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Tomato rhizosphere microbiome alterations that contribute to bacterial wilt resistance are detected using metagenomics.

Copy number variation is a major source of variation between individuals that is increasingly recognized as influencing genome evolution and human disease. But how does it arise? The authors discuss predicted mechanisms of copy number change, including non-homologous end-joining and non-homologous repair of broken replication forks.

An E. coli and K. pneumoniae phenotype resistant to piperacillin/tazobactam has recently emerged. Here, the authors show that hyperproduction of the β-lactamase driving this resistance occurs due to excision and reinsertion of a translocatable unit containing bla_TEM-1B, creating a tandem array.

CRISPR technology is emerging as a potential antimicrobial against antimicrobial-resistant bacteria. Here the authors develop a bacteriophage delivered Cas13a system for killing target bacteria and detecting bacterial genes.

The number and diversity of organisms known to produce the environmentally important sulfur compound dimethylsulfoniopropionate (DMSP) is expanded with the discovery of a family of DMSP synthesis enzymes.

Although many mutations are harmful, some can help a population to adapt to environmental changes and enhance its chances of survival. Mutations have always been thought to be random, chance events, but the discovery of a set of enzymes known as mutases indicates that cells have mechanisms for generating them. The process needs to be tightly regulated, though, and is switched on only when the cell is under stress.

Human chromatin remodeller SMARCAD1 exhibits a substrate preference for subnucleosomal particles over the canonical nucleosome.

CRISPR spacers can recombine with phage target sequences to mediate a form of specialized transduction that can promote transfer of CRISPR elements to other bacteria in the population.

Delivering functional proteins or protein complexes into cells continues to be a significant challenge. Here, the authors develop efficient systems by using engineered extracellular vesicles to deliver functional cargoes, including CRISPR/Cas9-ribonucleoproteins, both in vitro and in vivo.

Adherent-invasive strains of E. coli are commonly isolated from patients with Crohn’s disease. Here, the authors show that an AIEC harbours a hybrid Type IV secretion system (T4SS) that mediates pilin polymerization and biofilm formation in vivo.

Inteins can act as post-translational environmental sensors in vivo. Here the authors characterize two inteins present in the Mycobacterium smegmatis replicative helicase DnaB that display distinct splicing behaviors and are differentially sensitive to inhibition by biological stressors and propose that splicing inhibition could modulate DnaB levels to protect the cell against replication stress.

In this Protocol, the authors describe a DNA assembly method that enables users to achieve the ordered, recombination-based assembly of repetitive sequences for the development and optimization of metabolic pathways and functional genetic circuits.

The bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi, which causes Lyme disease and is transmitted by ticks, has a linear chromosome and multiple plasmids. Here, Takacs et al. show that the pathogen is polyploid, the number of genome copies decreases during stationary phase, and chromosome copies are regularly spaced along the cell’s length.

Eller et al. develop a Facile Accelerated Specific Therapeutic (FAST) platform of antisense therapeutics that targets MDR bacterial pathogens with peptide nucleic acids (PNAs). This platform designs species and/or sequence specific PNAS based on a bioinformatics toolbox and offers a new delivery approach by repurposing the bacterial Type III secretion system in conjunction with a kill switch to overcome limited transport of PNAs into mammalian cells.

Bacterial genes required for plant colonization are highly host- and organ-specific. An efflux pump detoxifies specific Arabidopsis glucosinolates to protect commensal bacteria from plant chemical defenses during colonization.

The plant commensal Bacillus velezensis SQR9 uses its type VII secretion system to deliver effector protein YukE to plant roots, which causes iron leakage and promotes its colonization on roots.

During the transition from lysogeny (a stable association between a phage and its bacterial host) to the lytic cycle, prophage excision can be followed or preceded by DNA replication and packaging. Here, the authors show that prophage excision is delayed in Salmonella phage P22, thus allowing the packaging and transfer of large fragments of host DNA via lateral transduction.

The tumor suppressor RAD51C is mutated in ovarian cancers. Through variant analysis the authors identify a mutation cluster in the RAD51C Walker B region important for the repair of DNA double-strand breaks and replicative damage. By identifying Walker B separation-of-function alleles, they show that these activities can be uncoupled.

The crystal structure of the toxin from the pathogenic bacterium Burkholderia pseudomallei in complex with its target, human eIF4A, provides insights into substrate specificity and may facilitate the design of inhibitors for the treatment of melioidosis.

A study describes the assembly and analysis of a haplotype-resolved pangenome of bulbous barley with the potential to improve domesticated barley and illustrates its use in evolutionary research and trait mapping.

A conserved peptide motif, RXLR-EER present in effector proteins from the oomycete Phytophthora infestans (the cause of the Irish Potato famine) is required for movement of effectors from specialized infection structures called haustoria into plant cells. This sequence has recently been reported to be required for the translocation of the malarial parasite Plasmodium falciparum into human erythrocytes.

Cyanobacteria are shown to produce alkanes that sustain communities of pentadecane-degrading bacteria, and possibly archaea, as part of an alkane cycle in the ocean.

Current bacterial sgRNA activity models struggle with accurate predictions and generalizations. Here the authors report crisprHAL, a machine learning architecture that can be trained on existing datasets, and shows good sgRNA activity prediction accuracy can generalize predictions to different bacteria.

Stem cell grafts present a risk of tissue overgrowth/tumors. Here, the authors utilise a human pluripotent stem cell line carrying a FailSafe suicide gene to not only ablate proliferative cells, but through timely gene activation, improve the purity of neural grafts in Parkinsonian rats.

Cycling of the sulfur compound DMSOP by dimethylsulfoniopropionate lyase enzymes in the most abundant marine bacteria, algae and fungi is diverse and prevalent in Earth’s oceans and sediments and probably impacts climate-active gas production.

Medulloblastoma is the most common brain tumour in children; using exome sequencing of tumour samples the authors show that these cancers have low mutation rates and identify 12 significantly mutated genes, among them the gene encoding RNA helicase DDX3X.

The AIM2 inflammasome complex is essential for defence against a number of human pathogens but how it assembles upon recognition of foreign DNA remains incompletely understood. Here Morrone et al.suggest the AIM2 pyrin domain acts in both DNA binding and filament assembly to generate a structural template for complex assembly.

Interdisciplinary work in the life sciences at the boundaries of biology, chemistry and physics is making enormous strides. This progress was showcased at the recent Single Molecule Biophysics conference.

Escherichia coli uses curli fibres, oligomers of the functional amyloid CsgA, as a barrier to protect against the predatory bacteria Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus and Myxococcus xanthus in a mechanism that is independent of genes required for biofilm formation.

Pre-ribosomes undergo numerous structural rearrangements during their assembly. Here the authors identify the binding sites of three essential RNA helicases on pre-ribosomal particles, enabling them to provide insights into the structural and compositional changes that occur during biogenesis of the large ribosomal subunit.