, January 28, 2026
Regulation of extracellular vesicles for protein secretion in <i>Aspergillus nidulans</i>

Regulation of extracellular vesicles for protein secretion in Aspergillus nidulans

Rebekkah E. Pope1, Patrick Ballmann2, Lisa Whitworth3 and Rolf A. Prade1,*

This study reveals that Aspergillus nidulans boosts extracellular vesicle production when ER-trafficked enzymes are induced, uncovering how fungi remodel their secretome through vesicle-mediated secretion to adapt to changing environments and biofilm formation.

January 23, 2026
Transcriptomic response to different heme sources in <i>Trypanosoma cruzi</i> epimastigotes

Transcriptomic response to different heme sources in Trypanosoma cruzi epimastigotes

Evelyn Tevere1,a, María G. Mediavilla1,a, Cecilia B. Di Capua1, Marcelo L. Merli1, Carlos Robello2,3, Luisa Berná2,4 and Julia A. Cricco

This study uncovers how the Chagas disease parasite adapts to changes in heme, an essential molecule for its survival, providing transcriptional clues to heme metabolism and identifying a previously unreported heme-binding protein in T. cruzi.

, January 21, 2026

Sir2 regulates selective autophagy in stationary-phase yeast cells

Ji-In Ryua, Juhye Junga, and Jeong-Yoon Kim

This study establishes Sir2 as a previously unrecognized regulator of selective autophagy during the stationary phase and highlight how cells dynamically control organelle degradation.

January 4, 2015

Prokaryotic ancestry and gene fusion of a dual localized peroxiredoxin in malaria parasites

Carine F. Djuika1, Jaime Huerta-Cepas2, Jude M. Przyborski3, Sophia Deil1, Cecilia P. Sanchez1, Tobias Doerks2, Peer Bork2, Michael Lanzer1 and Marcel Deponte1

Horizontal gene transfer has emerged as a crucial driving force for the evolution of eukaryotes. This also includes Plasmodium falciparum and related economically and clinically relevant apicomplexan parasites, whose rather small genomes have been shaped not only by natural selection in different host populations but also by horizontal gene transfer following endosymbiosis. However, there is rather little reliable data on horizontal gene transfer between animal hosts or bacteria and apicomplexan parasites. Here we show that apicomplexan homologues of peroxiredoxin 5 (Prx5) have a prokaryotic ancestry and therefore represent a special subclass of Prx5 isoforms in eukaryotes. Using two different immunobiochemical approaches, we found that…

January 1, 2015

Two distinct and competitive pathways confer the cellcidal actions of artemisinins

Chen Sun#, Jian Li#, Yu Cao, Gongbo Long and Bing Zhou

The biological actions of artemisinin (ART), an antimalarial drug derived from Artemisia annua, remain poorly understood and controversial. This article concludes that ARTs are endowed with two major and distinct types of properties: a potent and specific mitochondria-dependent reaction and a more general and less specific heme-mediated reaction. The competitive nature of these two actions could be explained by their shared source of the consumable ARTs, so that inhibition of the heme-mediated degradation pathway would enable more ARTs to be available for the mitochondrial action. These properties of ARTs can be used to interpret the divergent antimalarial and anticancer actions of ARTs.

, November 29, 2014

Loss of wobble uridine modification in tRNA anticodons interferes with TOR pathway signaling

Viktor Scheidt1,#, André Jüdes1,#, Christian Bär1,2,#, Roland Klassen1 and Raffael Schaffrath1

The herein presented data suggest that proper TOR signaling requires intact tRNA modifications and that loss of U34 modifications impinges on the TOR-sensitive NCR branch via Gln3 misregulation.

, November 26, 2014

Measurement of apoptosis by SCAN©, a system for counting and analysis of fluorescently labelled nuclei

Neta Shlezinger1,#, Elad Eizner1,2,#, Stas Dubinchik2, Anna Minz-Dub1, Rachel Tetroashvili1, Adi Reider1, Amir Sharon1

This work reports on a system for analyses of apoptosis-like programmed cell death in fungal hyphae that is composed of several modules, which enable automatic quantification of nuclei with chromatin condensation and DNA strand break in large datasets according to nuclei-associated fluorescent markers.

