The stringent response is a central adaptation mechanism that allows bacteria to adjust their growth and metabolism according to environmental conditions. The functionality of the stringent response is crucial for bacterial virulence, survival during host invasion as well as antibiotic resistance and tolerance. Therefore, specific inhibitors of the stringent response hold great promise as molecula

The alarmones guanosine tetraphosphate and guanosine pentaphosphate (collectively referred to as (p)ppGpp) are involved in regulating growth and several different stress responses in bacteria. In recent years, substantial progress has been made in our understanding of the molecular mechanisms of (p)ppGpp metabolism and (p)ppGpp-mediated regulation. In this Review, we summarize these recent insight

The antibiotic fusidic acid (FA) targets elongation factor G (EF-G) and inhibits ribosomal peptide elongation and ribosome recycling, but deeper mechanistic aspects of FA action have remained unknown. Using quench flow and stopped flow experiments in a biochemical system for protein synthesis and taking advantage of separate time scales for inhibited (10 s) and uninhibited (100 ms) elongation cycl

The transition of Escherichia coli from the exponential into the stationary phase of growth induces the stringent response, which is mediated by the rapid accumulation of the alarmone nucleotide (p)ppGpp produced by the enzyme RelA. The significance of RelA's functionality during the transition in the opposite direction, i.e. from the stationary phase into new exponential growth, is less well unde

The mitochondrial genome almost exclusively encodes a handful of transmembrane constituents of the oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS) system. Coordinated expression of these genes ensures the correct stoichiometry of the system's components. Translation initiation in mitochondria is assisted by two general initiation factors mIF2 and mIF3, orthologues of which in bacteria are indispensible for pro

Persisters—a drug-tolerant sub-population in an isogenic bacterial culture—have been featured throughout the last decade due to their important role in recurrent bacterial infections. Numerous investigations detail the mechanisms responsible for the formation of persisters and suggest exciting strategies for their eradication. In this review, we argue that the very term “persistence” is currently

The highly streamlined mitochondrial genome encodes almost exclusively a handful of transmembrane components of the respiratory chain complex. In order to ensure the correct assembly of the respiratory chain, the products of these genes must be produced in the correct stoichiometry and inserted into the membrane, posing a unique challenge to the mitochondrial translational system. In this review w

The bacterial stringent response (SR) is a conserved stress tolerance mechanism that orchestrates physiological alterations to enhance cell survival. This response is mediated by the intracellular accumulation of the alarmones pppGpp and ppGpp, collectively called (p)ppGpp. In Enterococcus faecalis, (p)ppGpp metabolism is carried out by the bifunctional synthetase/hydrolase E. faecalis Rel (RelEf)

Background: The GTPase eEF1A is the eukaryotic factor responsible for the essential, universal function of aminoacyl-tRNA delivery to the ribosome. Surprisingly, eEF1A is not universally present in eukaryotes, being replaced by the paralog EFL independently in multiple lineages. The driving force behind this unusually frequent replacement is poorly understood. Results: Through sequence searching o

Mitochondrial translation is essentially bacteria-like, reflecting the bacterial endosymbiotic ancestry of the eukaryotic organelle. However, unlike the translation system of its bacterial ancestors, mitochondrial translation is limited to just a few mRNAs, mainly coding for components of the respiratory complex. The classical bacterial initiation factors (IFs) IF1, IF2 and IF3 are universal in ba

Tom40 is an integral protein of the mitochondrial outer membrane, which as the central component of the Translocase of the Outer Membrane (TOM) complex forms a channel for protein import. We characterize the diffusion properties of individual Tom40 molecules fused to the photoconvertable fluorescent protein Dendra2 with millisecond temporal resolution. By imaging individual Tom40 molecules in inta

Translation, that is biosynthesis of polypeptides in accordance with information encoded in the genome, is one of the most important processes in the living cell, and it has been in the spotlight of international research for many years. The mechanisms of protein biosynthesis in bacteria and in the eukaryotic cytoplasm are now understood in great detail. However, significantly less is known about

The RelA-mediated stringent response is at the heart of bacterial adaptation to starvation and stress, playing a major role in the bacterial cell cycle and virulence. RelA integrates several environmental cues and synthesizes the alarmone ppGpp, which globally reprograms transcription, translation, and replication. We have developed and implemented novel single-molecule tracking methodology to cha

Sweden is actively seeking to scale up repair activities as part of its strategy to reduce waste, transition to a circular economy, and achieve zero net emissions by 2045. In the last couple of years, several new policies to promote consumer repairs have been adopted or proposed in Sweden. However, very little is known about the socio-cultural factors that shape people's decision to repair their p

Extending the lifetime of products is seen as a key objective for realising the vision of a Circular Economy. One way to increase the lifespan of products is to enable more repair activities. However, consumers encounter a variety of barriers for repairs, prompting public authorities in Europe and the US to adopt or propose policies in support of consumer repairs. Sweden has recently adopted a cir

ObjectivesThe objectives of this study are threefold: first, we separate trust into a two-dimensional concept: ingroup trust and outgroup trust. Second, we apply both types of trust to two dependent variables: nativism and civicness, hypothesizing that respondents with ingroup trust should display higher degrees of nativism and lower degrees of civicness while the opposite should apply to responde

Expert surveys are a valuable, commonly used instrument to measure party positions. Some critics question the cross-national comparability of these measures, though, suggesting that experts may lack a common anchor for fundamental concepts such as economic left–right. Using anchoring vignettes in the 2010 Chapel Hill Expert Survey, we examine the extent of cross-national difference in expert ideol

In this article, we combine advances in both survey research and scaling techniques to estimate a common dimension for political parties across the member states of the European Union. Most previous scholarship has either ignored or assumed cross-national comparability of party placements across a variety of dimensions. The 2010 wave of the Chapel Hill Expert Survey includes anchoring vignettes wh

ObjectiveThis article explores whether there is a systematic variation in conventional and unconventional political participation as a function of in-group versus out-group trust. We postulate that the narrower the moral community is, the more political participation is restricted to conventional activity that is perceived as an obligation, as a political act to be fulfilled, something akin to cit

This article reports on the 2010 Chapel Hill expert surveys (CHES) and introduces the CHES trend file, which contains measures of national party positioning on European integration, ideology and several European Union (EU) and non-EU policies for 1999−2010. We examine the reliability of expert judgments and cross-validate the 2010 CHES data with data from the Comparative Manifesto Project and the