Nature Reviews. Microbiology

Stony corals, the engines and engineers of reef ecosystems, face unprecedented threats from anthropogenic environmental change. Corals are holobionts that comprise the cnidarian animal host and a diverse community of bacteria, archaea, viruses and eukaryotic microorganisms. Recent research shows that the bacterial microbiome has a pivotal role in coral biology. A healthy bacterial assemblage contributes to nutrient cycling and stress resilience, but pollution, overfishing and climate change can break down these symbiotic relationships, which results in disease, bleaching and, ultimately, coral death...

Pathogens are ubiquitous and a constant threat to their hosts, which has led to the evolution of sophisticated immune systems in bacteria, archaea and eukaryotes. Bacterial immune systems encode an astoundingly large array of antiviral (antiphage) systems, and recent investigations have identified unexpected similarities between the immune systems of bacteria and animals. In this Review, we discuss advances in our understanding of the bacterial innate immune system and highlight the components, strategies and pathogen restriction mechanisms conserved between bacteria and eukaryotes...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

Successful approaches for eradication or cure of HIV-1 infection are likely to include immunological mechanisms, but remarkably little is known about how human immune responses can recognize and interact with the few HIV-1-infected cells that harbour genome-intact viral DNA, persist long term despite antiretroviral therapy and represent the main barrier to a cure. For a long time regarded as being completely shielded from host immune responses due to viral latency, these cells do, on closer examination with single-cell analytic techniques, display discrete footprints of immune selection, implying that human immune responses may be able to effectively engage and target at least some of these cells...

Malaria, mostly due to Plasmodium falciparum infection in Africa, remains one of the most important infectious diseases in the world. Standard treatment for uncomplicated P. falciparum malaria is artemisinin-based combination therapy (ACT), which includes a rapid-acting artemisinin derivative plus a longer-acting partner drug, and standard therapy for severe P. falciparum malaria is intravenous artesunate. The efficacy of artemisinins and ACT has been threatened by the emergence of artemisinin partial resistance in Southeast Asia, mediated principally by mutations in the P...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

Microorganisms are a promising means to address many societal sustainability challenges owing to their ability to thrive in diverse environments and interface with the microscale chemical world via diverse metabolic capacities. Synthetic biology can engineer microorganisms by rewiring their regulatory networks or introducing new functionalities, enhancing their utility for target applications. In this Review, we provide a broad, high-level overview of various research efforts addressing sustainability challenges through synthetic biology, emphasizing foundational microbiological research questions that can accelerate the development of these efforts...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.