mSphere of Influence: the Young Investigators in Parasitology Meeting-Investing in the Future of Our Scientific Community by Lifting Up and Connecting Junior Faculty. | LitMetric
Drs. Monica Mugnier and Chi-Min Ho work in the field of parasitology. In this mSphere of Influence article, they share their experience as cochairs of the Young Investigators in Parasitology (YIPs) meeting, a 2-day biennial meeting for new PIs in parasitology. Setting up a new lab can be a daunting task. YIPS is designed to make the transition a little easier. YIPs is both a crash course in the skills needed to run a successful research lab and a way to build community among new group leaders in parasitology. In this perspective, they describe YIPs and the benefit it has had on the molecular parasitology community. They also provide some tips for building and running a meeting like YIPs, in the hopes that other fields might replicate their model.
Unlabelled: Advances in technology have facilitated extensive sample collection to explore microbiomes across diverse systems, leading to a growing reliance on ultracold freezers for storing both samples and extracted DNA. However, freezer malfunctions can jeopardize data integrity. To evaluate the impact of an unexpected -80°C freezer failure and the recoverability of thawed soil samples, we extracted DNA and compared it to long-term DNA stored at -20°C and original 16S and ITS2 sequencing data collected before the malfunction.
Louis V. Gerstner Jr. Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Sloan Kettering Institute, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, New York, USA.
Unlabelled: Myeloid phagocytes are essential for antifungal immunity against pulmonary and systemic infections. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying fungal clearance by phagocytes remain incompletely understood. In this study, we investigated the role of Perforin-2 () in antifungal immunity.
Institut Pasteur de Tunis, University of Tunis El Manar, Laboratoire de Microbiologie Moléculaire, Vaccinologie et Développement Biotechnologique, Tunis, Tunisia.
Heat shock factor (HSF)-type regulators are stress-responsive transcription factors widely distributed among eukaryotes, including fungi. They carry a four-stranded winged helix-turn-helix DNA-binding domain considered as the signature domain for HSFs. The genome of the opportunistic yeast encodes four HSF members, namely, Sfl1, Sfl2, Skn7, and the essential regulator, Hsf1.
Unlabelled: The eukaryotic CCR4-NOT deadenylase complex is a highly conserved regulator of mRNA metabolism that influences the expression of the complete transcriptome, representing a prime target for a generalist bacterial pathogen. We show that a translocated bacterial effector protein, PieF (Lpg1972) of , directly interacts with the CNOT7/8 nuclease module of CCR4-NOT, with a dissociation constant in the low nanomolar range. PieF is a robust inhibitor of the DEDD-type nuclease, CNOT7, acting in a stoichiometric, dose-dependent manner.
Unlabelled: Dietary fibers influence the composition of the human gut microbiota and directly contribute to its downstream effects on host health. As more research supports the use of glycans as prebiotics for therapeutic applications, the need to identify the gut bacteria that metabolize glycans of interest increases. Fructo-oligosaccharide (FOS) is a common diet-derived glycan that is fermented by the gut microbiota and has been used as a prebiotic.
