653 papers
Microbiology explores the invisible world of tiny life forms that shape our health, environment, and even the air we breathe. From bacteria and viruses to fungi and parasites, this field investigates how these microscopic organisms interact with us and each other, driving everything from disease outbreaks to beneficial fermentation processes. Understanding them is crucial for developing new medicines, improving food safety, and combating global health challenges.
At Gist.Science, we make the latest discoveries in this dynamic field accessible to everyone. We process every new preprint uploaded to bioRxiv in this category, transforming dense academic findings into both clear, plain-language explanations and detailed technical summaries. This ensures that whether you are a student, a researcher, or simply curious, you can grasp the significance of cutting-edge science without getting lost in jargon.
Below are the most recent papers in microbiology, curated and summarized directly from the bioRxiv server to keep you at the forefront of discovery.
By screening the MMV Pathogen Box against *Toxoplasma gondii* bradyzoites using a novel myotube culture model, researchers identified compounds that kill both parasite stages by targeting the mitochondrial bc1-complex, revealing that mature bradyzoites rely on mitochondrial ATP production for survival.
This study reveals that Kaposi's Sarcoma-associated Herpesvirus (KSHV) hijacks the archaic translation initiation factor eIF5B to bypass eIF2-mediated translational shutdown during infection, thereby mimicking a hypoxic cellular environment to drive viral replication, oncogenic transformation, and angiogenesis.
This study reveals that human adenovirus type 26 (HAdV-D26) exhibits prolonged intracellular trafficking distinct from HAdV-C5, and demonstrates that depleting the host protein Rab9 enhances HAdV-D26 transduction efficiency by increasing viral internalization and reducing its retention in late endosomes and lysosomes.
This study demonstrates that the aspartate aminotransferase AspC is essential for *Salmonella* Typhimurium to expand in the inflamed gut by enabling the catabolism of aspartate to fuel the TCA cycle, a requirement that is specific to gut colonization and not systemic infection.
This study demonstrates that animal-free peptones can be used as a safe and effective alternative to traditional animal-derived media for propagating therapeutic bacteriophages, as they produce comparable yields, bactericidal activities, and genomic stability without significant alterations.
This paper presents an extended mathematical model incorporating dynamic gastric pH fluctuations driven by bacterial urease activity, host acid secretion, and dietary factors to analyze how pH-dependent reproductive thresholds influence *H. pylori* eradication success and the emergence of antibiotic resistance, thereby offering a theoretical framework for optimizing treatment strategies through pH modulation.
This study reveals that arboviruses like Chikungunya and Zika establish persistent infections in mosquito cells by repressing viral RNA translation to maintain a balanced host-virus state, thereby avoiding the host translational takeover and cell death observed in human infections.
This study reconstructs the genomic trajectory of the *Clostridium botulinum* Army Hall A strain, revealing how early domestication-induced hypermutation and prolonged human selection led to massive gene loss and adaptive traits like increased toxin yield and reduced sporulation, thereby providing a comprehensive framework for understanding microbial domestication.
This study reveals that population-level silencing of HIV-1 in polyclonal Jurkat cell populations arises not from uniform transcriptional repression, but from a heterogeneous combination of selective expansion of low-activity clones, variable expression reductions, and the long-term maintenance of stable bimodal expression in a significant subset of individual proviral clones.
This study utilizes CRISPRi-seq across nine diverse *Streptococcus pneumoniae* strains to map a functional genetic landscape of antibiotic sensitivity, identifying both conserved and lineage-specific vulnerabilities that reveal novel targets for global sensitizing therapies.