BefA, a microbiota-secreted membrane disrupter, disseminates to the pancreas and increases β cell mass.

Microbiome dysbiosis is a feature of diabetes, but how microbial products influence insulin production is poorly understood. We report the mechanism of BefA, a microbiome-derived protein that increases proliferation of insulin-producing β cells during development in gnotobiotic zebrafish and mice. BefA disseminates systemically by multiple anatomic routes to act directly on pancreatic islets.

Tolerability of graded levels of tall oil fatty acids as a nutritional additive for broiler chickens: a 45-day target animal safety study.

1. The following study was conducted to evaluate the tolerability of tall oil fatty acid (TOFA) to broiler chickens, at three graded levels as a nutritional additive in complete feed.2.

Host-emitted amino acid cues regulate bacterial chemokinesis to enhance colonization.

Animal microbiomes are assembled predominantly from environmental microbes, yet the mechanisms by which individual symbionts regulate their transmission into hosts remain underexplored. By tracking the experimental evolution of Aeromonas veronii in gnotobiotic zebrafish, we identify bacterial traits promoting host colonization. Multiple independently evolved isolates with increased immigration harbored mutations in a gene we named sensor of proline diguanylate cyclase enzyme (SpdE) based on structural, biochemical, and phenotypic evidence that SpdE encodes an amino-acid-sensing diguanylate cyclase.

Helicobacter pylori senses bleach (HOCl) as a chemoattractant using a cytosolic chemoreceptor.

The gastric pathogen Helicobacter pylori requires a noncanonical cytosolic chemoreceptor transducer-like protein D (TlpD) for efficient colonization of the mammalian stomach. Here, we reconstituted a complete chemotransduction signaling complex in vitro with TlpD and the chemotaxis (Che) proteins CheW and CheA, enabling quantitative assays for potential chemotaxis ligands. We found that TlpD is selectively sensitive at micromolar concentrations to bleach (hypochlorous acid, HOCl), a potent antimicrobial produced by neutrophil myeloperoxidase during inflammation.