Prolyl hydroxylation is required for maturation and secretion of Zika virus non-structural protein 1 - Nature

AcknowledgementsWe thank Eric Freed, Klaus Strebel, Paul Spearman, Gregory Melikian, John Guatelli, Tom Smithgall, Michael Burkrinsky, Andreas Baur, and Walther Mothers for critical reading and discussion. We thank Christina Ochsenbauer, Eric Freed, Yuntao Wu, Henrich Gottlinger, Kenzo Tokunaga, Axel Ullrich, David Sabatini, Michael Davidson, Gia Voeltz, Amy Palmer, Paul Luzio, Feng Zhang, Brett Stringer, Bob Weinberg, Simon Davis, and BEI resources for reagents. The authors acknowledge the support of the UIC Flow Cytometry Core Facility for flow cytometry instrumentation, technical expertise, and data analysis assistance. We thank the core staff for their valuable contributions to this work. FundingY. H. Z. is supported by the National Institutes of Health (AI145504, AI205746). Next-generation sequencing bioinformatics was performed by the UIC Research Informatics Core, supported in part by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) through grant UL1TR002003.

Picture of China's space station rice experiment. Photo: China Central TelevisionChina's space station has welcomed a new "autumn harvest," with astronauts collecting, sowing and storing a new batch of rice experiment samples last week, marking further progress in research on rice cultivation in space, CCTV News reported on Sunday. The research project, which focuses on the molecular mechanisms regulating multigenerational genetic stability and environmental adaptability of rice in space, is progressing smoothly, according to the media report. The latest experiment is expected to grow two generations of rice in orbit for the first time, helping researchers understand the mechanisms through which prolonged exposure to microgravity affects the genetic stability of rice. In addition to the rice experiment, the astronauts conducted touch-interaction tests with Xiaohang, their robotic companion aboard the space station. The tests collected data on the robot's movements in response to  different types of physical contact, providing data to improve its motion planning for future operations in orbit.

AcknowledgementsWe thank Julia Nelson, Animal Disease Research and Diagnostic Laboratory, South Dakota for the help with 16S sequencing, and Metabolon, Inc. for the untargeted metabolomics. Metagenome data analysis for this project was performed using the OU Supercomputing Center for Education & Research (OSCER) at the University of Oklahoma (OU). We thank Suryang Kwak and Joohee Choi for their help in providing further details on their dataset:54. FundingThis project has received funding from the United States National Institutes of Health (contract no: G- 202306-70697), Walter R. Sitlington Endowment (grant no: 5- 153200), European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant no. 866028) and from the UK Medical Research Council (project no. MC_UU_00025/11).

We’re sharing this article early to provide faster access to peer-reviewed, accepted research. It is citable and carries a permanent DOI. This version is subject to further edits and will be replaced automatically by the final Version of Record. All legal disclaimers apply. AbstractCryptococcus neoformans and Cryptococcus gattii are fungal pathogens that cause life-threatening infections, including cryptococcal meningitis. A distinctive feature of the cryptococcal cell wall is the extensive deacetylation of chitin to chitosan, a modification that is essential for virulence but whose structural role in cell-wall organization remains poorly understood. Here, we analyze the cell walls of wild-type strains of both species and their avirulent chitosan-deficient mutants, which serve as vaccine candidates. Loss of chitosan disrupted cell morphology and altered cell-wall ultrastructure, with more pronounced defects in C. neoformans. Solid-state NMR reveals that aggregated α-(1→3)-glucans form the principal rigid domain of the cell wall in both species and are closely associated with chitin microfibrils, whereas surrounding β-glucans and mannoproteins constitute a more dynamic matrix.