SUMMARY A balanced gut microbiota contributes to health, but the mechanisms
maintaining homeostasis remain elusive. Microbiota assembly during infancy is governed by …

Cellular responses to stress can be defined by the overwhelming number of changes that
cells go through upon contact with and stressful conditions such as infection and …

The gut microbiota prevents harmful microbes from entering the body, a function known as
colonization resistance. The enteric pathogen Salmonella enterica serovar (S.) Typhimurium …

Antibiotic therapy often fails to eliminate a fraction of transiently refractory bacteria, causing
relapses and chronic infections. Multiple mechanisms can induce such persisters with high …

Tolerance and persistence are superficially similar phenomena by which bacteria survive
bactericidal antibiotics. It is assumed that the same physiology underlies survival of …

During intracellular infections, autophagy significantly contributes to the elimination of
pathogens, regulation of pro-inflammatory signaling, secretion of immune mediators and in …

In bacteria, one paradigm for signal transduction is the two-component regulatory system,
consisting of a sensor kinase (usually a membrane protein) and a response regulator …

Autophagy is an important component of the innate immune system in mammals. Low levels
of basic autophagy are sustained in normal cells, to help with the clearance of aging …

Intracellular pathogens commonly reside within macrophages to find shelter from humoral
defenses, but host cell death can expose them to the extracellular milieu. We find …

Pathogenicity islands (PAIs) are regions of the chromosome of pathogenic bacteria that
harbor virulence genes, which were probably acquired by lateral gene transfer. Several PAIs …