Divine Aleru, Microbiome Signatures Research Coordinator

This study explores the critical role of iron transport and metabolism in Listeria monocytogenes, focusing on key systems for iron acquisition and their implications for bacterial virulence and pathogenesis.

This study explores the critical role of iron acquisition systems in Listeria monocytogenes pathogenesis, focusing on Fur-regulated iron transporters and their impact on bacterial survival and virulence.

This study reveals how Listeria monocytogenes uses listeriolysin S (LLS) as a bacteriocin to alter the gut microbiota, aiding in colonization and infection, with implications for therapeutic interventions targeting microbiota modulation.

This study explores how Listeria monocytogenes organizes its surface proteins, specifically InlA and InlH, to adapt to different host environments and promote virulence, shedding light on the dynamic regulation of bacterial surface components during infection.

This study examines the protective effect of passive immunization with anti-ActA and anti-LLO antibodies against Listeria monocytogenes infection, showing how these antibodies reduce bacterial load and enhance survival in infected mice.

This study reveals how Listeria monocytogenes uses listeriolysin O (LLO) to disrupt host cell membranes, aiding in bacterial survival and spread. It highlights the potential for LLO-targeted therapies and biotechnological applications.

This study highlights the critical role of CD147 in facilitating Listeria monocytogenes membrane protrusion formation and cell-to-cell spreading, offering insights into potential therapeutic targets for limiting infection spread.

This study uncovers how Listeria monocytogenes uses listeriolysin O (LLO) to induce host cell entry via membrane perforation, a novel pathogen strategy for invasion.

This study explores how Listeria monocytogenes InlC modulates the host immune response by inhibiting the NF-κB pathway, highlighting its role in immune evasion and infection persistence.

This review explores the role of internalin proteins in Listeria monocytogenes pathogenesis, focusing on their ability to facilitate bacterial invasion, spread, and crossing of key host barriers such as the intestinal, blood-brain, and placental barriers.

This study investigates the role of Listeria monocytogenes internalin A in the interaction with human E-cadherin, essential for invasion across host barriers, including the placenta, highlighting its species specificity and implications for listeriosis pathogenesis.

This study identifies the InlA–E-cadherin interaction as crucial for Listeria monocytogenes invasion of the human placenta, providing insights into mechanisms of fetoplacental listeriosis.

This review explores the survival mechanisms of Listeria monocytogenes in food production environments, focusing on stress resistance, biofilm formation, and its persistence despite sanitation measures.

This study examines the role of flagella in Listeria monocytogenes invasion, concluding that motility, not adhesion, is crucial for host cell invasion and early colonization.

This study explores Listeria monocytogenes contamination in poultry products, highlighting serotype distribution, antimicrobial resistance, and molecular subtyping methods used to track outbreaks and assess food safety.

This review discusses the genetic mechanisms behind Listeria monocytogenes resistance to LAB-produced bacteriocins, emphasizing receptor modifications and cross-resistance, and suggests strategies to counteract these challenges in food preservation.

This review explains how Listeria monocytogenes triggers and then evades macrophage autophagy, including SLAP formation that supports slow intracellular persistence.

This review explores the mechanisms of heavy metal resistance in Listeria monocytogenes, focusing on arsenic and cadmium resistance genes and their potential role in persistence and virulence in food and clinical settings.

This study analyzes antimicrobial resistance in Listeria monocytogenes isolates from clinical and food environments in France, highlighting the low prevalence of acquired resistance and the continued effectiveness of first-line treatments.

This study analyzes antimicrobial resistance in Listeria monocytogenes isolates from 2010 to 2021, finding no significant increase in resistance and highlighting key AMR genes.

This review discusses the rising antimicrobial resistance in Listeria species, focusing on their resistance mechanisms to antibiotics, biocides, and heavy metals, and their implications for food safety and public health.

