Publications by Xavier Jean-Yves Pierrat

Two antagonistic response regulators control Pseudomonas aeruginosa polarization during mechanotaxis

Alexandre Louis André Persat, Lorenzo Anton-Louis Talà, Xavier Jean-Yves Pierrat, Joanne Netter Engel, Marco Julian Kühn

The opportunistic pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa adapts to solid surfaces to enhance virulence and infect its host. Type IV pili (T4P), long and thin filaments that power surface-specific twitching motility, allow single cells to sense surfaces and contro ...

WILEY2023

Engineering Agrobacterium tumefaciens Adhesion to Target Cells

Alexandre Louis André Persat, Xavier Jean-Yves Pierrat, Jeremy Pak Hei Wong, Alix Kim Lan Pham

Agrobacterium tumefaciens is a plant pathogen commonly repurposed for genetic modification of crops. Despite its versatility, it remains inefficient at transferring DNA to many hosts, including to animal cells. Like many pathogens, physical contact between ...

AMER CHEMICAL SOC2022

Engineering synthetic adhesins for biophysical investigation and rewiring of host-microbe interactions

Xavier Jean-Yves Pierrat

Host attachment is often a critical step in the onset of pathogenesis. To attach to host cells, bacteria have evolved a range of adhesins that bind to specific receptors. Some of these adhesins have been thoroughly characterized using biochemical technique ...

EPFL2022

The wall-less bacterium Spiroplasma poulsonii builds a polymeric cytoskeleton composed of interacting MreB isoforms

Bruno Lemaitre, Alexandre Louis André Persat, Florent François Masson, Xavier Jean-Yves Pierrat

A rigid cell wall defines the morphology of most bacteria. MreB, a bacterial homologue of actin, plays a major role in coordinating cell wall biogenesis and defining cell shape. Spiroplasma are wall-less bacteria that robustly grow with a characteristic he ...

CELL PRESS2021

Time-Resolved Scanning Ion Conductance Microscopy for Three-Dimensional Tracking of Nanoscale Cell Surface Dynamics

Aleksandra Radenovic, Georg Fantner, Daniel Constam, Alexandre Louis André Persat, Barney Frederick Drake, Adrian Pascal Nievergelt, Vytautas Navikas, Samuel Mendes Leitão, Xavier Jean-Yves Pierrat, Charlène Cécile Geneviève Brillard

Nanocharacterization plays a vital role in understanding the complex nanoscale organization of cells and organelles. Understanding cellular function requires high-resolution information about how the cellular structures evolve over time. A number of techni ...

AMER CHEMICAL SOC2021

The Mammalian Membrane Microenvironment Regulates the Sequential Attachment of Bacteria to Host Cells

Alexandre Louis André Persat, Xavier Jean-Yves Pierrat, Jeremy Pak Hei Wong

Pathogen attachment to host tissue is critical in the progress of many infections. Bacteria use adhesion in vivo to stabilize colonization and subsequently regulate the deployment of contact-dependent virulence traits. To specifically target host cells, th ...

2021

Mechanotaxis directs Pseudomonas aeruginosa twitching motility

Alexandre Louis André Persat, Lorenzo Anton-Louis Talà, Xavier Jean-Yves Pierrat, Jose Negrete Jr, Marco Julian Kühn, Joanne Netter Engel

The opportunistic pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa explores surfaces using twitching motility powered by retractile extracellu-lar filaments called type IV pili (T4P). Single cells twitch by sequen-tial T4P extension, attachment, and retraction. How single ...

National Academy of Sciences2021

Bacterial Mechanosensing with Type IV Pili

Alexandre Louis André Persat, Lorenzo Anton-Louis Talà, Xavier Jean-Yves Pierrat

CELL PRESS2018