A ganglioside-based immune checkpoint enables senescent cells to evade immunosurveillance during aging.

Although senescent cells can be eliminated by the immune system, they tend to accumulate with age in various tissues. Here we show that senescent cells can evade immune clearance by natural killer (NK) cells by upregulating the expression of the disialylated ganglioside GD3 at their surface. The increased level of GD3 expression on senescent cells that naturally occurs upon aging in liver, lung, kidney or bones leads to a strong suppression of NK-cell-mediated immunosurveillance.

MicroGlycoDB: A database of microbial glycans using Semantic Web technologies.

Glycoconjugates are present on microbial surfaces and play critical roles in modulating interactions with the environment and the host. Extensive research on microbial glycans, including elucidating the structural diversity of the glycan moieties of glycoconjugates and polysaccharides, has been carried out to investigate the function of glycans in modulating the interactions between the host and microbes, to explore their potential applications in the therapeutic targeting of pathogenic species, and in the use as probiotics in gut microbiomes. However, glycan-related information is dispersed across numerous databases and a vast amount of literature, which makes it laborious and time-consuming to identify and gather the relevant information about microbial glycosylation.

Dissecting the Enterococcal Polysaccharide Antigen (EPA) structure to explore innate immune evasion and phage specificity.

Streptococci, Lactococci and Enterococci all produce L-rhamnose-containing cell wall polysaccharides which define Lancefield serotypes and represent promising candidates for the design of glycoconjugate vaccines. The L-rhamnose containing Enterococcal Polysaccharide Antigen (EPA), produced by the opportunistic pathogen Enterococcus faecalis, plays a critical role in normal growth, division, biofilm formation, antimicrobial resistance, phage susceptibility, and innate immune evasion. Despite the critical role of this polymer in E.

A dTDP-L-rhamnose 4-epimerase required for glycopeptidolipid biosynthesis in Mycobacterium abscessus.

Mycobacterium abscessus causes severe lung infections in cystic fibrosis patients and exhibits smooth (S) or rough (R) morphotypes. Disruption of glycopeptidolipid (GPL) production results in the S-to-R transition but the underlying molecular mechanisms of this transition remain incompletely understood. Herein, we characterized MAB_4111c in relation to GPL synthesis and investigated the effects of MAB_4111c deletion in M.