Browse our latest Microbiology and Infectious Disease articles

Heterotypic immunity, the ability of immunity induced by one SARS-CoV-2 variant to protect against another, is asymmetric, with the UK (B.1.1.7) variant, eliciting weaker heterotypic immunity than other variants.

Pulse electron paramagnetic resonance on intact Escherichia coli reveals a substrate-induced structural transition in BtuB, the vitamin B₁₂ transporter, which is not seen in reconstituted membranes and indicates a mechanism of transport.

The increased risk for symptomatic malaria following an asymptomatic Plasmodium falciparum infection supports targeting asymptomatic infections as a tool to reduce clinical malaria in high-transmission settings.

The extension of covariation analyses to proteins that coevolve but do not physically interact enabled identification of selectivity residues in quorum sensing proteins, providing insight into the evolution of signaling systems.

Outer membrane vesicles serve as decoys to reduce the chance of direct polymyxin B (PMB) binding to cells, which partly explains why many clinical isolates and microbial communities can be protected against PMB treatment.

Plasmodium falciparum K13 mutations confer resistance to the antimalarial artemisinin in Asian and African parasites, with most gene-edited mutant K13 African parasite lines showing a fitness cost that may predict slow dissemination of artemisinin resistance in high-transmission settings.

Selection by national-level antibiotic consumption and vaccination trends drives atypical recombinations, frequently resulting in interspecies sequence exchange at many sites across a bacterial species’ chromosome.

Large-scale retrospective analysis suggests medications and dietary supplements, such as rosuvastatin, ezetimibe, ubiquinone, risedronate, vitamin D, and magnesium, are associated with a lower rate of severe COVID-19 disease.

Genetic and biochemical approaches uncover a novel mode of regulation of the alarmone synthetase RelA through a functional and direct interaction with the small subunit of the nitrite reductase NirD.

KSHV nullifies hypoxic restriction of DNA replication.