Every year bacteria kill more than a million people worldwide through infections that no longer respond to antibiotics. In many cases, why those bacteria are so hard to stop comes down to their uniquely powerful structure.

On the surfaces of many disease-causing bacteria, fibers thousands of times thinner than a human hair bristle, acting like biological grappling hooks. These fibers help bacteria latch onto body tissue, build biofilms, which are sticky bacterial communities that antibiotics struggle to penetrate, and reel in fragments of DNA from their environment, including genes that help them resist drugs.

Now, scientists have solved a key mystery about how those hooks work. A new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reveals the molecular mechanism behind one of the most powerful mechanical actions in all of biology, the reeling in of tiny surface fibers called type IV pili.

A paper published in the journal Biomarker Research by a cross-university team led by Queen Mary University of London researchers validates the use of a noninvasive brush biopsy test that can detect oral cancer within one hour.

This test could revolutionize oral cancer detection and prevent more than 90% of unnecessary harmful scalpel biopsy procedures. These can be very painful, lead to infection and, in some areas of the mouth, such as the gum, are hard to carry out and may damage the underlying tooth and bone structure.

Oral cancer is a growing global killer. According to Global Burden of Disease data, lip and oral cancer are among the world’s most rapidly increasing causes of early death. More than 10,000 people in the UK were diagnosed with oral cancer last year, according to the charity Mouth Cancer, and 3,637 people died. Worldwide, it affects 650,000 people a year. Risk factors include tobacco use and smoking, alcohol, infection with the HPV virus, and sun damage. Unfortunately, more than half (53%) of all mouth cancers are diagnosed in stage IV, when the cancer is at its most advanced.

Using CHARLS data from 2011 to 2020, researchers found that sleep duration and self-reported sleep quality were associated with Parkinson’s disease risk in middle-aged and older Chinese adults. Short sleep was linked to higher PD risk, while age-specific patterns suggested a linear association in adults aged ≤60 years and a U-shaped relationship in those aged 60 years.

Autophagy is the process by which cells remove damaged proteins, recycle worn-out organelles (e.g., mitochondria), clear cellular waste and provide nutrients during stress. Autophagy is essential for muscles because they are constantly under mechanical stress. If autophagy is too low, damaged proteins accumulate and muscle gradually weakens. If it is too high, muscle tissue can begin breaking itself down.

Disruption of autophagy has been implicated in a wide range of muscle disorders, and abnormal muscle autophagy is frequently observed in neurogenic diseases. However, the neuronal signaling pathways that control this process had previously remained largely unknown.

Now, researchers led by Prof. Zhang Hong from the Institute of Biophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have identified two parallel neuronal circuits that regulate the autophagy-lysosome pathway in the body wall muscle of Caenorhabditis elegans, a tiny nematode worm. Their research has uncovered a previously unknown mechanism by which the worm’s nervous system maintains muscle homeostasis.