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Related publications (30)

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Host-derived organic acids enable gut colonization of the honey bee symbiont Snodgrassella alvi

Anders Meibom, Stéphane Laurent Escrig, Christel Genoud

Diverse bacteria can colonize the animal gut using dietary nutrients or by engaging in microbial crossfeeding interactions. Less is known about the role of host-derived nutrients in enabling gut bacterial colonization. Here we examined metabolic interactio ...

Nature Portfolio2024

DNA modifications impact natural transformation of Acinetobacter baumannii

Melanie Blokesch, Nicolas Jean Philippe Guex, Christian Iseli, Alexandre Lemopoulos, Nina Vesel

Acinetobacter baumannii is a dangerous nosocomial pathogen, especially due to its ability to rapidly acquire new genetic traits, including antibiotic resistance genes (ARG). In A. baumannii, natural competence for transformation, one of the primary modes o ...

2023

Biotechnological Frontiers of DNA Nanomaterials Continue to Expand: Bacterial Infection using Virus-Inspired Capsids

Maartje Martina Cornelia Bastings

The elegant geometry of viruses has inspired bio-engineers to synthetically explore the self-assembly of polyhedral capsids employed to protect new cargo or change an enzymatic microenvironment. Recently, Yang and co-workers used DNA nanotechnology to revi ...

Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH2023

Homogeneous Environmental Selection Structures the Bacterial Communities of Benthic Biofilms in Proglacial Floodplain Streams

Tom Ian Battin, Hannes Markus Peter, Tyler Joe Kohler, Susheel Bhanu Busi, Grégoire Marie Octave Edouard Michoud, Stylianos Fodelianakis, Massimo Bourquin, Leïla Ezzat, Jade Brandani

Streams draining proglacial floodplains harbor benthic biofilms comprised of diverse microbial communities. These high-mountain ecosystems are rapidly changing with climate warming, and it is therefore critical to better understand the mechanisms underlyin ...

AMER SOC MICROBIOLOGY2023

Functional characterization of Drosophila melanogaster immune effectors

Alexia Laurie Carboni

Drosophila melanogaster, commonly known as the "fruit fly", is a genetically tractable model organism widely used to study biological processes, notably the innate immune system. The advent of novel genome editing technologies, such as the CRISPR-Cas9 syst ...

EPFL2023

Natural competence of the pathogen Acinetobacter baumannii: an elusive phenomenon

Natural competence for transformation is an important driver of horizontal DNA exchange between different organisms. This can result in accumulation of dangerous genetic features, such as antibiotic resistance genes, in a single organism. One example of an ...

EPFL2022

2.4-angstrom structure of the double-ring Gemmatimonas phototrophica photosystem

Henning Paul-Julius Stahlberg

Phototrophic Gemmatimonadetes evolved the ability to use solar energy following horizontal transfer of photosynthesis-related genes from an ancient phototrophic proteobacterium. The electron cryo-microscopy structure of the Gemmatimonas phototrophica photo ...

AMER ASSOC ADVANCEMENT SCIENCE2022

N-terminal mutant huntingtin deposition correlates with CAG repeat length and symptom onset, but not neuronal loss in Huntington's disease

Hilal Lashuel, Nathan Alain Denis Riguet, Lorène Aeschbach

Huntington's disease (HD) is caused by a CAG repeat expansion mutation in the gene encoding the huntingtin (Htt) protein, with mutant Htt protein subsequently forming aggregates within the brain. Mutant Htt is a current target for novel therapeutic strateg ...

ACADEMIC PRESS INC ELSEVIER SCIENCE2022

Engineering Agrobacterium tumefaciens Adhesion to Target Cells

Alexandre Louis André Persat, Xavier Jean-Yves Pierrat, Zaïnebe Dhirani, 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

Two defence systems eliminate plasmids from seventh pandemic Vibrio cholerae

Melanie Blokesch, David William Adams, Milena Jadwiga Jaskolska

Horizontal gene transfer can trigger rapid shifts in bacterial evolution. Driven by a variety of mobile genetic elements—in particular bacteriophages and plasmids—the ability to share genes within and across species underpins the exceptional adaptability o ...

