Regulation of extracellular vesicles for protein secretion in Aspergillus nidulans
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.
Transcriptomic response to different heme sources in Trypanosoma cruzi epimastigotes
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.
Luminal acetylation of microtubules is not essential for Plasmodium berghei and Toxoplasma gondii survival
Acetylation of α-tubulin at lysine 40 is not essential for cytoskeletal stability in Plasmodium berghei or Toxoplasma gondii, suggesting redundancy and plasticity in microtubule regulation in these parasites.
The dual-site agonist for human M2 muscarinic receptors Iper-8-naphtalimide induces mitochondrial dysfunction in Saccharomyces cerevisiae
S. cerevisiae is a model to study human GPCRs. N-8-Iper, active against glioblastoma via M2 receptor, causes mitochondrial damage in yeast by binding Ste2, highlighting evolutionary conservation of GPCRs.
Integrative Omics reveals changes in the cellular landscape of peroxisome-deficient pex3 yeast cells
To uncover the consequences of peroxisome deficiency, we compared Saccharomyces cerevisiae wild-type with pex3 cells, which lack peroxisomes, employing quantitative proteomics and transcriptomics technologies.
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.
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.
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.
Chromosome-condensed G1 phase yeast cells are tolerant to desiccation stress
Zhaojie Zhang1 and Gracie R. Zhang2
The budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae is capable of surviving extreme water loss for a long time. However, less is known about the mechanism of its desiccation tolerance. In this study, we revealed that in an exponential culture, all desiccation tolerant yeast cells were in G1 phase and had condensed chromosomes. (…)
Detection of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and its first variants in fourplex real-time quantitative reverse transcription-PCR assays
Mathieu Durand1, Philippe Thibault1, Simon Lévesque2,3, Ariane Brault4, Alex Carignan2, Louis Valiquette2, Philippe Martin2 and Simon Labbé4
The early diagnosis of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infections is required to identify and isolate contagious patients to prevent further transmission of SARS-CoV-2. In this study, we present a multitarget real-time TaqMan reverse transcription PCR (rRT-PCR) assay for the quantitative detection of SARS-CoV-2 and some of its circulating variants harboring mutations that give the virus a selective advantage. Seven different primer-probe sets that included probes containing locked nucleic acid (LNA) nucleotides were designed to amplify specific wild-type and mutant sequences in Orf1ab, Envelope (E), Spike (S), and Nucleocapsid (N) genes (…)
Forced association of SARS-CoV-2 proteins with the yeast proteome perturb vesicle trafficking
Cinzia Klemm1,#, Henry Wood1,#, Grace Heredge Thomas1,#, Guðjón Ólafsson1,2, Mara Teixeira Torres1 and Peter H. Thorpe1
This work demonstrates that the yeast Synthetic Physical Interactions method is a rapid way to identify potential functions of ectopic viral proteins.
Airborne bacteria in show caves from Southern Spain
Irene Dominguez-Moñino1, Valme Jurado1, Miguel Angel Rogerio-Candelera1, Bernardo Hermosin1 and Cesareo Saiz-Jimenez1
This study analyzes the factors conditioning the diversity of airborne bacteria recorded in three Andalusian show caves, subjected to different managements.
Landscapes and bacterial signatures of mucosa-associated intestinal microbiota in Chilean and Spanish patients with inflammatory bowel disease
Nayaret Chamorro1,#, David A. Montero1,2,#, Pablo Gallardo3, Mauricio Farfán3, Mauricio Contreras4, Marjorie De la Fuente2, Karen Dubois2, Marcela A. Hermoso2, Rodrigo Quera5,6, Marjorie Pizarro-Guajardo7,8,9, Daniel Paredes-Sabja7,8,9, Daniel Ginard10, Ramon Rosselló-Móra11 and Roberto Vidal1,8,12
This study investigates the landscapes and alterations of mucosa-associated intestinal microbiota in patients with inflammatory bowel diseases, which cause chronic inflammation of the gut, including ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease.
Genome, transcriptome and secretome analyses of the antagonistic, yeast-like fungus Aureobasidium pullulans to identify potential biocontrol genes
Maria Paula Rueda-Mejia1, Lukas Nägeli1, Stefanie Lutz2, Richard D. Hayes3, Adithi R. Varadarajan2, Igor V. Grigoriev3,4, Christian H. Ahrens2,5 and Florian M. Freimoser1
This study highlights the value of a sequential approach starting with genome mining and consecutive transcriptome and secretome analyses in order to identify a limited number of potential target genes for detailed, functional analyses in Aureobasidium pullulans.
Proanthocyanidin-enriched cranberry extract induces resilient bacterial community dynamics in a gnotobiotic mouse model
Catherine C. Neto1,2,#, Benedikt M. Mortzfeld3,#, John R. Turbitt1,2, Shakti K. Bhattarai3, Vladimir Yeliseyev4, Nicholas DiBenedetto4, Lynn Bry4 and Vanni Bucci2,3
This study investigates the effect of a water-soluble, proanthocyanidin-rich cranberry juice extract on the short-term dynamics of a human-derived bacterial community in a gnotobiotic mouse model.
