Microbiology

Expanding the toolbox: Novel class IIb microcins show activity against Gram-negative ESKAPE and plant pathogens

1. Benedikt M Mortzfeld
2. Shakti K Bhattarai
3. Vanni Bucci

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study presents important advances in the discovery and assessment of microcins that improve our understanding of their prevalence and roles. The bioinformatics analysis, expression, and antimicrobial assays are solid, although the diverging evaluations also indicated the need for additional support regarding the sequence analysis and validation to fully back some of the claims and conclusions. This study will appeal to researchers working on the discovery and analysis of novel peptide natural products.

Reviewed by eLife

Primosomal protein PriC rescues replication initiation stress by bypassing the DnaA-DnaB interaction step for DnaB helicase loading at oriC

1. Ryusei Yoshida
2. Kazuma Korogi
3. Qinfei Wu
4. Shogo Ozaki
5. Tsutomu Katayama

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important study addresses how DNA replication restarts in Escherichia coli in the absence of a functional replication initiator protein DnaA. The authors show that helicase DnaB loading at the replication origin oriC can be executed by PriC under sub-optimal initiation conditions. While the genetic and biochemical evidence is solid, there is so far no direct evidence for PriC acting at oriC in vivo.

Reviewed by eLife

Anti-tubercular potential and pH-driven mode of action of salicylic acid derivatives

1. Janïs Laudouze
2. Thomas Francis
3. Emma Forest
4. Frédérique Mies
5. Jean-Michel Bolla
6. Céline Crauste
7. Stéphane Canaan
8. Vadim Shlyonsky
9. Pierre Santucci
10. Jean-François Cavalier

Reviewed by Rapid Reviews Infectious Diseases

A fast-acting inhibitor of blood-stage P. falciparum with mechanism distinct from artemisinin and chloroquine

1. Stephanie Kabeche
2. Thomas Meister
3. Ellen Yeh

Reviewed by Rapid Reviews Infectious Diseases

A system for functional studies of the major virulence factor of malaria parasites

1. Jakob Cronshagen
2. Johannes Allweier
3. Paolo Mesén-Ramírez
4. Jan Stäcker
5. Anna Viktoria Vaaben
6. Gala Ramón-Zamorano
7. Isabel Naranjo-Prado
8. Susann Ofori
9. Pascal WTC Jansen
10. Joëlle Hornebeck
11. Florian Kieferle
12. Agnes Murk
13. Elicia Martin
14. Carolina Castro-Peña
15. Richárd Bártfai
16. Thomas Lavstsen
17. Iris Bruchhaus
18. Tobias Spielmann

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study introduces an important approach using selection linked integration (SLI) to generate Plasmodium falciparum lines expressing single, specific surface adhesins PfEMP1 variants, enabling precise study of PfEMP1 trafficking, receptor binding, and cytoadhesion. By moving the system to different parasite strains and introducing an advanced SLI2 system for additional genomic edits, this work provides compelling evidence for an innovative and rigorous platform to explore PfEMP1 biology and identify novel proteins essential for malaria pathogenesis including immune evasion.

Reviewed by eLife

Microbiota from young mice counteracts susceptibility to age-related gout through modulating butyric acid levels in aged mice

1. Ning Song
2. Hang Gao
3. Jianhao Li
4. Yi Liu
5. Mingze Wang
6. Zhiming Ma
7. Naisheng Zhang
8. Wenlong Zhang

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This is an important study showing that age-related gut microbiota modulate uric acid metabolism through the NLRP3 inflammasome pathway and thereby regulate susceptibility to age-related gout. Several experimental approaches (mechanistic insights) and methods (data quality) remain incomplete. This paper should be of interest to researchers working on gout and microbiota.

Reviewed by eLife

Integrator complex subunit 12 knockout overcomes a transcriptional block to HIV latency reversal

1. Carley N Gray
2. Manickam Ashokkumar
3. Derek H Janssens
4. Jennifer Kirchherr
5. Brigitte Allard
6. Emily Hsieh
7. Terry L Hafer
8. Nancie M Archin
9. Edward P Browne
10. Michael Emerman

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  Using multiple techniques previously validated by the authors, this study identified INTS12, a component of the Integrator complex involved in 3' processing of small nuclear RNAs U1 and U2, as a factor promoting HIV-1 latency. The work is valuable, based on a sound strategy for screening targets to activate HIV latency and the deep mechanistic insights it provides on INTS12 repression of transcriptional elongation. While the work is solid, authors must address minor weaknesses, including assessing knockdown efficiency and validating the target by examining the impact on cell viability and latency-reversing activity in combination with LRAs other than AZD5582 & I-BET151.

Reviewed by eLife

Enterovirus A71 adaptation to heparan sulfate comes with capsid stability tradeoff

1. Han Kang Tee
2. Gregory Mathez
3. Valeria Cagno
4. Aleksandar Antanasijevic
5. Sophie Clément
6. Caroline Tapparel

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This is an important work and it correlates capsid stability with mutations that promote heparan sulfate binding. The data is solid, but there is a need for further analysis and experiments to support the claims and to propose a more detailed mechanism that could explain how these mutations altered capsid stability.

Reviewed by eLife

Microbes with higher metabolic independence are enriched in human gut microbiomes under stress

1. Iva Veseli
2. Yiqun T Chen
3. Matthew S Schechter
4. Chiara Vanni
5. Emily C Fogarty
6. Andrea R Watson
7. Bana Jabri
8. Ran Blekhman
9. Amy D Willis
10. Michael K Yu
11. Antonio Fernàndez-Guerra
12. Jessika Füssel
13. A Murat Eren

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study presents an important new bioinformatics tool for normalizing gene copy number from metagenomic assemblies and applies it to gain functional insights into the loss of microbial diversity during conditions of stress. The inclusion of extensive computational validation makes this a compelling study that raises intriguing new hypotheses regarding the impact of disease states on the gut microbiome. This paper will likely be of broad interest to researchers studying the role of complex microbial communities in host health and disease.

Reviewed by eLife

Paracrine rescue of MYR1-deficient Toxoplasma gondii mutants reveals limitations of pooled in vivo CRISPR screens

1. Francesca Torelli
2. Diogo M da Fonseca
3. Simon Butterworth
4. Joanna C Young
5. Moritz Treeck

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important study shows that Toxoplasma gondii uses paracrine mechanisms, in addition to cell-intrinsic methods, to evade the host immune system, with MYR1 playing a key role in transporting effector molecules into host cells. The authors present convincing evidence that in vivo, MYR1-deficient parasites can be rescued by wild-type parasites, revealing a limitation in pooled CRISPR screens, where such paracrine effects may obscure the identification of key parasite pathways involved in immune evasion

Reviewed by eLife