802 papers
This study reveals that while thogotoviruses utilize a distal duplex structure for RNA synthesis, Oz virus and Dhori virus differ in their reliance on specific base pairs at positions 5'12/3'11 within this structure to regulate segment-specific promoter activity, suggesting a genus-wide divergence in transcriptional control mechanisms.
This study demonstrates that the probiotic yeast *Saccharomyces boulardii* mitigates diet-induced obesity and associated inflammation in mice by remodeling the gut ecosystem to enhance energy expenditure, modulate cecal metabolites, and suppress colonic inflammatory signaling.
This study reveals that the pseudogenization of the cntQ permease in *Yersinia pestis* rewires the cnt operon's function from iron to zinc acquisition, demonstrating how a single evolutionary mutation can reshape bacterial metal uptake specificity.
This study demonstrates that *Acinetobacter baumannii* relies on a redundant family of DcaP outer membrane porins to utilize essential carboxylic acids and establish infection in specific host niches, thereby validating these proteins as promising therapeutic targets.
This study reveals that during wheat development under phosphorus-depleted conditions, phosphorus acquisition shifts temporally from bacterial mineralization to arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, with the root hairless mutant relying on enhanced fungal colonization rather than recruiting bacterial partners to compensate for its lack of root hairs.
This study demonstrates that sub-inhibitory measurements of antimicrobial drug combinations frequently fail to predict their interactions at clinically relevant inhibitory concentrations due to concentration- and ratio-dependent shifts in synergy or antagonism, necessitating pharmacodynamic assessments across the full range of therapeutic doses.
By applying advanced Nanopore sequencing and the myloasm assembler to a South San Francisco Bay microbiome, researchers achieved unprecedented strain-level resolution revealing that fundamentally different evolutionary strategies—ranging from highly diverse, phage-driven populations to nearly monotypic lineages—coexist within a single sample, marking a decade-long milestone in recovering complete *Pelagibacter* genomes from metagenomes.
This study reveals that *Actinoplanes missouriensis* zoospores achieve record-breaking swimming speeds of approximately 500 body lengths per second through a unique propulsion mechanism involving a synchronously rotating, anterior body-wrapping flagellar bundle, demonstrating that supramolecular flagellar organization rather than motor speed alone dictates the upper limits of bacterial motility.
This study proposes *Gardnerella fastidiominuta* sp. nov., a novel bacterial species isolated from the female urinary microbiome, based on comprehensive phylogenetic, genomic, and phenotypic evidence that distinguishes strain CCPDSM from all previously described *Gardnerella* species.
This study introduces PInc, a replication-centered classification framework based on conserved winged-helix domains in replication initiation proteins, which resolves deep evolutionary relationships and reveals the global diversity of nearly 100,000 bacterial plasmids, overcoming the limitations of traditional host-based and nucleotide-similarity typing schemes.
This study identifies 5-methyl-3'-dUTP as a superior SARS-CoV-2 inhibitor that effectively terminates viral RNA chains while evading the nsp14-nsp10 proofreading exonuclease through a nucleobase methylation-induced destabilization of the enzyme's active site, offering a promising strategy for designing next-generation antivirals.
This paper presents an optimized droplet digital PCR (ddPCR) assay that utilizes unique DNA barcodes and design of experiments to accurately quantify the titer and purity of bacteriophage vectors, overcoming the limitations of traditional biological activity assays by providing high precision and correcting for systemic errors in vector characterization.
This study elucidates the conserved molecular mechanism by which the motor ATPases PilT and PilU coordinate to drive forceful type IV pilus retraction, revealing that critical interactions between PilT and the PilU C-terminus are essential for this process across diverse bacterial species.
This study reveals that the stepwise evolution of multidrug-resistant plasmids is driven by synergistic interactions among integrons, IS26, and ISCR elements, establishing a "3I" framework that predicts increasing antibiotic resistance gene accumulation and offers universal markers for surveillance.
By integrating microfluidics and multi-omics in wheat, this study reveals that biochar amendment reshapes root exudates to recruit beneficial plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria, thereby rewiring the rhizosphere microbiome to enhance nutrient cycling, stress resistance, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
This study presents a two-stage machine learning framework that accurately predicts *Leptospira* serogroups directly from *rfb* locus genomic profiles, offering a scalable alternative to traditional serological assays and introducing the concept of "seroclass" to better organize antigenic diversity.
This study identifies 5-6 week-old female BALB/cJRJ mice as the optimal model for chronic *Mycobacterium abscessus* infection, as they exhibit sustained infection with low variability and no significant differences based on sex or age, unlike the C57BL/6NCrl strain.
This study characterizes a set of 25 orthogonal constitutive promoters with graded expression strengths derived from synthetic variants of the PconII promoter, demonstrating their utility for genetic engineering across diverse model and non-model cyanobacterial strains to support biotechnological applications.
The ONETest PathoGenome assay, an optimized hybrid-capture metagenomic NGS test, demonstrates high sensitivity and specificity for detecting lower respiratory pathogens in bronchoalveolar lavage samples, significantly improving diagnostic yield and turnaround time compared to conventional culture and whole-metagenome shotgun sequencing.
This study characterizes vaginal *Lactobacillus* isolates from South African women and identifies *L. crispatus* strains as the most promising candidates for a tailored live biotherapeutic due to their superior acidification, low inflammatory response, and population-specific genomic features.