This study demonstrates that gentamicin combination therapy significantly reduces 90-day mortality in patients with invasive listeriosis, especially in those with neurolisteriosis.

This study explores the persistence of Listeria monocytogenes biofilms in food industries, stressing the need for stronger hygiene protocols to prevent contamination. It highlights genetic factors that contribute to biofilm formation and resistance.

The review examines the persistence of Listeria monocytogenes biofilms in the food industry and evaluates current cleaning methods, offering insights into innovative control strategies.

This study examines pregnancy-associated listeriosis in England and Wales, exploring factors influencing pregnancy outcomes and infant survival, with a focus on maternal symptoms and timing of infection.

The paper reviews Listeria monocytogenes, its global prevalence, risk factors, and clinical management of listeriosis, with a focus on vulnerable populations.

Listeria monocytogenes is an opportunistic pathogen capable of surviving in diverse environments, including soil, water, and decaying vegetation. L. monocytogenes has the unique ability to evade the immune system by moving directly from cell to cell within the host. This intracellular lifestyle allows the bacterium to avoid extracellular immune detection, contributing to its ability to cause invasive diseases like meningitis and septicemia, particularly in the elderly and immunocompromised.

This study examines the relationship between the metal content of human milk and the infant gut microbiota, highlighting metal-induced microbial shifts and their potential impact on infant health and development.

This study investigates the buffer capacity and systems of human whole saliva, revealing the key role of bicarbonate, saliva flow rate, and pH in maintaining oral health. It provides insights into the implications for dental health and saliva analysis.

This study addresses diagnostic challenges for manganese imbalances, providing algorithms for identifying hypermanganesemia and hypomanganesemia, and offering solutions to improve clinical diagnosis, including sample handling and reference range standardization.

This study optimizes electrothermal atomic absorption spectrometry (ETAAS) for detecting manganese in urine and blood samples, demonstrating high sensitivity and precision, and providing insights into the use of chemical modifiers for improved analysis.

This study shows that manganese bio-oxidation, facilitated by Pseudomonas aeruginosa strain MQ2, can effectively degrade antibiotics and reduce antibiotic resistance gene propagation by alleviating oxidative stress, offering new strategies for environmental antibiotic pollution control.

This study explores how heavy metals in an ecological restoration area of a manganese mining site promote the diffusion of high-risk antibiotic resistance genes and pathogens through a transmission chain involving mulberry leaves, silkworms, and soil, raising concerns for public health and environmental safety.

This review explores how environmental bacteria acquire co-resistance to heavy metals and antibiotics, revealing complex genetic interactions and co-selection mechanisms.

This study links placental manganese levels, maternal gut microbiota, and preeclampsia risk, highlighting specific bacterial genera and metabolic pathways involved. It suggests that manganese may help mitigate preeclampsia, offering new insights for therapeutic strategies targeting the gut microbiome.

This study explores the impact of metal exposure on infant gut microbiota, identifying key metals like arsenic, copper, and manganese that alter microbial diversity and specific taxa, with implications for infant health and future therapeutic strategies.

This study shows that manganese exposure triggers neuroinflammation in rats through the NLRP3 inflammasome, but fecal microbiota transplantation can alleviate these effects, suggesting microbiome-based therapies for neurotoxic and neurodegenerative diseases.

This study shows that fecal microbiome transplantation (FMT) can attenuate manganese-induced neurotoxicity by regulating the apelin signaling pathway and autophagy in the brain, offering new therapeutic insights into managing metal-induced neurodegenerative diseases.

This study shows how manganese exposure alters the gut microbiome and metabolic functions in a sex-specific manner in C57BL/6 mice. It highlights changes in neurotransmitter pathways and microbial composition that could impact brain health and suggests the need for sex-specific approaches to understanding metal toxicity.

This study identifies the MntABC manganese transporter as crucial for S. aureus survival after phagocytosis. It helps bacteria recover from oxidative stress by facilitating DNA repair through the NrdEF complex, offering new therapeutic targets to disrupt metal acquisition and combat bacterial infections.

