mLife Journal

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mLife is an open access microbiology journal. It strives to build a high-level academic exchange platform for the global microbiology community.

Figure 1. Graphical abstract illustrating how microbial communities adapt to long-term nutrient depletion across the Mendocino Ecological Staircase, a natural laboratory spanning nearly 400,000 years of ecosystem development.
Cover: Antibiotic resistance is making many bacterial infections increasingly difficult to treat. Phages are promising therapy, but doctors currently lack fast methods to determine which phages can effectively kill a pathogen strain. In this issue, Xiao Han et al. invented a ramanome‐based phage susceptibility test (RPST) that is ten times faster than the conventional plaque assays. Within about 1 h, a Composite Infection Index (CII), derived by Raman microspectroscopy of bacteria, can determine whether a phage is effective, how strongly it infects bacteria, and how much phage is needed to start a successful infection (pp. 369–382). By providing faster and more quantitative information than traditional assays, RPST accelerates the selection of effective phages for the therapy against drug-resistant infections.
Figure 1. Major milestones in the evolution of the MCP concept, from its marine origin to an integrated land–sea MCP framework linking marine MCP (microbial carbon pump), soil MCP, and MnCP (mineral-associated carbon pump) across ecosystems.
Overview of ramanome‐based phage susceptibility test (RPST)
Figure 1. The CRISPR‐Cas adaptive immune system and its sabotage by Anti‐CRISPR (Acr) proteins. This schematic illustrates the three stages of CRISPR‐Cas adaptive immunity, including adaptation, expression and processing, and interference, and the diverse inhibition mechanisms used by bacteriophage‐encoded Acr proteins to neutralize each stage.
Multi-level adaptation to a hydrostatic pressure gradient by Orenia metallireducens strain Z6. (A) Changes in Fe(II) concentrations over time under different pressures. As no significant increase in product concentrations was observed in the abiotic controls under the corresponding conditions, and thus, they were not illustrated. (B) Pseudo-zero-order Fe(III) reduction rates (pink diamonds, left axis) and biomass-normalized Fe(III) reduction rates (blue diamonds, right axis) under different pressures. (C) Membrane adaptation. Relative abundance of phospholipid fatty acids (PLFAs) at different pressures. (D) Schematic diagram of metabolic pathways. In the heatmaps, the five cells (from left to right) correspond to the cultures at 0.1, 10, 20, 30, and 40 MPa, respectively. The dashed arrow indicates a feasible but potentially insignificant pathway. (E) Conditional transcriptomic strategies under different pressures. The size of bubbles indicates the number of genes that are pressure-dependent and upregulated only under specific pressure(s). HHP, high hydrostatic pressure; PTS, phosphotransferase system.
Figure 9 Distinct coordination modes of actomyosin and septins during conidiation and hyphal septation in V. dahliae. Schematic summary illustrates the spatial and temporal interactions between CAR (VdMyo2 and actin) and septins during conidiation and hyphal septation.
Figure 2 Septins are required for VdMyo2 localization at the bud neck and for proper nuclear division during conidiation. (A) Morphology and nuclear distribution of conidia in wild-type V592, ΔVdCdc3, and ΔVdCdc3ΔVdCdc11 mutants. Conidia were harvested from colony margins, stained with CFW, and visualized by fluorescence microscopy. Yellow arrows indicate multinucleate conidia observed in the septin-deletion mutants. Scale bar, 5 μm. (B) Quantification of conidial morphology and nuclear distribution in V592, ΔVdCdc3, and ΔVdCdc3ΔVdCdc11 strains. Categories include single-nucleus per conidium, multinucleate conidia (≥2 nuclei), multipolar conidia, adhered conidia, and anucleate conidia. Data are presented as the percentage of total observed events. Counts are based on pooled results from three independent biological replicates (n = number of conidia analyzed). (D) Quantitative analysis of the timing of VdMyo2-GFP appearance at the bud neck in V592 and ΔVdCdc3 strains. Error bars represent the standard error of the mean (SEM). ****p < 0.0001, unpaired two-tailed t-test.
Figure 1 VdMyo2 is essential for proper conidium separation in Verticillium dahliae. (A) Time-lapse fluorescence microscopy illustrating the dynamic localization of VdMyo2-GFP during hyphal apical budding. Nuclei were visualized by VdH2A-mCherry expression. Yellow arrows indicate segregated nuclei following mitosis; blue arrows show the localization of VdMyo2-GFP. Scale bar, 5 μm. (B) Bright-field microscopy images showing conidiophore morphology in the wild-type strain V592, the ΔVdMyo2 mutant, and the complemented strain VdMyo2-GFP/ΔVdMyo2. Scale bar, 20 μm. (C) Cryo-scanning electron microscopy images of conidial morphology in V592 and ΔVdMyo2. Scale bar, 5 μm. (D) Representative fluorescence images of conidia stained with Calcofluor White (CFW), showing the morphology and nuclear distribution in V592 and ΔVdMyo2. Scale bar, 5 μm. (E) Quantitative analysis of conidial morphology and nuclear status in V592 and ΔVdMyo2. Categories include single nucleus per conidium, multinucleate conidia (≥2 nuclei), multipolar conidia, adhered conidia, and anucleate conidia. Data are presented as percentages of total observed events. Counts are based on pooled results from three independent biological replicates (n = number of conidia analyzed).