In this episode we hear about echolocation, bacteriophages, babies and pain, a neural code for food abundance, and how zebrafish can make their own sunscreen.
Metabolomics and stable isotope labelling studies of virulent Mycobacterium tuberculosis reveal a de-centralised metabolic network able to utilise various amino acids as nitrogen sources to a better extent than ammonium.
Quantifiable bioenergetic parameters, determined from extracellular flux analyses, are distinct between macrophages infected with Mycobacteriumtuberculosis or vaccine strain M. bovis BCG, enabling assessment of future vaccine and drug efficacy.
The crystal structure of Thermus transcription activation complexes containing the transcriptional activator CarD reveals a new mechanism for the activation of transcription.
An unbiased forward genetic screen identified genes in Mycobacterium tuberculosis that are required for fatty acid import when the bacterium is residing within macrophages.
The integral membrane protein LucA facilitates fatty acid and cholesterol uptake into Mycobacterium tuberculosis by stabilizing the Mce1 and Mce4 transporters, respectively, and Mce1 functions as a fatty acid transporter in Mycobacterium tuberculosis.
RecO efficiently displaces SSB from ssDNA without consuming ATPs using its two DNA-binding sites, even though SSB binds to ssDNA approximately 300 times more strongly than RecO does.
An in vivo drug screen of FDA-approved compounds in zebrafish identified host-directed therapies against mycobacterial infection, including the drug clemastine, which targets the P2RX7-inflammasome axis to enhance bacterial control.
Intrinsic tolerance of Mycobacterium tuberculosis toward the world's most successful antibacterials, β-lactams, is dependent on cytoplasmic redox potential and an intracellular redox-sensor WhiB4.
