Microbiology

MX2 restricts HIV-1 and herpes simplex virus type 1 by forming cytoplasmic biomolecular condensates that mimic nuclear pore complexes

1. George D. Moschonas
2. Louis Delhaye
3. Robin Cooreman
4. Franziska Hüsers
5. Anayat Bhat
6. Delphine De Sutter
7. Eef Parthoens
8. Anne-Sophie Desmet
9. Aleksandra Maciejczuk
10. Hanna Grzesik
11. Saskia Lippens
12. Zeger Debyser
13. Beate Sodeik
14. Sven Eyckerman
15. Xavier Saelens

Reviewed by Rapid Reviews Infectious Diseases

Discovery of the 1-naphthylamine biodegradation pathway reveals a broad-substrate-spectrum enzyme catalyzing 1-naphthylamine glutamylation

1. Shu-Ting Zhang
2. Shi-Kai Deng
3. Tao Li
4. Megan E Maloney
5. De-Feng Li
6. Jim C Spain
7. Ning-Yi Zhou

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This important work identifies a p. aeruginosa strain and enzyme that can degrade 1-naphthylamine, a harmful industrial pollutant. Data resulting from in vivo and structural approaches are compelling, but additional mutagenesis would further test and establish the broad substrate specificity of NpaA1. With this additional data, this paper would be of high interest to biologists and enzymologists studying biodegradation of industrial pollutants.

Reviewed by eLife

Investigating Novel Streptomyces Bacteriophage Endolysins as Potential Antimicrobial Agents

1. Jindanuch Maneekul
2. Amanda Chiaha
3. Rachel Hughes
4. Faith Labry
5. Joshua Saito
6. Matthew Almendares
7. Brenda N. Banda
8. Leslie Lopez
9. Nyeomi McGaskey
10. Melizza Miranda
11. Jenil Rana
12. Brandon R. Zadeh
13. Lee E. Hughes

Reviewed by Arcadia Science

A chemically induced attenuated strain of Candida albicans generates robust protective immune responses and prevents systemic candidiasis development

1. Swagata Bose
2. Satya Ranjan Sahu
3. Abinash Dutta
4. Narottam Acharya

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This study presents a useful strategy in which the authors devised a simple method to attenuate Candida albicans and deliver a live whole-cell vaccine in a mouse model of systemic candidiasis. The reviewers are not convinced about the completeness of the study: the strength of the evidence is incomplete and could be augmented with additional experiments to more fully characterize vaccine efficacy and host immune responses.

Reviewed by eLife

Decoding the complexity of delayed wound healing following Enterococcus faecalis infection

1. Cenk Celik
2. Stella Tue Ting Lee
3. Frederick Reinhart Tanoto
4. Mark Veleba
5. Kimberly Kline
6. Guillaume Thibault

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  Wounds are commonly infected, which can lead to delayed or poor wound healing, thereby significantly impacting morbidity and overall quality of life for patients. This manuscript uses single cell RNA sequencing to try to understand the impact of infection on various cell types during wound healing in a mouse model. The methodology is solid and the results provide a valuable 'atlas' of the cellular changes associated with infected and uninfected wounds which will be of interest to the field.

Reviewed by eLife

A Plasmodium falciparum MORC protein complex modulates epigenetic control of gene expression through interaction with heterochromatin

1. Maneesh Kumar Singh
2. Victoria Ann Bonnell
3. Israel Tojal Da Silva
4. Verônica Feijoli Santiago
5. Miriam Santos Moraes
6. Jack Adderley
7. Christian Doerig
8. Giuseppe Palmisano
9. Manuel Llinas
10. Celia RS Garcia

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This study provides valuable insights into how chromatin-bound PfMORC controls gene expression in the asexual blood stage of Plasmodium falciparum. By interacting with key nuclear proteins, PfMORC is predicted to affect expression of genes relating to host invasion and variable subtelomeric gene families. Correlating transcriptomic data with in vivo chromatin analysis, the study provides convincing evidence for the role of PfMORC in epigenetic transcriptional regulation.

Reviewed by eLife

The Spx stress regulator confers high-level β-lactam resistance and decreases susceptibility to last-line antibiotics in methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus

1. Tobias Krogh Nielsen
2. Ida Birkjær Petersen
3. Lijuan Xu
4. Maria Disen Barbuti
5. Viktor Mebus
6. Anni Justh
7. Abdulelah Ahmed Alqarzaee
8. Nicolas Jacques
9. Cécile Oury
10. Vinai Thomas
11. Morten Kjos
12. Camilla Henriksen
13. Dorte Frees

Reviewed by Rapid Reviews Infectious Diseases

Real-time identification of epistatic interactions in SARS-CoV-2 from large genome collections

1. Gabriel Innocenti
2. Maureen Obara
3. Bibiana Costa
4. Henning Jacobsen
5. Maeva Katzmarzyk
6. Luka Cicin-Sain
7. Ulrich Kalinke
8. Marco Galardini

Reviewed by Review Commons

Mycobacterium tuberculosis PhoP integrates stress response to intracellular survival by regulating cAMP level

1. Hina Khan
2. Partha Paul
3. Harsh Goar
4. Bhanwar Bamniya
5. Navin Baid
6. Dibyendu Sarkar

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This important study describes how PhoP regulates cyclic-AMP production in the human pathogen Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The authors provide convincing evidence that PhoP acts as a repressor of the cyclic-AMP-specific phosphodiesterase, Rv0805, which can degrade cyclic-AMP. The revised manuscript has addressed all outstanding comments and the work will be of interest to bacteriologists.

Reviewed by eLife

Multimodal HLA-I genotype regulation by human cytomegalovirus US10 and resulting surface patterning

1. Carolin Gerke
2. Liane Bauersfeld
3. Ivo Schirmeister
4. Chiara Noemi-Marie Mireisz
5. Valerie Oberhardt
6. Lea Mery
7. Di Wu
8. Christopher Sebastian Jürges
9. Robbert M Spaapen
10. Claudio Mussolino
11. Vu Thuy Khanh Le-Trilling
12. Mirko Trilling
13. Lars Dölken
14. Wolfgang Paster
15. Florian Erhard
16. Maike Hofmann
17. Andreas Schlosser
18. Hartmut Hengel
19. Frank Momburg
20. Anne Halenius

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This study presents a useful finding on a virally encoded immune-evasin which differentially inhibits antigen presentation by cellular protein complexes called Major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I, thereby diminishing the activation of cytotoxic T cells. The evidence supporting the claims of the authors is solid, although the addition of more mechanistic insights would strengthen the study. The work will be of interest to virologists and immunologists working on the adaptive immune response to herpesviral infection. Some conclusions would require additional experimental support.

Reviewed by eLife