Still displaying characteristics of their bacterial origin, such as autonomous division, motility, and their own genome, mitochondria remain an elusive component of modern eukaryotes. They produce most of the cell's energy in the form of adenosine triphosp ...
While largely neglected over decades during which adaptive immunity captured most of the attention, innate immune mechanisms have now become central to our understanding of immunology. Innate immunity provides the first barrier to infection in vertebrates, ...
Bacteria are ubiquitous single cellular organisms. Compared to eukaryotic cells, bacteria have two unique characteristics: the membrane-less nucleoid and the cell wall built of peptidoglycan (PG). In most bacteria, a single circular chromosome is compacted ...
Multicellular communities of contiguous cells attached to solid surfaces called biofilms represent a common microbial strategy to improve resilience in adverse environments.1-3 While bacterial biofilms have been under intense investigation, whether archaea ...
The biofilm lifestyle is the most widespread survival strategy in the bacterial world. Pseudomonas aeruginosa biofilms cause chronic infections and are highly recalcitrant to antimicrobials. The genetic requirements allowing P. aeruginosa to grow into biof ...
The notion that mitochondria cannot be lost was shattered with the report of an oxymonad Monocercomonoides exilis, the first eukaryote arguably without any mitochondrion. Yet, questions remain about whether this extends beyond the single species and how th ...
The last decade has seen a strong proliferation of therapeutic strategies for the treatment of metabolic and age-related diseases based on increasing cellular NAD(+) bioavailability. Among them, the dietary supplementation with NAD(+) precursors-classicall ...
Periphyton is a freshwater biofilm composed of prokaryotic and eukaryotic communities that occupy rocks and sediments, forming the base of the food web and playing a key role in nutrient cycling. Given the large surface that periphyton comprises, it may al ...
The beginning of the 21st century was marked by the advent of disruptive technologies, which ushered an era of groundbreaking advances in fundamental sciences, carried by the great pace at which computational capabilities spread and evolved. But the new ce ...
The rnlAB toxin-antitoxin operon from Escherichia co/ifunctions as an anti-phage defense system. RnlA was identified as a member of the HEPN (Higher Eukaryotes and Prokaryotes Nucleotide-binding domain) superfamily of ribonucleases. The activity of the tox ...