This study uncovers the structural basis of manganese binding in the MntR regulator from Bacillus halodurans, revealing its role in bacterial manganese homeostasis. Understanding this process could inform new strategies for controlling bacterial infections by targeting metal regulation.

This study reveals how the human immune protein calprotectin (CP) sequesters zinc, facilitating manganese binding to bacterial solute-binding proteins. This interaction prevents zinc toxicity and supports bacterial virulence, offering new insights into metal ion competition between host and pathogen.

This review examines how iron, copper, zinc, and manganese affect gut microbiota composition and function, highlighting their regulatory role in health and disease. It discusses both the effects of metal deficiencies and supplementation on microbial balance and associated health outcomes.

This study maps the metallophore synthesis and uptake potential across the Staphylococcus genus, revealing species-specific production and utilization of metallophores. These findings provide insights into microbial cooperation, competition, and potential therapeutic targets for infections caused by S. aureus and other staphylococcal species.

This study reveals how S. aureus uses staphylopine (StP) to acquire transition metals, with CntA playing a central role in metal recognition and transport. The findings highlight new potential therapeutic targets to disrupt metal acquisition and reduce bacterial virulence.

This study reveals that the ArlRS two-component system in S. aureus enables resistance to host-imposed manganese starvation by modulating metabolism, particularly by promoting amino acid utilization. These findings provide insights into how bacterial metabolic flexibility aids in overcoming nutritional immunity and suggest potential therapeutic targets.

This study reveals that S. aureus uses the Cnt-StP system to acquire zinc during infection, enabling it to compete with the host’s immune defenses. This zinc acquisition pathway is critical for pathogen survival and virulence, offering new targets for antimicrobial therapy.

This review summarizes bacterial Mn sensing and homeostasis mechanisms, highlighting key regulators like MntR and the yybP-ykoY riboswitch. It discusses newly identified Mn exporters and their roles in protecting against Mn toxicity, with implications for antimicrobial strategies targeting bacterial metal regulation.

This study examines the roles of MntS and MntP in regulating manganese levels in E. coli, highlighting their importance in preventing manganese toxicity and supporting enzyme activation. The findings offer insights into bacterial metal homeostasis and potential therapeutic strategies targeting manganese regulation in pathogens.

This study explores how the MntR metalloregulator in Bacillus subtilis coordinates Mn(II) uptake and efflux systems to maintain Mn homeostasis and prevent toxicity, offering insights into bacterial metal regulation and potential therapeutic targets for controlling metal imbalance in infections.

This study identifies the essential roles of manganese and iron transporters (mntH, sitABCD, and feoB) in Salmonella enterica Typhimurium virulence. These transporters are required for bacterial survival inside macrophages and for successful infection, highlighting potential targets for antimicrobial therapy.

What was reviewed?This review provides an in-depth analysis of the speciation and fractionation of manganese (Mn) across various environmental and biological matrices, including water, soil, plants, animals, and polluted environments. It discusses the methods used for manganese determination, such as extraction techniques, spectroscopic methods, and the challenges associated with analyzing manganese species in complex matrices.Who […]

This study highlights the role of MntE in Mn detoxification and its crucial impact on S. aureus’s resistance to oxidative stress and virulence. Disrupting MntE leads to Mn accumulation, reduced fitness, and increased sensitivity to host immune responses, suggesting MntE as a potential antimicrobial target.

This study highlights calprotectin’s role in sequestering manganese and zinc to disrupt bacterial superoxide defenses, making S. aureus more vulnerable to neutrophil-mediated killing, providing insights into potential therapeutic strategies targeting bacterial metal acquisition.

This review examines the essential role of manganese in human health, highlighting its involvement in enzyme activation and neurotransmitter function. It underscores the dangers of Mn dysregulation, especially its link to neurodegenerative diseases, and advocates for better monitoring and prevention strategies for Mn toxicity.

