Extracellular vesicles are produced by species across all domains of life, suggesting that
vesiculation represents a fundamental principle of living matter. In Gram-negative bacteria …

Proteolytic cleavage regulates numerous processes in health and disease. One key player
is the ubiquitously expressed serine protease furin, which cleaves a plethora of proteins at …

Identifying and characterizing mobile genetic elements in sequencing data is essential for
understanding their diversity, ecology, biotechnological applications and impact on public …

Despite remarkable strides in microbiome research, the viral component of the microbiome
has generally presented a more challenging target than the bacteriome. This gap persists …

Viruses that infect microbial hosts have traditionally been studied in laboratory settings with
a focus on either obligate lysis or persistent lysogeny. In the environment, these infection …

The world is on the cusp of a post-antibiotic era, but researchers and medical doctors have
found a way forward—by looking back at how infections were treated before the advent of …

Prokaryotes have numerous mobile genetic elements (MGEs) that mediate horizontal gene
transfer (HGT) between cells. These elements can be costly, even deadly, and cells use …

The severity of human infection by one of the many Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli
(STEC) is determined by a number of factors: the bacterial genome, the capacity of human …

Unlike lytic phages, temperate phages that enter lysogeny maintain a long-term association
with their bacterial host. In this context, mutually beneficial interactions can evolve that …

Nearly half of the sequenced bacteria are lysogens and many of their prophages encode
adaptive traits. Yet, the variables driving prophage distribution remain undetermined. We …