.
A minimal bacterial community has been defined that provides colonization resistance to Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium once established in germ-free mice to a similar extent as a conventional microbial community.
The cryo-EM structure of an HIV-1 broadly neutralizing antibody from an elite neutralizer reveals the fusion peptide of the envelope glycoprotein (Env) as a site of vulnerability that may be explored by future therapies.
Single-cell RNA-seq finds a pro-inflammatory M1 polarized immune response in macrophages infected with actively replicating Salmonella and an anti-inflammatory M2-like response in uninfected bystanders or cells with non-replicating bacteria.
Palindromic nucleotide sequences are not present at individual integration sites for the retroviruses HTLV-1 and HIV-1, but arise in the population average owing to a non-palindromic motif found in roughly equal proportions on the plus and minus strands.
The Aspergillus fumigatus surface protein CalA mediates pulmonary invasion by interacting with integrin α5β1 on the surface of epithelial and endothelial cells, inducing endocytosis and enhancing virulence.
Toxin–antitoxin systems mediate virulence plasmid retention at environmental temperatures; deletion of these systems may have facilitated the evolution of Shigella sonnei as a person-to-person transmissible pathogen.
A steady-state evolutionary model is used to investigate archaeal genome evolution, finding two classes of microbial genes—one with instantaneous gene replacement and another with finite, distributed replacement rates.
Optimization of culturing techniques has allowed the identification of 1,057 prokaryotic species within the human gut microbiome repertoire, doubling the previous number of isolated species from the human gut.
‘Candidatus Udaeobacter copiosus’ is found to be one of the most abundant microorganisms across >1,000 soil samples. Metabolic reconstruction of the small genome suggests it is an aerobic heterotroph with multiple auxotrophies.
A small-molecule inhibitor that blocks the ATPase activity of the cellular human transcription/export complex (hTREX) protein UAP56 prevents the formation of Kaposi's sarcoma associated herpesvirus (KSHV) viral ribonucleoprotein particles (vRNPs)
The metabolomes of 260 strains of Pseudomonas were indexed, enabling the discovery and evolutionary relationships of 4 molecules — a poaeamide analogue, and the bananamides 1, 2 and 3 — a molecular sub-family of cyclic lipopeptides.
The S-oxidizing symbiont of the bivalve Codakia orbicularis encodes all proteins required for biological nitrogen fixation. The symbiont's NifH is phylogenetically close to free-living N-fixing Proteobacteria associated with seagrass sediment.
The chemosynthetic symbionts of the bivalve Loripes lucinalis and nematode Laxus oneistus are found to encode nitrogen fixation genes, with evidence for active nitrogen fixation.