Brucella is an intracellular bacterium that causes abortion, reproduction failure in livestock and leads to a debilitating flu-like illness with serious chronic complications if untreated in humans. As a successful intracellular pathogen, Brucella ha...
Lymphatic vessels provide a critical line of communication between peripheral tissues and their draining lymph nodes, which is necessary for robust immune responses against infectious agents. At the same time, lymphatics help shape the nature and kin...
The endoplasmic reticulum (ER) is the largest intracellular organelle. It forms a complex network of continuous sheets and tubules, extending from the nuclear envelope (NE) to the plasma membrane. This network is frequently perturbed by positive-stra...
Bacteria evolved many strategies to survive and persist within host cells. Secretion of bacterial effectors enables bacteria not only to enter the host cell but also to manipulate host gene expression to circumvent clearance by the host immune respon...
The anterior segment of the eye is a complex set of structures that collectively act to maintain the integrity of the globe and direct light towards the posteriorly located retina. The eye is exposed to numerous physical and environmental insults suc...
Stem-cell behavior is governed not solely by intrinsic genetic programs but by highly specialized microenvironments—or niches—that integrate structural, biochemical, and mechanical cues to regulate quiescence, self-renewal, and differenti...
Obligate intracellular pathogens have coevolved with their host, leading to clever strategies to access nutrients, to combat the host’s immune response, and to establish a safe niche for intracellular replication. The host, on the other hand, has als...
Two distinct stem/progenitor cell populations of biliary origin have been identified in the adult liver and biliary tree. Hepatic Stem/progenitor Cells (HpSCs) are bipotent progenitor cells located within the canals of Hering and can be differentiate...
Modeling human infectious diseases using the early life stages of zebrafish provides unprecedented opportunities for visualizing and studying the interaction between pathogens and phagocytic cells of the innate immune system. Intracellular pathogens...
Herpesviruses usurp cellular stress responses to promote viral replication and avoid immune surveillance. The unfolded protein response (UPR) is a conserved stress response that is activated when the protein load in the ER exceeds folding capacity an...
Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections pose a global health threat, especially with the continuous development of antibiotic resistance. As an opportunistic pathogen, MRSA infections have a high mortality rate worldwide. Althou...
The increasing burden of vascular dysfunction on healthcare systems worldwide results in higher morbidity and mortality rates across pathologies, including cardiovascular diseases. Vasculopathy is suggested to be caused by the dysregulation of vascul...
Yersinia pseudotuberculosis, Y. enterocolitica and Y. pestis are pathogenic bacteria capable of causing disease in humans by growing extracellularly in lymph nodes and during systemic infections. While the capacity of these bacteria to invade, replic...
Inflammasomes are multiprotein platforms assembled in the cytosol in response to pathogens and cell stress. Inflammasomes are recognized by their important role on defences against bacterial infections and have been also implicated in a range of huma...
Mycobacterium tuberculosis is able to establish a chronic colonization of lung macrophages in a controlled replication manner, giving rise to a so-called latent infection. Conversely, when intracellular bacteria undergo actively uncontrolled replicat...
In addressing the current climate crisis, research into how past societies have coped with risk and ecological uncertainty can provide old solutions to new problems. Here, we examine how human niche construction can be seen as risk management in the...
Escherichia coli were isolated from three patients with chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS) by intraoperative sinus tissue biopsy. Taking into account the unusual replicative niche and previous treatment failures, it was decided to focus on the virulence an...
In the adult, the source of functionally diverse, mature blood cells are hematopoietic stem cells, a rare population of quiescent cells that reside in the bone marrow niche. Like stem cells in other tissues, hematopoietic stem cells are defined by th...
Mycobacteria tuberculosis (Mtb) infection causes tuberculosis (TB). TB is one of the most intractable infectious diseases, causing over 1.13 million deaths annually. Under harsh growing conditions, the innate response of mycobacteria is to shut down...
In hematological malignancies, leukemias or myelomas, malignant cells present bone marrow (BM) homing, in which the niche contributes to tumor development and drug resistance. BM architecture, cellular and molecular composition and interactions defin...
Hematological malignancies such as acute myeloid leukemia (AML), chronic myeloid leukemia (CML), lymphomas, and multiple myeloma remain difficult to model ex vivo because conventional two-dimensional (2D) cultures and murine systems fail to reproduce...
Pathogenic intracellular bacteria, parasites and viruses have evolved sophisticated mechanisms to manipulate mammalian host cells to serve as niches for persistence and proliferation. The intracellular lifestyles of pathogens involve the manipulation...
Coxiella burnetii, the causative agent of Q fever, is a highly infectious pathogen capable of invading diverse cell types, from alveolar macrophages to trophoblasts. Within host cells, it establishes a replicative niche named Coxiella-containing vacu...
Intracellular bacterial pathogens establish their replicative niches within membrane-encompassed compartments, called vacuoles. A subset of these bacteria uses a nanochannel called the type 4 secretion system (T4SS) to inject effector proteins that s...
The Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic disproportionately affects immunocompetent and immunocompromised individuals, with the latter group being more vulnerable to severe disease and death. However, the differential pathogenesis of SARS-CoV...
