When Streptococcus pneumoniae produces low amounts of the second messenger cyclic di-AMP (c-di-AMP), they do not survive in the presence of competence-stimulating peptide (CSP), which is used for tra...

Clostridioides difficile is a pathogenic bacterium and a leading cause of antibiotic-associated diarrhea. Symptoms of the infection arise due to production of large clostridial toxins that disrupt the...

npj Antimicrobials and Resistance - Predicting drug inactivation by changes in bacterial growth dynamics

Tolerance to antimicrobial agents in mature and structured biofilms presents a significant challenge in clinical and industrial applications. The contribution of biofilm physical structure to antimicrobial tolerance remains particularly poorly understood, primarily due to the lack of biofilm structu …

:id: Scan contig files against PubMLST typing schemes - tseemann/mlst

Image: CDC, Jennifer Oosthuizen

Bacteroides fragilis is a prominent member of the human gut microbiota, where it contributes to immune modulation, intestinal barrier integrity, and colonization resistance (1–3). Despite its benefici...

Antimicrobial tolerance (AMT) is the ability of a microorganism to survive but not proliferate during high-dose antimicrobial treatment (1). Mechanisms of AMT have been linked to many different cellul...

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a major concern in public health, with over 5 million deaths associated with bacterial AMR (1). AMR can be conferred by de novo mutations on the chromosome or through the acquisition of genes which interfere with the mechanism of action of antibiotics—also known as antimicrobial resistance genes (ARGs). Bacterial ARGs can be chromosomal or carried on plasmids. Plasmids are extrachromosomal genetic elements that replicate independently of their host chromosome. These small, often circular elements are frequent “vectors” of ARGs, allowing the horizontal dissemination of resistance genes between bacteria (2, 3).

Linezolid (LZD) is an important clinical option for treating serious gram-positive infections, especially multidrug-resistant strains such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, vancomycin-resistant enterococci, and multidrug-resistant Streptococcus pneumoniae (1, 2). It exerts its antibacterial effect by binding to the ribosomal peptidyl transferase center (PTC) of the 50S subunit, thereby inhibiting bacterial protein synthesis. However, shortly after its introduction into clinical use in 2000, LZD-resistant strains emerged from clinical Enterococcus faecium and Staphylococcus aureus (3, 4) and subsequently were reported in coagulase-negative staphylococci (5) and other species (6).

Chronic wound infection represents a major global public health concern, impacting both healthcare costs and patient quality of life (1, 2). Enterococcus faecalis is a Gram-positive opportunistic path...

The gut microbiome is the vast, diverse ecosystem of microorganisms that inhabits the human intestines and provides numerous essential functions for the host. One such key role is the metabolism of pr...

⚡♠️ Assemble bacterial isolate genomes from Illumina paired-end reads - tseemann/shovill

How good is Bacillus subtilis as a model for the spore-forming pathogen Bacillus anthracis? Using high throughput genetics to identify B. anthracis sporulation genes and cytological analysis of the mu...

Detection of morphological phenotypes from light microscopy is a key part of microbiology. Despite advances in automated morphological analysis, accurate measurements still often require significant u...

Background Many clinically important antimicrobial resistance (AMR) phenotypes such as fluoroquinolones and rifamycins are driven by antimicrobial resistance-conferring mutations (ARMs) in conserved c...

Traditional bacterial classification relies on phenotypic traits (e.g., morphology, metabolic profiles), but these methods lack resolution for closely related taxa and are biased by culture conditions...