, November 18, 2014

Rewiring yeast acetate metabolism through MPC1 loss of function leads to mitochondrial damage and decreases chronological lifespan

Ivan Orlandi1,2, Damiano Pellegrino Coppola2 and Marina Vai1,2

This work shows that MPC1-deficient cells make up for their impairment in mitochondrial pyruvate with a metabolic rewiring which involves several intermediates of the mitochondrially localized TCA cycle and the cytosolic glyoxylate shunt but ultimately results in a pro-aging process.

, October 31, 2014

Overexpression of the transcription factor Yap1 modifies intracellular redox conditions and enhances recombinant protein secretion

Marizela Delic1,2, Alexandra B. Graf2,3, Gunda Koellensperger1,4, Christina Haberhauer-Troyer1,4, Stephan Hann1,4, Diethard Mattanovich1,2, Brigitte Gasser1,2

This article investigates the role of Yap1 during the production of recombinant secretory proteins in glucose based growth conditions in Pichia pastoris, and reports a novel role of Yap1 during ER-resident oxidative protein folding.

, October 29, 2014

Functional analysis of lipid metabolism genes in wine yeasts during alcoholic fermentation at low temperature

María López-Malo1,2, Estéfani García-Ríos1, Rosana Chiva1 and José Manuel Guillamon1

This study confirms the importance of specific genes in growth and fermentation activity of Saccharomyces cerevisiae at low temperature.

, October 24, 2014

Angiotensin II type 1 receptor blockers increase tolerance of cells to copper and cisplatin

Pieter Spincemaille1,+, Gursimran Chandhok2,+, Andree Zibert2, Hartmut Schmidt2, Jef Verbeek3, Patrick Chaltin4,5, Bruno P.A. Cammue1,6,#, David Cassiman3, Karin Thevissen1,#

This study reports the identification of the drug class of Angiotensin II Type 1 receptor blockers (ARBs) and shows that specific ARBs increase yeast tolerance to Cu and Cp, and affect markers of Cu-induced apoptosis. Likewise, this study finds that specific ARBs increase human cell line tolerance to Cu and decrease the prevalence of apoptotic markers.

, October 1, 2014

An extensive endoplasmic reticulum-localised glycoprotein family in trypanosomatids

Harriet Allison1, Amanda J. O’Reilly1, Jeremy Sternberg2 and Mark C. Field1

This work describes a novel family of type I membrane proteins (“invariant glycoproteins”) and proposes them as trypanosomatid-specific ER-localised glycoproteins, with potential contributions to life cycle progression and immunity, that utilise oligomerisation as an ER retention mechanism.

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, March 2, 2017

New insights into the function of a versatile class of membrane molecular motors from studies of Myxococcus xanthus surface (gliding) motility

Tâm Mignot1 and Marcelo Nöllmann2

This article comments on work published by Faure et al. (Nature, 2016), which deciphers force transmission at focal adhesion complexes that are involved in gliding motility in bacteria.

, March 2, 2017

Advancing host-directed therapy for tuberculosis: new therapeutic insights from the Toxoplasma gondii

Chul-Su Yang

This article comments on work published by Koh et al. (PLoS Pathog, 2017), which uncovered that infection-induced signaling pathways suggest possibilities for the development of novel therapeutic modalities for TB that target the intracellular signaling pathways permitting the replication of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB).

, February 3, 2017

Breaking the bilayer: OMV formation during environmental transitions

Katherine E. Bonnington, Meta J. Kuehn

This article comments on work published by Bonnington & Kuehn (MBio, 2016), which shows how gram-negative bacteria maintain the barrier properties of the outer membrane (OM) in a wide array of physiological conditions despite their inability to degrade lipopolysaccharide (LPS) and protein material present in the outer leaflet of the OM.