Myosins play a key role in many cellular processes such as cell migration, adhesion, intracellular trafficking and internalization processes, making them ideal targets for bacteria. Through selected examples, such as enteropathogenic E. coli (EPEC),...
In the biomedical field, there is a demand for the development of novel approaches for the investigation of optical epithelial anatomical features with biomimetic materials. These materials are not only required to replicate structures but also enabl...
Alphaviruses have historically been viewed as acute, self-limiting pathogens. However, growing evidence shows that viral RNA and antigens can persist in vertebrate hosts long after the resolution of acute infection, a phenomenon known as viral persis...
Uropathogenic Escherichia coli (UPEC) cause the majority of community-onset urinary tract infections (UTI) and represent a major etiologic agent of healthcare-associated UTI. Introduction of UPEC into the mammalian urinary tract evokes a well-describ...
Background: Microbial communities of insects have distinct roles for their respective hosts. For the black fly (Diptera: Simuliidae), an important vector and ecological indicator, the representative microbiota from the different body regions are not...
The bovine tuberculoid granuloma is the hallmark lesion of bovine tuberculosis (bTB) due to Mycobacterium bovis infection. The pathogenesis of bTB, and thereby the process of bovine tuberculoid granuloma development, involves the recruitment, activat...
Endoplasmic reticulum-associated degradation (ERAD) is highly conserved in yeast. Recent studies have shown that ERAD is also ubiquitous and highly conserved in eukaryotic cells, where it plays an essential role in maintaining endoplasmic reticulum (...
The actin cytoskeleton is crucially important to maintenance of the cellular structure, cell motility, and endocytosis. Accordingly, bacterial pathogens often co-opt the actin-restructuring machinery of host cells to access or create a favorable envi...
In this review we examine the use of secretion systems by bacteria to subvert host functions. Bacteria have evolved multiple systems to interact with and overcome their eukaryotic host and other prokaryotes. Secretion systems are required for the rel...
Bacteriophages, or phages, are microscopic viruses that specifically infect and replicate within bacterial hosts. Their unique ability to target and control bacterial populations makes them valuable tools with applications ranging from human medicine...
Colon cancer tumorigenesis occurs incrementally. The process involves the acquisition of mutations which typically follow an established pattern: activation of WNT signaling, activation of RAS signaling, and inhibition of TGF-β signaling. This a...
Giant pandas (Ailuropoda melanoleuca), a flagship endangered species under priority preservation in China, remain poorly understood in terms of their testicular physiology and the mechanisms underlying spermatogenesis. Testicular peritubular cells (T...
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Mosquitoes (Diptera: Culicidae) exhibit vertical stratification patterns in forest environments, a fundamental ecological aspect for understanding niche occupation patterns, host-seeking behavior, and consequently arbovirus transmission mechanisms. D...
To more accurately replicate the in vivo three-dimensional (3D) mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) niche and enhance cellular phenotypes for superior in vivo treatments, MSC functionalization through in vitro 3D culture approaches has gained attention. The...
About thirty years ago, a new form of pro-inflammatory lytic cell death was observed and termed pyroptosis. Only in 2015, gasdermins were defined as molecules that create pores at the plasma membrane and drive pyroptosis. Today, we know that gasdermi...
The biofouling of marine structures must be controlled if crippling operational and maintenance costs are to be avoided and biological invasions prevented. However, traditional methods of biofouling control typically involve the use of toxic chemical...
Many studies have examined the biology, genetics, and chemotherapeutic response of ovarian cancer’s solid component; its liquid facet, however, remains critically underinvestigated. Floating within peritoneal effusions known as ascites, ovarian...
African swine fever virus (ASFV) causes global swine outbreaks, but its cellular pathogenesis is poorly understood. Using single-cell RNA data from ASFV-infected pig spleens across four timepoints, we identified macrophages as the primary viral reser...
Mesenchymal stem cells constitute a pool of cells present throughout the lifetime in numerous niches, characteristic of unlimited replication potential and the ability to differentiate into mature cells of mesodermal tissues in vitro. The therapeutic...
Current cancer therapeutics often insufficiently eradicate malignant cells due to the surrounding dense tumor stroma. This multi-componential tissue consists of mainly cancer-associated fibroblasts, the (compact) extracellular matrix, tumor vasculatu...
Listeria monocytogenes has evolved exquisite mechanisms for invading host cells and spreading from cell-to-cell to ensure maintenance of its intracellular lifecycle. As such, it is not surprising that loss of the intracellular replication niche throu...
Chlamydiae are strict intracellular pathogens residing within a specialised membrane-bound compartment called the inclusion. Therefore, each infected cell can, be considered as a single entity where bacteria form a community within the inclusion. It...
At present, issues of ecosystem self-organization and the mechanisms for their sustainable development have been insufficiently explored in academic literature. The key idea of our research is that for enterprises interacting in different industries...
Brucella abortus is a pathogenic bacterium able to proliferate inside host cells. During the first steps of its trafficking, it is able to block the progression of its cell cycle, remaining at the G1 stage for several hours, before it reaches its rep...
Lipids play a crucial role in the entry and egress of viruses, regardless of whether they are naked or enveloped. Recent evidence shows that lipid involvement in viral infection goes much further. During replication, many viruses rearrange internal l...
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