Manganese plays a pivotal role in microbial pathogenesis. As a vital cofactor for enzymes involved in antioxidant defense and metabolism, manganese is essential for pathogens, enabling them to survive within the host. However, when not properly managed, manganese can become toxic to both the host and the pathogen. The host’s immune system, through mechanisms like the secretion of calprotectin, tries to limit microbial access to manganese, creating an ongoing battle between host defenses and microbial survival .

This review explains why magnesium deficiency is common and overlooked in blood cancers. It links magnesium to immune control of EBV, inflammation, and DNA repair pathways, and it highlights XMEN disease as proof that impaired magnesium transport can raise lymphoma risk.

This review explains why magnesium testing often misses true deficiency, especially in critical illness. It compares blood and urine methods, highlights drug-related magnesium loss, and shows how urine indices and free magnesium may improve diagnosis and treatment decisions.

This review explains how magnesium supports immune signaling and controls inflammation. It links magnesium deficiency to higher cytokine activity, oxidative stress, infection risk, and cancer progression. It also highlights magnesium-dependent T-cell function pathways and notes that microbiome links appear through inflammaging, not consistent taxa signatures.

This review links magnesium, especially magnesium orotate, to gut–brain axis modulation in functional GI disorders with anxiety or depression. It summarizes evidence that magnesium status can shift microbiome diversity, inflammation, and neuroactive pathways, and it highlights early pilot work combining magnesium orotate with SSRIs and probiotics.

This trial shows magnesium supplementation changes colorectal-adjacent microbes in a TRPM7 genotype-dependent way, especially in rectal swabs. In people with typical TRPM7 function, magnesium increased Carnobacterium maltaromaticum and Faecalibacterium prausnitzii, microbes linked to local vitamin D activity.

This study shows that Lacticaseibacillus rhamnosus can internalize magnesium from its environment, making it a potential probiotic carrier for improving magnesium absorption in the gut. The findings suggest that this could address magnesium deficiency through nutribiotic strategies.

This study explores how dietary magnesium supplementation can alleviate murine colitis by modulating the gut microbiota, improving microbiota richness, and reducing inflammation.

What was studied?This study examined the role of metals in regulating antibiotic resistance in bacteria, particularly focusing on how metals, such as copper, zinc, and iron, can induce resistance mechanisms against antibiotics. The research explored various mechanisms like co-resistance, cross-resistance, and co-regulation, shedding light on how metal ions act as signals to induce antibiotic resistance […]

Magnesium restriction in mice caused hypomagnesemia, increased inflammation, and altered the gut microbiome. These changes impacted immune function and highlighted the importance of magnesium in maintaining gut health and immune homeostasis.

Magnesium influences bacterial phenotypic resistance by modulating fatty acid and phospholipid metabolism in Vibrio species, leading to reduced antibiotic uptake and increased resistance to drugs like balofloxacin.

This study shows that combining resistant dextrin with low-dose magnesium oxide increases SCFA and lactic acid production by gut microbiota, improving gut health.

This study explores how dietary magnesium levels affect the gut microbiota of rats. It shows that low magnesium increases beneficial microbes, while high magnesium promotes potentially harmful bacteria. These changes may influence metabolism and gut health.

This study explores the conditions that regulate C. difficile spore germination in the GI tract, showing how pH, bile salts, calcium, and amino acids interact to trigger germination, and how this affects C. difficile infection risk.

The study investigates Streptococcus pneumoniae’s virulence, immune evasion strategies, and how aging impacts susceptibility to infections. It explores diagnostic and vaccine strategies for improving prevention in high-risk groups.

Fungal competition for magnesium between Candida albicans and Pseudomonas aeruginosa significantly lowers bacterial fitness but enhances resistance to polymyxin antibiotics. This highlights the role of Mg²⁺ in microbial interactions and offers potential therapeutic avenues to manage polymicrobial infections and combat antibiotic resistance.

