Researchers have recently proven that common soil bacteria can use light captured earlier in the day to power chemical work at night.

The skin microbiome is dominated by a few key genera, among which Staphylococcus is one of the most well characterized. Recent studies have examined the roles of various Staphylococcus species such as...

Diversity-generating retroelements (DGRs) accelerate evolution by rapidly diversifying variable proteins. The human gastrointestinal microbiota harbors the greatest density of DGRs known in nature, su...

Structural analysis reveals how a phage protein blocks a lipid II flippase to prevent bacterial cell wall synthesis.

Panoptes, an anti-phage defence system against virus-mediated immune suppression, is revealed.

Bacteria have evolved sophisticated antiphage systems that halt phage replication upon detecting specific phage triggers. Identifying phage triggers is crucial to our understanding of immune signaling...

More than 4,000 women collected their own vaginal swabs to help scientists build a reference for the understudied healthy vaginal microbiome.

Biofilm bacteria found in heart plaque may escape antibiotics and cause cardiac events, pointing to a hidden infectious risk.

1. The use of long-read sequencing using portable Oxford Nanopore Technologies (ONT) is becoming increasingly popular in the study of host-associated microbiomes. However, its application has not yet...

The structural integrity of bacterial cells is traditionally attributed to the peptidoglycan cell wall, and more recently to the outer membrane, with the cytoplasmic membrane assumed to be mechanicall...

A large fraction of aquatic bacteria remains uncultured. Here, the authors cultivated 627 strains of abundant freshwater bacteria from 14 European lakes, thus generating a collection that includes many previously uncultured, oligotrophic bacteria that may serve as model organisms.

Chromosome architecture influences Agrobacterium fitness, competitiveness, and virulence, shaping its adaptation and evolution.

During chlorite-induced oxidative stress, the MsrPQ system repairs periplasmic proteins oxidized at methionine residues. This study shows that in these conditions the Escherichia coli chaperone Spy is...

Author summary The nasopharynx is dominated by opportunistic pathogens, such as Streptococcus pneumoniae (SPN), which typically reside as harmless bystanders. However, in individuals with heightened n...

The antibiotic polymyxin B requires bacterial metabolic activity to cause sufficient damage to the outer membrane to access the inner membrane, which it permeabilizes via an energy-independent mechanism to kill the cell.

Megaphages are bacteriophages (i.e., phages) with exceptionally large genomes that have been discovered computationally across the globe. To date, all have evaded cultivation except phage G, which we examined with multiomics and artificial intelligence (AI) to resolve its 50-year cultivated history. Phage G is one of the largest phages with a size of >0.6 µm, about half the width of the host cell, and a 499 kbp, non-permuted, linear genome that has, uniquely among known phages, two pairs of ends. Phage G has >650 protein-coding open reading frames (ORFs), with >65% being hypothetical proteins, with the expansive repertoire of auxiliary metabolic genes (AMGs) acquired from its bacterial host, manipulate host sporulation (sspD, RsfA, spoK), and antiviral escape genes (e.g., anti-CBass nuclease and Anti-Pycsar protein). Our study represents a doorway into the complexity of the genomic repertoire of the only cultivated megaphage.