Dry biocleaning of artwork: an innovative methodology for Cultural Heritage recovery?
Giancarlo Ranalli1, Pilar Bosch-Roig2, Simone Crudele1, Laura Rampazzi3,4, Cristina Corti3 and Elisabetta Zanardini5
This work proposes an innovative methodology based on applied biotechnology for the recovery of altered stonework: the “dry biocleaning”, which envisages the use of dehydrated microbial cells without the use of free water or gel-based matrices.
When and where? Pathogenic Escherichia coli differentially sense host D-serine using a universal transporter system to monitor their environment
James P. R. Connolly and Andrew J. Roe
This article comments on work published by Connolly et al. (PLoS Pathog, 2016), which describes the discovery of a functional and previously uncharacterized D-serine uptake system in E. coli.
Signaling pathways and posttranslational modifications of tau in Alzheimer’s disease: the humanization of yeast cells
Jürgen J. Heinisch1 and Roland Brandt2
In the past decade, yeast have been frequently employed to study the molecular mechanisms of human neurodegenerative diseases, generally by means of heterologous expression of genes encoding the relevant hallmark proteins. Substantial posttranslational modifications of many of these proteins are required for the development and progression of potentially disease relevant changes. We give an overview on common modifications as they occur in tau during AD and discuss potential approaches to humanize yeast in order to create modification patterns resembling the situation in mammalian cells.
The bacterial cell cycle checkpoint protein Obg and its role in programmed cell death
Liselot Dewachter1, Natalie Verstraeten1, Maarten Fauvart1,2 and Jan Michiels1
This article comments on work published by Dewachter et al. (mBio, 2015), which identified a programmed cell death mechanism in Escherichia coli that is triggered by a mutant isoform of the essential GTPase ObgE.
Control of the gut microbiome by fecal microRNA
Shirong Liu and Howard L. Weiner
This article comments on work published by Liu et al. (Cell Host & Microbe, 2016), which identifies miRNAs in gut lumen and feces of both mice and humans that were able to enter bacteria, specifically regulate bacterial gene transcripts and affect bacterial growth thereby regulating the gut microbiome.
Mitochondrial regulation of cell death: a phylogenetically conserved control
Lorenzo Galluzzi1,2,3,4,5, Oliver Kepp1,2,3,4,6 and Guido Kroemer1,2,3,4,6,7,8
Mitochondria are fundamental for eukaryotic cells as they participate in critical catabolic and anabolic pathways. Moreover, mitochondria play a key role in the signal transduction cascades that precipitate many (but not all) regulated variants of cellular demise. In this short review, the authors discuss the differential implication of mitochondria in the major forms of regulated cell death.
Mek1/Mre4 is a master regulator of meiotic recombination in budding yeast
Nancy M. Hollingsworth
This article comments on work published by Chen et al. (PLoS BIol, 2015), showing that the meiosis specific kinase Mek1 indirectly regulates the crossover/non-crossover decision between homologs as well as genetic interference and suggests Mek1 to be a “master regulator” of meiotic recombination in budding yeast.
Shaping meiotic chromosomes with SUMO: a feedback loop controls the assembly of the synaptonemal complex in budding yeast
Hideo Tsubouchi1, Bilge Argunhan1 and Tomomi Tsubouchi2
This article comments on work published by Leung et al. (J Cell Biol, 2015), which shows that the formation of the meiosis-specific synaptonemal complex is controlled through SUMOylation of a regulator required for the assembly of transverse filaments, implicating the involvement of a positive feedback loop in the control of synaptonemal complex assembly.
Learning epigenetic regulation from mycobacteria
Sanjeev Khosla1, Garima Sharma1,2 and Imtiyaz Yaseen1,2
This article comments on work published by Koshla et al. (Nat Commun, 2015), which shows that pathogenic Mycobacterium tuberculosis has evolved strategies to hijack the epigenetic regulation of host transcripton for its own survival.
Patterns of protein synthesis in the budding yeast cell cycle: variable or constant?
Eun-Gyu No, Heidi M Blank and Michael Polymenis
Proteins are the principal macromolecular constituent of proliferating cells, and protein synthesis is viewed as a primary metric of cell growth. While there are celebrated examples of proteins whose levels are periodic in the cell cycle (e.g., cyclins), the concentration of most proteins was not thought to change in the cell cycle, but some recent results challenge this notion. The ‘bulk’ protein is the focus of this article, specifically the rate of its synthesis, in the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae.
Ribose 5-phosphate: the key metabolite bridging the metabolisms of nucleotides and amino acids during stringent response in Escherichia coli?