2022

Effect of cetyltrimethylammonium chloride on various Escherichia coli strains and their inactivation kinetics by ozone and monochloramine

Urs von Gunten, Florian Frédéric Vincent Breider, Margaux Océane Voumard

Cethyltrimethylammonium chloride (CTMA) is one of the most used quaternary ammonium compounds (QACs) in consumer products. CTMA and other QACs are only partially eliminated in municipal wastewater treatment and they can interact with bacteria in biological ...

2022

High Aspect Ratio Au Microflakes via Gap-Assisted Synthesis

Giulia Tagliabue, Fateme Kiani Shahvandi

Ultrathin and extra-large single-crystalline Au microflakes (Au MFs) have a huge potential in applications ranging from nanophotonics to catalysis. Yet, wet chemical synthesis approaches cannot access this size range due to the proportionality between grow ...

2022

The Dynamics of Single-Cell Nanomotion Behaviour of Saccharomyces cerevisiae in a Microfluidic Chip for Rapid Antifungal Susceptibility Testing

Sandor Kasas, María Inés Villalba

The fast emergence of multi-resistant pathogenic yeasts is caused by the extensive-and sometimes unnecessary-use of broad-spectrum antimicrobial drugs. To rationalise the use of broad-spectrum antifungals, it is essential to have a rapid and sensitive syst ...

MDPI2022

Pilus production in Acinetobacter baumannii is growth phase dependent and essential for natural transformation

Melanie Blokesch, Nina Vesel

Acinetobacter baumannii is a severe threat to human health as a frequently multidrug-resistant hospital-acquired pathogen. Part of the danger from this bacterium comes from its genome plasticity and ability to evolve quickly by taking up and recombining ex ...

American Society for Microbiology2021

A New Chemoenzymatic Semisynthetic Approach Provides Insight into the Role of Phosphorylation beyond Exon1 of Huntingtin and Reveals N-Terminal Fragment Length-Dependent Distinct Mechanisms of Aggregation

Hilal Lashuel, Rajasekhar Kolla, Jonathan Jean-Pierre Ricci, Andreas Reif, Gopinath Pushparathinam

Huntington’s disease is a neurodegenerative dis- order caused by the expansion of a polyglutamine repeat (>36Q) in the N-terminal domain of the huntingtin protein (Htt), which renders the protein or fragments thereof more prone to aggregate and form inclus ...

2021

KRAB zinc finger protein-mediated control of transposon-embedded regulatory sequences from human germline to early embryos

Alexandra Iouranova

Transposable elements (TEs), also called jumping genes, are genetic elements capable of changing their position within the genome of their host. They make up large fractions of genomes, including 45% of human DNA content, according to current estimates. S ...

EPFL2021

Pharmacological characterization of mutant huntingtin aggregate-directed PET imaging tracer candidates

Hilal Lashuel, Anass Chiki

Huntington's disease (HD) is caused by a CAG trinucleotide repeat expansion in the first exon of the huntingtin (HTT) gene coding for the huntingtin (HTT) protein. The misfolding and consequential aggregation of CAG-expanded mutant HTT (mHTT) underpin HD p ...

Nature Portfolio2021

Retention of E. coli and water on the skin after liquid contact

Tamar Kohn, Timothy R. Julian

The frequent contact people have with liquids containing pathogenic microorganisms provides opportunities for disease transmission. In this work, we quantified the transfer of bacteria—using E. coli as a model- from liquid to skin, estimated liquid retenti ...

2020

The Polyglutamine Expansion at the N-Terminal of Huntingtin Protein Modulates the Dynamic Configuration and Phosphorylation of the C-Terminal HEAT Domain

Matteo Dal Peraro, Maria Josefina Marcaida Lopez, Giorgio Elikem Tamo

The polyQ expansion in huntingtin protein (HTT) is the prime cause of Huntington's disease (HD). The recent cryoelectron microscopy (cryo-EM) structure of HTT-HAP40 complex provided the structural information on its HEAT-repeat domains. Here, we present an ...

CELL PRESS2020

Enhanced Phenotype Definition for Precision Isolation of Precursor Exhausted Tumor-Infiltrating CD8 T Cells

Pedro Romero, Amaia Martinez Usatorre

In the context of adoptive T cell transfer (ACT) for cancer treatment, it is crucial to generate in vitro large amounts of tumor-specific CD8 T cells with high potential to persist in vivo. PD-1, Tim3, and CD39 have been proposed as markers of tumor-specif ...

2020