Mystery molecule in bacteria is revealed to be a guard

Peculiar hybrid structures called retrons that are half RNA, half single-strand DNA are found in many species of bacteria. Since their discovery around 35 years ago, researchers have learned how to use retrons for producing ...

Terrestrial bacteria can grow on nutrients from space

In the past decade, there has been renewed thinking about human missions to the moon and perhaps even to Mars. Inevitably, terrestrial microorganisms on the bodies of astronauts, spaceships or equipment will come into contact ...

Bacteria can 'outsmart' programmed cell death

Certain bacteria can override a defence mechanism of the immune system, so called programmed cell death, through inhibition of death effector molecules by their outer membranes components. Shigella bacteria, which cause diarrhoea, ...

How the strep bacterium hides from the immune system

A bacterial pathogen that causes strep throat and other illnesses cloaks itself in fragments of red blood cells to evade detection by the host immune system, according to a study publishing December 3 in the journal Cell ...

Filming how our immune system kill bacteria

To kill bacteria in the blood, our immune system relies on nanomachines that can open deadly holes in their targets. UCL scientists have now filmed these nanomachines in action, discovering a key bottleneck in the process ...

New anti-CRISPR proteins discovered in soil and human gut

Scientists from the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability (DTU) have found four new anti-CRISPR proteins that are distributed across different environments. The new study published in Cell Host & Microbe suggests ...

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