, January 30, 2017

The tug-of-war over MTOR in Legionella infections

Stanimir S. Ivanov

This article comments on work published by Abshire et al (PLoS Pathog, 2016), which uncovered that the host metabolic checkpoint kinase Mechanistic target of rapamycin (MTOR) is a central regulator of the pathogen niche expansion program.

, January 2, 2017

A new role for Holliday junction resolvase Yen1 in processing DNA replication intermediates exposes Dna2 as an accessory replicative helicase

Benoît Falquet1,2 and Ulrich Rass

This article comments on work published by Ölmezer et al. (Nat Commun, 2016), which revealed a new function of Yen1, distinct from its previously known role as a Holliday junction resolvase, mediating the removal of branched HR intermediates.

, December 29, 2016

Toxin-mediated gene regulatory mechanism in Staphylococcus aureus

Hwang-Soo Joo and Michael Otto

This article comments on work published by Joo et al. (MBio, 2016), which describes the first molecular regulatory mechanism exerted by an S. aureus toxin, setting a paradigmatic example of how S. aureus toxins may influence cell functions to adjust them to times of toxin production.

, December 1, 2016

Autophagy: machinery and regulation

Zhangyuan Yin, Clarence Pascual and Daniel J. Klionsky

Macroautophagy/autophagy is an evolutionarily conserved cellular degradation process that targets cytoplasmic materials including cytosol, macromolecules and unwanted organelles. The discovery and analysis of autophagy-related (Atg) proteins have unveiled much of the machinery of autophagosome formation. In this review, we briefly summarize the physiological roles, molecular mechanism, regulatory network, and pathophysiological roles of autophagy.

, November 5, 2016

NprR, a moonlighting quorum sensor shifting from a phosphatase activity to a transcriptional activator

Stéphane Perchat1, Antoine Talagas2, Samira Zouhir2, Sandrine Poncet1, Laurent Bouillaut1,¶, Sylvie Nessler2 and Didier Lereclus1

This article comments on work published by Perchat et al. (PLoS Pathog, 2016), which demonstrates that, in the absence of the signaling peptide NprX, the sensor NprR is a dimer, which negatively controls sporulation in Bacillus thuringiensis, independently of its transcription factor activity.

, November 4, 2016

Threading Granules in Freiburg: 2nd International Symposium on “One Mitochondrion, Many Diseases – Biological and Molecular Perspectives”, a FRIAS Junior Researcher Conference, Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany, March 9th/10th, 2016

Ralf J. Braun1, Ralf M. Zerbes2, Florian Steinberg3, Denis Gris4, and Verónica I. Dumit5

INTRODUCTION Mitochondria (greek: μίτος & χονδρίον, mitos & chondrion, i.e., thread & granule) are the power houses of eukaryotic cells, and are pivotally involved in essential metabolic processes, including iron/sulfur cluster and heme biosynthesis. Mitochondria

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January 4, 2015

The emerging role of complex modifications of tRNALysUUU in signaling pathways

Patrick C. Thiaville1,2,3,4 and Valérie de Crécy-Lagard2,4

This comment discusses the article “Loss of wobble uridine modification in tRNA anticodons interferes with TOR pathway signaling” by Scheidt et al (Microbial Cell, 2014).

, August 22, 2014

Metabolic pathways further increase the complexity of cell size control in budding yeast

Jorrit M. Enserink

This article comments on work published by Soma et al. (Microbial Cell, 2014), which teased apart the effect of metabolism and growth rate on setting of critical cell size in Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

, April 7, 2014

Only functional localization is faithful localization

Roland Lill1,2,3

This article comments on work published by Peleh et al. (Microbial Cell 2014), which analyzes the localization of Dre2 in Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

, April 7, 2014

Metabolites in aging and autophagy

Sabrina Schroeder1,#, Andreas Zimmermann1,#, Didac Carmona-Gutierrez1, Tobias Eisenberg1, Christoph Ruckenstuhl1, Aleksandra Andryushkova1, Tobias Pendl1, Alexandra Harger1,2 and Frank Madeo1

This article analyzes the implications of specific metabolites in aging and autophagy with special emphasis on polyamine metabolism.

