771 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.
This study demonstrates that the essential lipoprotein maturation enzyme Lgt is critical for maintaining *Helicobacter pylori* membrane and flagellar integrity, while revealing that the bacterium's heterogeneous population can survive Lgt depletion through diverse genetic and epigenetic adaptations that restore motility and viability.
By integrating isolate genomes with deep long-read metagenomics, this study reveals that a low-diversity dairy starter microbiome harbors extensive hidden population complexity and combinatorial diversity in fermentation traits and phage defense mechanisms that neither approach could fully capture alone.
This study establishes a homologous recombination method for genetic manipulation in *Jeongeupia sacculi* HS-3 and demonstrates that disrupting the *rpoS* gene specifically impairs biofilm formation under low-nutrient conditions without broadly affecting general stress survival.
This study demonstrates that reovirus recombination occurs more frequently during plus-strand synthesis within infected cells than previously recognized, but many resulting recombinant RNA molecules are selectively excluded from viral particles, revealing a post-recombination constraint on genome packaging.
This study demonstrates that the cytosolic pathogen *Listeria monocytogenes* relies on high-affinity manganese transporters (MntH and MntABC) to scavenge manganese, a process essential for its resistance to oxidative stress, intracellular replication, and overall virulence.
This study establishes an integration-free CRISPR/Cas9 workflow for genetically engineering human nasal basal cells to create gene-edited air-liquid interface cultures, which were used to validate ACE2 and TMPRSS2 as critical host factors for SARS-CoV-2 and hCoV-NL63 infection in a physiologically relevant model.
This study reveals that the dimeric dUTPase Gp135 from Mosigvirus AV110 inhibits *E. coli* growth by disrupting DNA replication and cell division, while phylogenetic analysis uncovers significant structural and functional diversity among phage-encoded dUTP/dCTPases.
This study demonstrates that Chikungunya virus infection of PDGFRα+ mesenchymal cells via the MXRA8 receptor enhances endothelial permeability through VEGF signaling, thereby driving vascular leakage and facilitating hematogenous viral spread.
This study introduces a scalable, computer vision-based method that continuously tracks plaque expansion dynamics to reveal distinct kinetic phenotypes and taxonomic signatures of bacteriophages, offering a superior alternative to traditional static endpoint measurements for accelerating phage discovery and genotype-phenotype mapping.
This study demonstrates that SIRT2 protects against Japanese encephalitis virus infection in mice by deacetylating NF-κB to suppress viral replication and inflammation, thereby improving survival rates.