Paulina Katarzyna Grucela1, Tobias Fuhrer2, Uwe Sauer2, Yanjie Chao3 and Yong Everett Zhang1
Here we propose the metabolite ribose 5’-phosphate as the key link between nucleotide and amino acid metabolisms and a working model integrating both the transcriptional and metabolic effects of (p)ppGpp on E. coli physiological adaptation during the stringent response.
Flagellated bacterial porter for in situ tumor vaccine
Haiheng Xu1, Yiqiao Hu1, 2 and Jinhui Wu1, 2, 3
Cancer immunotherapy, which use the own immune system to attack tumors, are increasingly popular treatments. But, due to the tumor immunosuppressive microenvironment, the antigen presentation in the tumor is limited. Recently, a growing number of people use bacteria to stimulate the body’s immunity for tumor treatment due to bacteria themselves have a variety of elements that activate Toll-like receptors. Here, we discuss the use of motility of flagellate bacteria to transport antigens to the tumor periphery to activate peritumoral dendritic cells to enhance the effect of in situ tumor vaccines.
The rise of Candida auris: from unique traits to co-infection potential
Nadine B. Egger1,§, Katharina Kainz1,§, Adina Schulze1, Maria A. Bauer1, Frank Madeo1-3 and Didac Carmona-Gutierrez1
Candida auris is a multidrug resistant (MDR) fungal pathogen with a crude mortality rate of 30-60%. First identified in 2009, C. auris has been rapidly rising to become a global risk in clinical settings and was declared an urgent health threat by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). A concerted global action is thus needed to successfully tackle the challenges created by this emerging fungal pathogen. In this brief article, we underline the importance of unique virulence traits, including its easy transformation, its persistence outside the host and its resilience against multiple cellular stresses, as well as of environmental factors that have mainly contributed to the rise of this superbug.
A hundred spotlights on microbiology: how microorganisms shape our lives
Didac Carmona-Gutierrez1, Katharina Kainz1, Andreas Zimmermann1, Sebastian J. Hofer1, Maria A. Bauer1, Christoph Ruckenstuhl1, Guido Kroemer2-4 and Frank Madeo1,5,6
Viral, bacterial, fungal and protozoal biology is of cardinal importance for the evolutionary history of life, ecology, biotechnology and infectious diseases. Various microbiological model systems have fundamentally contributed to the understanding of molecular and cellular processes, including the cell cycle, cell death, mitochondrial biogenesis, vesicular fusion and autophagy, among many others. Microbial interactions within the environment have profound effects on many fields of biology, from ecological diversity to the highly complex and multifaceted impact of the microbiome on human health. Also, biotechnological innovation and corresponding industrial operations strongly depend on microbial engineering. With this wide range of impact in mind, the peer-reviewed (…)
Yeast goes viral: probing SARS-CoV-2 biology using S. cerevisiae
Brandon Ho1, Raphael Loll-Krippleber1 and Grant W. Brown1
The budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae has long been an outstanding platform for understanding the biology of eukaryotic cells. Robust genetics, cell biology, molecular biology, and biochemistry complement deep and detailed genome annotation, a multitude of genome-scale strain collections for functional genomics, and substantial gene conservation with Metazoa to comprise a powerful model for modern biological research. Recently, the yeast model has demonstrated its utility in a perhaps unexpected area, that of eukaryotic virology. Here we discuss three innovative applications of the yeast model system to reveal functions and investigate variants of proteins encoded by the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
Murals meet microbes: at the crossroads of microbiology and cultural heritage
Maria A. Bauer1, Katharina Kainz1, Christoph Ruckenstuhl1, Frank Madeo1-3 and Didac Carmona-Gutierrez1
This article comments on the duality of microorganisms in the conservation and restoration of cultural heritage, which encompasses the negative impact of damaging microorganisms and recent advances in using specific microorganisms and microbial-based technologies for cultural heritage preservation.
Urm1, not quite a ubiquitin-like modifier?
Lars Kaduhr1, Cindy Brachmann1, Keerthiraju Ethiraju Ravichandran2,3, James D. West4, Sebastian Glatt2 and Raffael Schaffrath1
This article comments on work published by Brachmann et al. (Redox Biol, 2020), which studied urmylation of the yeast 2-Cys peroxiredoxin Ahp1, uncovering that promiscuous lysine target sites and specific redox requirements determine the Urm1 acceptor activity of the peroxiredoxin.
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.Check Article Types and Manuscript Preparation guidelines. Submit online via Scholastica.
It takes four to tango: the cooperative adventure of scientific publishing
Didac Carmona-Gutierrez1,2, Katharina Kainz1 and Frank Madeo1-3
This Editorial is the 500th article published in Microbial Cell, a journey that started in 2014 and has seen the journal grow steadily and maintain itself as a respected community platform. The foundation that has allowed for and driven this development – as for any responsible journal – is composed of four essential pillars: the readers, the authors, the editors and the referees.