Clusters containing thousands of metal atoms obey the laws of quantum mechanics, say physicists

Numerous studies report cognitive impairment in COVID-19 patients from the acute to post-acute phases, linked to blood inflammation affecting blood–brain barrier (BBB) permeability and causing leakage of glial and neuronal proteins. However, a clear ...

Explore All 2023 Winners & Awards > Demis Hassabis Google DeepMind John Jumper Google DeepMind For the invention of AlphaFold, a revolutionary technology for predicting the three-dimensional structure of proteins The 2023 Albert Lasker Basic Medical

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Disruption of host cell barriers is a fundamental strategy enabling pathogens to establish a paracellular infection. Here, using dual RNA-Seq, we determine the in vivo host-pathogen transcriptomic landscape upon infection by the extracellular pathogen Leptospira interrogans and uncover a mechanism of cell–cell junction disruption. We demonstrate that, upon infection, an increase in intracellular calcium triggers tight junction destabilization, by activating the calmodulin and myosin light chain kinase signalization. We identify two bacterial effectors of the Virulence-Modifying (VM) proteins family, structurally related to toxin-like proteins, that promote modulation of calcium homeostasis and disruption of cell–cell junctions, thereby allowing Leptospira translocation across epithelium barriers, tissue colonization and pathogenicity. Furthermore, we demonstrate that at least one of these VM proteins is secreted and associates with host cells. Altogether, these findings reveal a unique strategy by which an extracellular pathogen secretes toxin-like proteins to exploit host calcium signaling for breaching epithelial barriers. Here, the authors use in vivo dual RNA sequencing to determine the host-pathogen transcriptomic landscape upon infection by Leptospira interrogans, revealing alterations in pathways associated with paracellular permeability, like cell–cell junctions.

Sensing technologies that exploit quantum phenomena for measurement are finding increasing applications across materials, physical and biological sciences1–7. Until recently, biological candidates for quantum sensors were limited to in vitro systems, had poor sensitivity and were prone to light-induced degradation. These limitations impeded practical biotechnological applications, and high-throughput study that would facilitate their engineering and optimization. We recently developed a class of magneto-sensitive fluorescent proteins including MagLOV, which overcomes many of these challenges8. Here we show that through directed evolution, it is possible to engineer these proteins to alter the properties of their response to magnetic fields and radio frequencies. We find that MagLOV exhibits optically detected magnetic resonance in living bacterial cells at room temperature, at sufficiently high signal-to-noise for single-cell detection. These effects are explained through the radical-p

Liu et al. develop a structure database of human gut microbial proteins and a structure-aware AI model for remote homolog detection. They demonstrate the power of structure-guided approach in discover...

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