Interspecies interactions drive bacterial proteome reorganization and emergent metabolism - Nature Ecology & Evolution

An analysis of the responses of 15 diverse human gut bacteria in more than 100 pairwise co-cultures reveals extensive remodelling of the bacterial proteome and metabolome in response to the presence o...

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Oxygen gradients reshape cross-feeding through emergent spatial organization of gut commensal bacteria

Microbial interactions unfold within environments structured by physical transport and chemical gradients. Yet most mechanistic studies rely on well-mixed systems that mask the reciprocal influences of environmental heterogeneity on metabolism and ecology. Here, we investigate how the physical environment modulates the interaction between the gut commensal Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron and Escherichia coli . In anoxic liquid culture, cell-resolved isotope imaging and genetic perturbations reveal exploitative cross-feeding, where E. coli consumes diffusible sugars released by B . thetaiotaomicron during starch degradation. When exposed to intestinal-like oxygen gradients in microfluidics, the interaction is restructured by spatial organization. The species self-organize into complementary niches: E. coli locally depletes sugars and oxygen, thereby expanding the anoxic niche required by B. thetaiotaomicron . A reactive transport model confirms that this organization arises from coupled feedback between physical transport and metabolic reaction rates. Together, our results reveal how physical structure and chemical gradients convert an exploitative cross-feeding interaction into a dynamic niche-construction process that generates emergent spatial organization and stabilizes coexistence. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest.

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Interaction of Pf4 tactoids with bacteria and synthetic colloidal rods - European Biophysics Journal

We investigated the interaction of liquid crystal droplets, formed by a phase separating system of elongated virus particles and polymer with rod-like impurities. The virus particles were Pf4, which w...

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Applications and prospects of cryo-electron tomography in drug discovery and understanding disease

Cryo-electron tomography (cryo-ET) is emerging as a transformative tool for structural biology. Unlike methods based on purified molecules, cryo-ET en…

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Assembly, architecture and functional roles of microbial surface layers - Nature Reviews Microbiology

Surface layers (S-layers) are ubiquitous protein assemblies that coat prokaryotic cells, with their functional roles increasingly coming into focus. In this Review, Isbilir and colleagues discuss rece...

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Cryo-EM structure of human telomerase dimer reveals H/ACA RNP-mediated dimerization

Telomerase ribonucleoprotein (RNP) synthesizes telomeric repeats at chromosome ends using a telomerase reverse transcriptase (TERT) and a telomerase RNA (hTR in humans). Previous structural work showe...

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A self-assembling surface layer flattens the cytokinetic furrow to aid cell division in an archaeon | PNAS

The surface layer or “S-layer” is a two-dimensional lattice of proteins that coats a wide range of archaea and bacteria in place of a cell wall or ...

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Tissue-like multicellular development triggered by mechanical compression in archaea

The advent of clonal multicellularity is a critical evolutionary milestone, seen often in eukaryotes, rarely in bacteria, and only once in archaea. We show that uniaxial compression induces clonal mul...

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Structural biology inside multicellular specimens using electron cryotomography | Quarterly Reviews of Biophysics | Cambridge Core

Structural biology inside multicellular specimens using electron cryotomography - Volume 58

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Tissue-Like Multicellular Development Triggered by Mechanical Compression in Archaea https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.10.19.619234v1

The advent of clonal multicellularity is a critical evolutionary milestone, seen often in eukaryotes

biorxiv.org

Halofilins as Emerging Bactofilin Families of Archaeal Cell Shape Plasticity Orchestrators

bioRxiv - the preprint server for biology, operated by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a research and educational institution

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