This study identifies MpfA (SA0657) as a key magnesium protection factor in Staphylococcus aureus. Disabling MpfA makes the bacterium highly sensitive to Mg2+ and pinpoints a conserved CBS-domain residue needed for function, supporting a role in Mg2+ export or detoxification.

This study shows that the Salmonella peptide MgtR directly limits the MgtA magnesium transporter during Mg2+ starvation. Deleting mgtR raises MgtA protein levels and makes MgtA appear earlier, which improves growth in low magnesium when other transporters are absent.

This study shows that the magnesium transporter MgtE suppresses Pseudomonas aeruginosa type III secretion by blocking ExsA translation. MgtE activates the GacAS system, increases rsmY and rsmZ, and limits ExsA production, which lowers T3SS gene transcription without reducing exsA mRNA.

What was studied?This experimental study investigated how the bacterial magnesium transporter A (MgtA) functions at the biochemical level and how membrane lipids and free magnesium concentrations regulate its activity. The authors focused on MgtA from Escherichia coli as a model system to clarify how this transporter responds to magnesium limitation and how it integrates environmental […]

This review explains how hosts restrict pathogens by triggering magnesium limitation signals during infection. It shows that bacteria respond to what they feel inside their cytoplasm and highlights Salmonella’s need for Mg2+ transport systems and stress sensors to survive inside macrophages.

This review explains that the small intestine absorbs magnesium through regulated transcellular and paracellular pathways. Hormones, luminal pH sensing, and proton pump inhibitors can suppress absorption, while fermentation-linked acidification may support uptake. It links dysbiosis and inflammation to impaired magnesium bioavailability.

This review explains how magnesium imbalance affects neuromuscular and cardiac function and why lab results can mislead. It highlights pre-analytical errors, limits of serum magnesium, and strong links between magnesium, potassium, calcium, and gut-related absorption or loss.

This mini-review explains how higher-dose magnesium can reduce bacterial adhesion and weaken biofilm formation. It highlights why biofilms resist cleaning and heat, and it summarizes evidence that magnesium in milk can reduce Bacillus biofilms and lower survival after pasteurization.

This study shows that low gut magnesium activates a virulence pathway in EHEC O157:H7 that boosts LEE gene expression and intestinal attachment. A magnesium-rich diet raised colon magnesium and sharply reduced bacterial adherence in mice, supporting magnesium as an anti-virulence approach.

This review explains how magnesium, zinc, copper, iron, and selenium shape innate and adaptive immunity and long-term inflammation. It highlights that magnesium deficiency can weaken the gut barrier and reduce bifidobacteria, which can raise inflammatory cytokines and worsen immune balance.

This review explains how bacteria sense magnesium outside and inside the cell, switch among Mg2+ transporters, and remodel their envelope to survive low Mg2+. It shows how Mg2+ limitation and host stresses can activate virulence programs, especially in Salmonella and related pathogens.

This review explains how magnesium supports energy, vascular tone, glucose handling, bone strength, and brain excitability, and why low intake or poor absorption can raise chronic disease risk. It also clarifies why serum magnesium can miss deficiency and why gut factors matter for magnesium availability.

This review explains how magnesium supports energy, vascular function, immunity, glucose control, bone strength, and muscle health, and how low intake or poor absorption can raise risks for cardiometabolic disease and inflammation. It also highlights gut factors that may reduce magnesium availability.

Magnesium (Mg) is a vital metal that not only supports critical cellular functions in both humans and microbes but also plays a significant role in shaping microbial pathogenesis. By regulating microbial growth, virulence factor expression, and competition for nutrients, magnesium directly influences infection outcomes. Understanding how magnesium interacts with microbial communities and the host immune system provides novel insights into therapeutic strategies that modulate microbial behavior, potentially improving infection management and microbiome health.

