Reviews & Analysis

Host cells assemble linear ubiquitin chains to activate immune signalling during bacterial infection. A new study reveals that Legionella pneumophila — the causative agent of Legionnaires’ disease — produces an enzyme that specifically disassembles these linear ubiquitin modifications to restrict immune responses.

The finding that the two cell wall elongation systems of Bacillus subtilis have opposite effects on cell diameter and on the amount of oriented material along the sidewalls elucidates the long-standing question of how cell width is controlled in rod-shaped bacteria.

There is increasing evidence of direct and/or indirect interactions between bacteria and viruses. Two new studies shed light on the mechanisms underlying these interactions with implications not only for our understanding of microbial pathogenesis, but also for vaccine design.

Complementary genomic frameworks for taxonomic classification of viruses infecting bacteria and archaea reveal evolutionary drivers, mosaicism and perspective on the genetic diversity of the tiniest, most abundant biological entities on Earth.

This Review summarizes mathematical modelling approaches that can be applied to microbiome datasets, providing insights into microbial dynamics and interactions in this complex system.

Eukaryotes evolved from a symbiosis involving Alphaproteobacteria and archaea phylogenetically nested within the Asgard clade. Two recent studies explore the metabolic capabilities of Asgard lineages, supporting refined symbiotic metabolic interactions that might have operated at the dawn of eukaryogenesis.

Biofilms are communities of bacteria that accumulate on surfaces such as replacement joints or intravenous catheters. By silencing a key communication system, Staphylococcus aureus builds tightly packed biofilms that can withstand attack by host immune cells.

Microscopy and genomic analyses reveal an intriguing symbiosis between eukaryotic protists and Deltaproteobacteria in anoxic marine sediments that involves division of labour and interspecies hydrogen transfer, and enables collective magnetotactic motility by the consortium.

The rapidly dividing bacterium Vibrio natriegens holds promise for transforming traditional molecular biology and biotechnology processes. New work demonstrates that CRISPR interference technology is a robust tool for rapid, genome-wide screens in V. natriegens, facilitating future bioengineering efforts.

This Review describes recent findings on the biogenesis and the role of defective viral genomes during replication of RNA viruses and discusses their impact on viral dynamics and evolution.

A recent study finds that viruses cooperate altruistically to overcome innate host immunity and that this can be explained in the same way we explain altruism between animals.

A class of drugs approved to treat schizophrenia can cause rapid loss of the pilus, an essential virulence factor necessary for the disease-causing properties in the strict human pathogen Neisseria meningitidis.

Differences in microbial genomes can result in vastly different phenotypes and functions. Consequently, it is critical to understand the genome variations that differentiate microbial strains. Here, we discuss recent exciting advances that enable structural variant measurement, their associated phenotypes and the horizon for future discovery.

The secondary metabolite cepacin A is the essential compound made by Burkholderia ambifaria needed for biocontrol of plant pathogens. In this organism, genes responsible for virulence and for cepacin A biosynthesis reside on different replicons, allowing for the engineering of avirulent mutants that retain their biocontrol properties.

Inflammatory molecules evolved partly to protect hosts from viruses, but increasing evidence suggests that they cause disease pathology and chronic conditions, and play a role in aging. By mitigating these effects, bats are able to both tolerate viral infections and live well beyond expectations.

A large-scale comparative genomic survey of Cryptosporidium species and subtypes reveals a cryptic anthroponotic Cryptosporidium parvum branch and a large, recent superclade of species and subtypes that undergo genetic exchange, potentially facilitating host associations.

Computational analysis of fungal genomes revealed that some early-branching fungi use selenocysteine, the selenium-containing amino acid, that was thought to be missing from proteins in this lineage.

This Review highlights some of the advances that have been made towards understanding the complexity of differential interferon (IFN) signalling inputs and outputs as well as some of the strategies viruses use to interfere with or circumvent IFN-induced antiviral responses.

Megaphages, the largest phage genomes sequenced to date, are abundant in faecal microbiomes from humans, baboons and pigs, leading us to question whether there is an upper limit to the size of viruses relative to their hosts.

Three recent metagenomic studies analyse methanogenesis-related genes in previously uncharacterized, sediment-inhabiting archaeal lineages. They elucidate the metabolic capacity encoded in the genomes of these lineages, yet how these organisms harness energy is still a mystery.