Wildfire smoke, spore-spread fungal diseases and microplastic are all on the rise, even as the US government slashes support for respiratory research and policy.

C. glabrata is often co-isolated with C. albicans from mixed-species infections. Parnandi et al. show that C. glabrata exports a unique protein, Yhi1, via its mating machinery to promote filamentation...

Chen et al. identify the natural product butyrolactol A as an inhibitor of the phospholipid flippase Apt1-Cdc50, which it locks in a nonfunctional state. By disrupting membrane homeostasis and enhanci...

The fungus Candida albicans and the Gram-positive bacterium Enterococcus faecalis share mucosal niches in the human body. As opportunistic pathogen...

Nature Microbiology - During filamentous growth in the human fungal pathogen Candida albicans, a reduction in ribosome concentration leads to a decrease in macromolecular crowding. Inhibition of...

Testi and colleagues introduce an enhanced Brillouin Microscope for user-independent and high-precision mechanical measurements. Using this approach, the authors obtained insight into the biophysical ...

Candida hijacks epithelial metabolism via glycolysis and GOT1-dependent TCA shunt, influencing antifungal defense.

Amid travel bans, a government shutdown, and funding crunches, 2025 was a turbulent year for U.S. scientific societies

Membrane lipids are heterogeneously distributed across the bilayers of cellular membranes. Cytosolic-facing pools of diacylglycerol (DAG) in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae are enriched at both ends of the endomembrane system from the vacuolar membrane to the polarized plasma membrane (PM) of buds. However, how this distribution is maintained remains unknown. Using a genome-wide DAG biosensor screen in yeast, we identify regulators of DAG spatial distribution, enriched in proteins involved in vesicle or lipid transport and in phospholipid or sterol metabolism. A subset of mutants exhibited DAG mislocalization predominantly to the PM, with the most severe phenotype linked to a mutant of a predicted lipase we have named Drl1 (DAG redistribution lipase 1). Reversion of this phenotype required both enzymatic activity and the presence of an intrinsically disordered carboxy-terminal domain. Lipidomic analysis revealed that loss of Drl1 increased cellular lysophosphatidylcholine (LysoPC) levels. Remarkably, we find that supplementing cells with a non-metabolizable LysoPC analogue replicated the mutant DAG phenotype, implicating LysoPC as a novel spatial regulator of DAG. High-resolution imaging suggests that LysoPC reduces the PM sterol pool resulting in DAG expansion into new PM territories. More globally, our work expands the known interplay between various lipids and their co-regulation to maintain accurate membrane properties. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, https://ror.org/01h531d29, 2023-04320 Alberta Innovates, AI 242506270 Canadian Institutes of Health Research, https://ror.org/01gavpb45, MOP-142403 Universidad de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, UBACYT 20020190100122BA Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (United States), 2023-331952 Weizmann Institute of Science, https://ror.org/0316ej306

Structural steps along the assembly of proteasome storage granules—membraneless organelles that form in response to metabolic shifts in yeast—are visualized inside cells by cryo-electron tomography. I...

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Abstract. Formation of the eukaryotic ribosomal subunits follows a strict regime to assemble ribosomal proteins (r-protein) with ribosomal RNAs (rRNA) whil

Tennessee health officials are investigating a fungal infection outbreak that has killed at least one person and sickened dozens more.

The discovery that some fluorescent proteins are sensitive to magnets could lead to the development of switchable drugs and biosensors.

Molecular crowding causes the compaction of chromatin fibers, contributing to the formation of the nuclear architecture. However, the molecular mechanism of compaction under crowded conditions is not yet fully understood. In this study, we employed the single-molecule optical tweezer method to investigate the effect of molecular crowding on chromatin structure. Force-extension experiments on a 12-mer polynucleosome in the presence of different sizes and concentrations of polyethylene glycol (PEG) as a crowding agent showed that at low concentrations of low-molecular-weight (MW) PEG, the compaction of the polynucleosome was not significant. In this respect, nucleosomes predominantly remained separated, while DNA-histone interactions within individual nucleosomes were slightly stabilized. In contrast, high concentrations of high-MW PEG significantly promote internucleosomal interactions, leading to highly compact polynucleosome conformations. Under these conditions, approximately 30 pN of force was required to disrupt the internucleosomal interactions and release DNA; this force was 36% higher than that required for DNA unwrapping in the absence of PEG. These findings suggest that molecular crowding impacts cellular processes by mechanically regulating chromatin accessibility for regulatory proteins and the passage of motor molecules such as RNA polymerase. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, https://ror.org/00hhkn466, KAKENHI JP18H05534, KAKENHI JP22K06176, KAKENHI JP23K05726, KAKENHI JP24H00884, KAKENHI JP23H05475, KAKENHI JP24H02328 National Institutes for Quantum Science and Technology, https://ror.org/020rbyg91, Budding Research Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development, BINDS JP25ama121025, BINDS JP25ama121009 Japan Science and Technology Agency, https://ror.org/00097mb19, CREST JPMJCR24T3

An alternative mating system, termed parasex, produces progeny with high levels of genotypic diversity and is able to fulfil the roles of meiosis when it is absent in the fungal pathobiont Candida alb...