Microbiology

A Novel Rapid Host Cell Entry Pathway Determines Intracellular Fate of Staphylococcus aureus

1. Marcel Rühling
2. Fabio Schmelz
3. Kim Ulbrich
4. Fabian Schumacher
5. Julia Wolf
6. Maximilian Pfefferle
7. Magdalena Priester
8. Adriana Moldovan
9. Nadine Knoch
10. Andreas Iwanowitsch
11. Christian Kappe
12. Kerstin Paprotka
13. Burkhard Kleuser
14. Christoph Arenz
15. Martin J Fraunholz

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This valuable study proposes a novel rapid-entry mechanism for Staphylococcus aureus, involving the rapid release of calcium from lysosomes. The paper's strength lies in its very interesting hypothesis. The methods used are solid and adequately support the conclusions.

Reviewed by eLife

Out-of-balance Growth Enables Cost-free Synthesis of the Flagellum and Other Proteins in a Single Bacterium

1. Mayra Garcia-Alcala
2. Josiah C Kratz
3. Philippe Cluzel

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important study addresses a discrepancy between population-level growth laws and single-cell correlations. It shows, for flagellar and synthetic genes in E. coli, that while gene expression of certain genes reduces population-average growth, expression levels positively correlate with growth at the single-cell level. The measurements are mostly convincing, and the proposed mechanism-inheritance of growth factors such as ribosomes during asymmetric division- explains this observation. The theoretical analysis would benefit from clearer explanations and robustness checks.

Reviewed by eLife

Quantitative RNA pseudouridine landscape reveals dynamic modification patterns and evolutionary conservation across bacterial species

1. Letong Xu
2. Shenghai Shen
3. Yizhou Zhang
4. Zhihao Guo
5. Beifang Lu
6. Jiadai Huang
7. Runsheng Li
8. Yitong Shen
9. Li-Sheng Zhang
10. Xin Deng

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study illustrates a valuable application of BID-seq to bacterial RNA, allowing transcriptome-wide mapping of pseudouridine modifications across various bacterial species. The evidence presented includes solid data and analyses that would benefit from additional experimental validation. The work will interest a specialized audience involved in RNA biology.

Reviewed by eLife

Research advance: Unexpected plasticity in the life cycle of Trypanosoma brucei

1. Carina Praisler
2. Jaime N Lisack
3. Anna Sophie Kreis
4. Laura Hauf
5. Johanna Krenzer
6. Fabian Imdahl
7. Markus Engstler

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  The manuscript concerns a fundamental and controversial question in Trypanosoma brucei biology and the parasite life cycle, providing further evidence that slender bloodstream forms can indeed infect Tsetse flies. The study is solid in design and execution, and addresses several criticisms made of the authors' earlier work. Nevertheless, some of the main conclusions are only partially supported: one issue is how, precisely, a "slender" bloodstream form is defined, and discrepancies with some results from other laboratories remain unexplained.

Reviewed by eLife

The phenotypic landscape of the mycobacterial cell

1. Nadia Herrera
2. Horia Todor
3. Lili M. Kim
4. Hannah N. Burkhart
5. Evan Billings
6. Allison Fay
7. Theodore C. Warner
8. So Young Lee
9. Natalie Y. Sayegh
10. Barbara Bosch
11. James Chen
12. Laura L. Kiessling
13. Michael S. Glickman
14. Filippo Mancia
15. Jeremy M. Rock
16. Carol A. Gross

Reviewed by Rapid Reviews Infectious Diseases

Ligand binding represses bacterial histidine kinase activity by inhibiting its dimerization

1. Gaurav D. Sankhe
2. Jiawei Xing
3. Merissa Xiao
4. John Buglino
5. Huilin Li
6. Igor B. Zhulin
7. Michael S. Glickman

Reviewed by Review Commons

Peptidoglycan recycling is critical for cell division, cell wall integrity, and β-lactam resistance in Caulobacter crescentus

1. Pia Richter
2. Anna Merz
3. Jacob Biboy
4. Nicole Paczia
5. Timo Glatter
6. Jared Ng
7. Waldemar Vollmer
8. Martin Thanbichler

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This manuscript presents a valuable investigation of the peptidoglycan (PG) recycling pathway in Caulobacter crescentus. The authors showed that PG recycling in C. crescentus is essential not only for β-lactam (ampicillin) resistance but also for cell morphology, efficient division, and overall fitness. The study is comprehensive and compelling.

Reviewed by eLife

Reactive Oxygen Detoxification Contributes to Mycobacterium abscessus Antibiotic Survival

1. Nicholas A Bates
2. Ronald Rodriguez
3. Rama Drwich
4. Abigail Ray
5. Sarah A Stanley
6. Bennett H Penn

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  Using a transposon sequencing (TN-seq) approach, the authors identified key genetic determinants of drug tolerance in Mycobacterium abscessus. Given that M. abscessus is inherently resistant to multiple antibiotics, this valuable study makes a significant contribution by uncovering how antibiotic tolerance is linked to reactive oxygen species (ROS) in this non-tuberculous mycobacterial (NTM) species. The solid findings further strengthen the growing evidence that ROS play a central role in the mechanism of antibiotic action and tolerance in mycobacteria. However, the use of words persistence or tolerance should follow the consensus definition given in the Balaban 2019 Nat Rev Micro paper.

Reviewed by eLife

A Coma Pattern-Based Autofocusing Method Resolves Bacterial Cold Shock Response at Single-Cell Level

1. Sihong Li
2. Zhixin Ma
3. Yue Yu
4. Jinjuan Wang
5. Yaxin Shen
6. Xiaodong Cui
7. Xiongfei Fu
8. Shuqiang Huang

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important study introduces LUNA, a new autofocusing method that achieves nanoscale precision and robustly corrects focus drift during time-lapse microscopy, improving imaging under temperature shifts. The authors exploit this technical advance to investigate the bacterial cold shock response, providing solid evidence that individual cells continue to grow and divide in a highly coordinated process that cannot be observed in population-level measurements. This work offers a technical and conceptual framework for reconciling discrepancies between bulk and single-cell growth measurements, with broad relevance for cell biology and microbiology.

Reviewed by eLife

Evaluation of antibiotic and peptide vaccine strategies for mirror bacterial infections

1. Alexander Kleinman
2. Joe Torres
3. Brian Wang

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important study experimentally probes potential antibiotic activity against hypothetical "mirror bacteria" with reversed chirality, showing that D-enantiomers of several approved antibiotics largely lack activity against natural bacteria (as a proxy for mirror organisms) and that conjugated D-peptides can elicit strong binding antibody responses in mice when adjuvanted. The evidence is solid for these core observations but incomplete on issues of chiral purity, functional antibody assays, replicates, and pharmacodynamic readouts; the work also overreaches in extrapolations without deeper mechanistic integration or native-format validation. Overall, the work offers a cautious, relevant contribution to mirror microbiology discussions and will interest infectious disease researchers.

Reviewed by eLife