, January 5, 2014

One cell, one love: a journal for microbial research

Didac Carmona-Gutierrez1, Guido Kroemer2-6 and Frank Madeo1

In this inaugural article of Microbial Cell, we highlight the importance of microbial research in general and the journal’s intention to serve as a publishing forum that supports and enfolds the scientific diversity in this area as it provides a unique, high-quality and universally accessible source of information and inspiration.

, January 4, 2014

What’s the role of autophagy in trypanosomes?

Katherine Figarella1 and Néstor L. Uzcátegui1,2

This article comments on Proto et al. (Microbial Cell, 2014), who report first insights into the molecular mechanism of autophagy in African trypanosomes by generating reporter bloodstream form cell lines.

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Microbial Cell

is an open-access, peer-reviewed journal that publishes exceptionally relevant research works that implement the use of unicellular organisms (and multicellular microorganisms) to understand cellular responses to internal and external stimuli and/or human diseases.

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Peer-reviewed, open-access research using unicellular organisms (and multicellular microorganisms) to understand cellular responses and human disease.

The journal (founded in 2014) is led by its Editors-in-Chief Frank Madeo, Didac Carmona-Gutierrez, and Guido Kroemer

Microbial Cell has been publishing original scientific literature since 2014, and from the very beginning has been managed by active scientists through an independent Publishing House (Shared science Publishers). The journal was conceived as a platform to acknowledge the importance of unicellular organisms, both as model systems as well as in the biological context of human health and disease.

Ever since, Microbial Cell has very positively developed and strongly grown into a respected journal in the unicellular research community and even beyond. This scientific impact is reflected in the yearly number of citations obtained by articles published in Microbial Cell, as recorded by the Web of Science (Clarivate, formerly Thomson/Reuters):

The scientific impact of Microbial Cell is also mirrored in a series of milestones:

2015: Microbial Cell is included in the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI), a selection of developing journals drafted by Clarivate Analytics based on the candidate’s publishing standards, quality, editorial content, and citation data. Note: As an ESCI-selected journal, Microbial Cell is currently being evaluated in a rigorous and long process to determine an inclusion in the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE), which allows the official calculation of Clarivate Analytics’ impact factor.

2016: Microbial Cell is awarded the so-called DOAJ Seal by the selective Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). The DOAJ Seal is an exclusive mark of certification for open access journals granted by DOAJ to journals that adhere to outstanding best practice and achieve an extra high and clear commitment to open access and high publishing standards.

2017: Microbial Cell is included in Pubmed Central (PMC), allowing the archiving of all the journal’s articles in PMC and PubMed.

2019: Microbial Cell is indexed in the prestigious abstract and citation database Scopus after a thorough selection process. This also means that Microbial Cell obtains, for the first time, an official Scopus CiteScore as well as an official journal ranking in the Scimago Journal and Country Ranking.

2022: Microbial Cell’s CiteScore reaches a value of 7.2 for the year 2021, positioning Microbial Cell among the top microbiology journals (previously available CiteScores: 2019: 5.4; 2020: 5.1).

2022: Microbial Cell is indexed in the highly selective Science Citation Index Expanded™, which covers approx. 9,500 of the world’s most impactful journals across 178 scientific disciplines. In their journal selection and curation process, Clarivate´s editors apply 24 ‘quality’ criteria and four ‘impact’ criteria to select the most influential journals in their respective fields. This selection is also a pre-requisite for inclusion in the JCR, which features the impact factor.

2022: Microbial Cell is listed in the Journal Citation Reports™ (JCR), and obtains its first official Journal Impact Factor™ (JIF) for the year 2021: 5.316.

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