This review explains how dietary pectin may shift gut microbiota and SCFA production to shape allergy risk, while also noting reports of pectin-related sensitization and anaphylaxis. It highlights structure-dependent microbial associations and immune pathways that matter in asthma and food allergy.

This review explains how thiol-based chelators bind mercury, cadmium, and lead and how that chemistry guides clinical treatment. It compares common agents such as DMSA and DMPS, outlines safety tradeoffs, and clarifies why brain and intracellular metal stores remain hard to remove.

This study shows the gut microbiome helps clear dietary methylmercury by demethylating it in the intestine. People differed widely in elimination rates, which tracked with stool demethylation activity and specific taxa patterns, especially Alistipes.

This pilot study in late pregnancy linked maternal gut microbiota to mercury biomarkers and tested whether microbes directly change stool methylmercury. Stool methylmercury did not predict fetal exposure, and mercury cycling genes were largely absent, suggesting indirect microbiome pathways may matter more.

This review explains how mercury form and exposure route change diagnosis and treatment. It compares blood, urine, and hair biomarkers, discusses why symptoms do not always match measured levels, and summarizes supportive care and chelation options while noting that firm treatment thresholds remain hard to define.

This review explains how workplace microbes, chemicals, metals, and air pollution can change the adult human microbiome. It highlights links to colonization, gut permeability, and immune effects, and it suggests that stopping exposure alone may not reverse risk if microbiome changes persist.

Mercury pollution reshaped a soil microbiome by lowering alpha diversity and increasing between-community divergence. A focal Pseudomonas strain survived mercury stress by acquiring mercury resistance, and conjugative elements spread merA widely across taxa, showing how toxicants can drive community change and resistance gene flow.

This study shows human gut microbiota can demethylate methylmercury and that detox rates vary by exposure level and food source. Higher Desulfovibrio and methanogen signals aligned with faster demethylation, while mer and hgcAB genes did not explain the process.

Mercury-contaminated paddy soil increased plant and human pathogen signals under both ambient and elevated CO₂. Metagenomics showed strong activation of efflux pumps, especially the RND family, alongside higher adherence and secretion-related virulence factors, linking metal exposure to antibiotic resistance potential and pathogen aggressiveness.

This study shows that trace mercury exposure can favor the USA300-LV MRSA lineage in South America. Mercury reverses the fitness cost of COMER, helps USA300-LV outcompete other strains, and increases expression of major virulence genes under sub-inhibitory mercury.

This review explains how methylmercury forms in the environment, enters the body, and reaches the brain through fast “exchange” chemistry with sulfur and selenium groups. It highlights microbial methylation as the exposure driver and selenoenzymes as vulnerable targets that amplify neurotoxicity.

This study shows mercury(II) can bind histidines to inhibit chymotrypsin and trigger irreversible denaturation and aggregation. Imidazole blocks aggregation, aggregation rises above pH 6.5, and histidine-targeting DEPC shifts mercury effects, supporting a two-histidine mechanism.

This review explains how mercury, cadmium, arsenic, and lead disrupt glutathione and cysteine-based defenses. It emphasizes catalytic mercury-driven glutathione oxidation and metal-conjugate breakdown that generates electrophiles and metal sulfides, linking these mechanisms to kidney, neurologic, and carcinogenic injury patterns.

This study shows that mussel metallothionein binds mercury in two main forms: a dominant linear Hg–thiolate complex and a substantial clustered Hg–thiolate structure with Hg–Hg pairing. The clustered form likely concentrates in the α-domain and supports cellular mercury detoxification.

What was studied?This original research study used large-scale bioinformatics to map where mercury detoxification genes occur across prokaryotes and to infer how those genes evolved. The authors screened 84,032 bacterial and archaeal genomes, including isolate genomes, metagenome-assembled genomes, and single-cell genomes, for mercuric reductase (MerA), which reduces Hg(II) to volatile Hg(0), and organomercury lyase (MerB), […]