Microbiology

Addressing efficacy of everyday hygiene cleansing products in context of sustainable handwashing behaviour in the post-pandemic era

1. Sandip B. Pathak
2. Shafali Arora
3. Jabir Sayyed
4. Urmi Trivedi
5. Lincy Sherin
6. Nitish Kumar
7. Harshinie W. Jayasekera
8. Amitabha Majumdar
9. Sayandip Mukherjee

Reviewed by PREreview, Rapid Reviews Infectious Diseases

Finding the known unknowns: minimal machine learning models of resistance identify novel antibiotic resistance discovery opportunities in Klebsiella pneumoniae

1. Kristina Kordova
2. Caitlin Collins
3. Julian Parkhill

Reviewed by Rapid Reviews Infectious Diseases

Nonequilibrium polysome dynamics promote chromosome segregation and its coupling to cell growth in Escherichia coli

1. Alexandros Papagiannakis
2. Qiwei Yu
3. Sander K Govers
4. Wei-Hsiang Lin
5. Ned S Wingreen
6. Christine Jacobs-Wagner

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important study presents compelling observational data supporting a role for transcription and polysome accumulation in the separation of newly replicated bacterial chromosomes. Through a comprehensive and rigorous comparative analysis of the spatiotemporal dynamics of ribosomal accumulation, nucleoid segregation, and cell division, the authors develop a model that nucleoid segregation rates are determined at least in part by the accumulation of ribosomes in the center of the cell, exerting a steric force to drive nucleoid segregation prior to cell division. This model circumvents the need to invoke as yet unidentified active mechanisms (e.g. an equivalent to a eukaryotic spindle) as drivers of bacterial chromosome segregation and intrinsically couples this vital step in the cell cycle to cell growth.

Reviewed by eLife

Salmonella exploits host- and bacterial-derived β-alanine for replication inside host macrophages

1. Shuai Ma
2. Bin Yang
3. Yuyang Sun
4. Xinyue Wang
5. Houliang Guo
6. Ruiying Liu
7. Ting Ye
8. Chenbo Kang
9. Jingnan Chen
10. Lingyan Jiang

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  The authors use a multidisciplinary approach to provide a link between Beta-alanine and S. Typhimurium (STM) infection and virulence. This valuable work shows how Beta-alanine synthesis mediates zinc homeostasis regulation, possibly contributing to virulence. The work is convincing as it adds to the existing knowledge of metabolic flexibility displayed by STM during infection.

Reviewed by eLife

Stumpy forms are the predominant transmissible forms of Trypanosoma brucei

1. Jean Marc Tsagmo Ngoune
2. Parul Sharma
3. Aline Crouzols
4. Nathalie Petiot
5. Brice Rotureau

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  African (or Salivarian) trypanosomes are significant pathogens of humans and domestic animals. For many decades is was accepted that only the "stumpy" non-proliferative form was capable of infecting the Tsetse-fly vector, but recent work challenged this, suggesting that the proliferative "slender" form is also infective. The current paper provides important and convincing laboratory evidence that the original concept is probably correct for most infections: the slender form was not infective for adult Tsetse, and was only able to infect young, less immunocompetent flies if N-acetyl glucosamine was added to the feed.

Reviewed by eLife

A bacterial regulatory uORF senses multiple classes of ribosome-targeting antibiotics

1. Gabriele Baniulyte
2. Joseph T Wade

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  In this important study, Baniulyte and Wade provide convincing evidence that translation of a short ORF denoted toiL positioned upstream of the topAI-yjhQP operon is responsive to different ribosome-targeting antibiotics, consequently controlling translation of the TopAI toxin as well as Rho-dependent transcription termination. Strengths of the study include combining a genetic screen to identify 23S rRNA mutations that affect topA1 expression and a creative approach to map the different locations of ribosome stalling within toiL induced by different antibiotics, with ribosome profiling and RNA structure probing by SHAPE to examine consequences of different antibiotics on toiL-mediated regulation. The work leaves unanswered how bacteria benefit by activating expression of the genes using the proposed strategy and the mechanism underlying ToiL's sensing of structurally distinct antibiotics.

Reviewed by eLife

Vibrio cholerae lineage and pangenome diversity varies geographically across Bangladesh over one year

1. Chuhan Qin
2. Patrick Lypaczewski
3. Md. Abu Sayeed
4. Aline C. Cuénod
5. Lindsey Brinkley
6. Ashton Creasy-Marrazzo
7. Emilee T. Cato
8. Kamrul Islam
9. Md. Imam Ul Khabir
10. Md. Taufiqur R. Bhuiyan
11. Yasmin Begum
12. Firdausi Qadri
13. Ashraful I. Khan
14. Eric J. Nelson
15. B. Jesse Shapiro

Reviewed by Rapid Reviews Infectious Diseases

The emergence of new lineages of the Mpox virus could affect the 2022 outbreak

1. Mayla Abrahim
2. Alexandro Guterres
3. Patrícia Cristina da Costa Neves
4. Ana Paula Dinis Ano Bom

Reviewed by Rapid Reviews Infectious Diseases

Efficacy and mechanism of action of cipargamin as an antibabesial drug candidate

1. Hang Li
2. Shengwei Ji
3. Nanang R Ariefta
4. Eloiza May S Galon
5. Shimaa AES El-Sayed
6. Thom Do
7. Lijun Jia
8. Miako Sakaguchi
9. Masahito Asada
10. Yoshifumi Nishikawa
11. Xin Qin
12. Mingming Liu
13. Xuenan Xuan

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study presents valuable findings with practical and theoretical implications for drug discovery, particularly in the context of repurposing cipargamin CIP for the treatment of Babesia spp. The evidence is solid with the methods, data, and analyses broadly supporting the claims. The paper will be of great interest to scientists in drug discovery, computational biology, and microbiology.

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 manuscript reports findings of fundamental significance on how bacteria might load helicase for DNA replication when normal DnaA-based loading pathway is defective. It provides convincing genetic and biochemical evidence that helicase loading at the E. coli oriC is not (as previously assumed) exclusively performed by the DnaA initiator protein but can also be executed by PriC (whether this occurs specifically at oriC has not been addressed in vivo). This is a significant step forward in our understanding of bacterial replication initiation.

Reviewed by eLife