Molecular Biology and Physiology
Commentary | Molecular Biology and PhysiologySignaling Pathways Governing the Caspofungin Paradoxical Effect in Aspergillus fumigatusAspergillus fumigatus is responsible for a wide range of diseases affecting several million people worldwide. Currently, a few families of antifungals are available to fight aspergillosis, and we are facing a worrisome increase in resistance to azoles, the drugs used for both first-line treatment and prophylaxis of invasive aspergillosis. In this context, some of the...
Research Article | Molecular Biology and PhysiologyThe sps Genes Encode an Original Legionaminic Acid Pathway Required for Crust Assembly in Bacillus subtilisBacillus species are a major economic and food safety concern of the food industry because of their food spoilage-causing capability and persistence. Their persistence is mainly due to their ability to form highly resistant spores adhering to the surfaces of industrial equipment. Spores of the Bacillus subtilis group are surrounded by the crust, a superficial...
Research Article | Molecular Biology and PhysiologyDifferential Alphavirus Defective RNA Diversity between Intracellular and Extracellular Compartments Is Driven by Subgenomic Recombination EventsOur understanding of viral defective RNAs (D-RNAs), or truncated viral genomes, comes largely from passaging studies in tissue culture under artificial conditions and/or packaged viral RNAs. Here, we show that specific populations of alphavirus D-RNAs arise de novo and that they are not packaged into virions, thus imposing a transmission bottleneck and impeding their prior detection. This raises important questions about the...
Research Article | Molecular Biology and PhysiologyThe Ndr/LATS Kinase Cbk1 Regulates a Specific Subset of Ace2 Functions and Suppresses the Hypha-to-Yeast Transition in Candida albicansThe regulation of Ace2 and morphogenesis (RAM) pathway is a key regulatory network that plays a role in many aspects of C. albicans pathobiology. In addition to characterizing the transcriptional effects of this pathway, we discovered that Cbk1 and Ace2, a key RAM pathway...
Research Article | Molecular Biology and PhysiologyPosttranslational Control of PlsB Is Sufficient To Coordinate Membrane Synthesis with Growth in Escherichia coliHow do bacterial cells grow without breaking their membranes? Although the biochemistry of fatty acid and membrane synthesis is well known, how membrane synthesis is balanced with growth and metabolism has remained unclear. This is partly due to the many control points that have been discovered within the membrane synthesis pathways. By precisely establishing the contributions of individual pathway enzymes, our results simplify the...
Research Article | Molecular Biology and PhysiologyPathogenesis of Human Papillomaviruses Requires the ATR/p62 Autophagy-Related PathwayHigh-risk human papillomaviruses (HPVs) infect epithelial cells and induce viral genome amplification upon differentiation. HPV proteins activate the ATR DNA damage repair pathway, and this is required for HPV genome amplification. In the present study, we show that HPV-induced ATR activation also leads to suppression of expression of inflammatory response genes. This suppression results from HPV-induced phosphorylation of the...
Editor's Pick Research Article | Molecular Biology and PhysiologyStructure and Multitasking of the c-di-GMP-Sensing Cellulose Secretion Regulator BcsEBacterial cellulose is a widespread biofilm component that can modulate microbial fitness and virulence both in the environment and infected hosts. Whereas its secretion generally involves an inner membrane c-di-GMP-dependent synthase tandem (BcsAB) across the bacterial domain of life, enterobacteria feature sophisticated Escherichia coli-like Bcs secretion systems,...
Research Article | Molecular Biology and PhysiologyHülle Cells of Aspergillus nidulans with Nuclear Storage and Developmental Backup Functions Are Reminiscent of Multipotent Stem CellsThe in vivo identification of Hülle cells in cases of aspergillosis infections in animals and humans illustrates their biological relevance and suggests that they might be involved in pathogenicity. It is striking that aspergilli have developed and maintained a multinucleate nurse cell that is presumably energy-intensive to produce and is usually found only in higher eukaryotes. Our findings shed light on how the understudied...
Research Article | Molecular Biology and PhysiologyA Genome-Wide CRISPR/Cas9 Screen Reveals that Riboflavin Regulates Hydrogen Peroxide Entry into HAP1 CellsUsing a genetic screen, we discovered that riboflavin controls the entry of hydrogen peroxide into a white blood cell line. To our knowledge, this is the first report of a vitamin playing a role in controlling transport of a small molecule across the cell membrane.
Minireview | Molecular Biology and PhysiologyEnterobacterial Common Antigen: Synthesis and Function of an Enigmatic MoleculeThe outer membrane (OM) of Gram-negative bacteria poses a barrier to antibiotic entry due to its high impermeability. Thus, there is an urgent need to study the function and biogenesis of the OM. In Enterobacterales, an order of bacteria with many pathogenic members, one of the components of the OM is enterobacterial common antigen (ECA). We have known of the presence of ECA on the cell surface of Enterobacterales for...