Bacterial physiology articles from across Nature Portfolio

Pathogenic bacteria rely on the stringent response to adapt to environments within the host. Here, Michaud et al. show that iron-sulfur cluster damage acts as a conserved signal that triggers the stringent response.

The BAM protein complex catalyzes the integration of newly made proteins into the outer membrane of Gram-negative bacteria. Here, Nilaweera et al. provide evidence that outer-membrane lipids also play an important role in this process.

Yoshioka et al. show that bacteria wrap their flagella to squeeze through near cell-width confinements, which allows symbiotic microbes to navigate constricted gut regions within insect hosts.

Structural, genetic, functional and biochemical analyses of the complex flagellar motor of Campylobacter jejuni reveal structural adaptations with an ancient origin also found more widely across bacterial species, including elements exapted from the type IV pilus machinery.

Amino acid starvation of Borrelia burgdorferi does not induce a physiological response via the canonical (p)ppGpp-driven stringent response and results in severe maladaptive phenotypes.

Chure et al. analyse experimental data to show that E. coli bacteria maintain stable protein density ratios between cytoplasm and membranes. In addition, they develop a biophysical model that predicts surface-to-volume ratio from ribosomal content and protein partitioning across cell compartments.

This study uncovers how Pseudomonas aeruginosa acquires colistin resistance in magnesium-depleted environments created by Candida albicans by accumulating unique mutations in the lipid A biosynthetic pathway.

This study shows that FhaB is a critical colonization factor that enables Bordetella species to colonize a protected niche at the base of the cilia of epithelial cells.

This study shows that amino acids facilitate microbial iron acquisition in environments that exhibit low nutrient concentration and where siderophores are highly diluted.

A study by Jin et al. shows that oral–gut translocation of prtC⁺ bacteria is implicated in the well-known link between gut microbiome dysbiosis and advanced liver disease in humans.

A recent study identifies a compound that sensitizes fungal pathogens to the antifungal drug caspofungin.

This study reports that the commensal gut bacterium Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron establishes distinct subpopulations in response to two secreted, self-targeting effector proteins.