In an article published in the journal “Viruses”, Nathalie Chazal, in collaboration with Roger Miller, discusses the leading role played by virology, and more particularly retrovirology, in the major breakthroughs in molecular biology and oncology, from its origin to the puzzling discovery of antisense genes and proteins in HTLV-1 and HIV-1.

Laurent Kremer's team, in collaboration with Graham Hatfull (Pittsbrugh, USA), a specialist in mycobacteriophages, has developed an animal model using zebrafish to test the efficacy of antibacterial treatments on Mycobacterium abscessus, a mycobacterium very similar to those responsible for tuberculosis or leprosy.

Interferons are our first line of defense against invading viruses. However, viruses encode effector proteins that can modulate human interferon responses.

Alarmins are extracellular mediators known to amplify the host inflammatory response, notably upon pathogenic challenge. The intracellular functions of alarmins in this context are, however, poorly studied.

This study, about imaging the translation of mRNA into proteins in the developing Drosophila embryo, is a federative work involving the three biology laboratories located on the Montpellier CNRS site, Route de Mende.

In this article published in Journal of Virology, the “interferon and antiviral restriction” team led by Caroline Goujon, studied the establishment and the role of the interferon response in the control of SARS-CoV-2 replication in human epithelial pulmonary cells, which are the main targets for SARS-CoV-2.

Raphaël GAUDIN publishes an article in Science Advances (IF=13.1): Rab7-harboring vesicles are carriers of the transferrin receptor through the biosynthetic secretory pathway (Deffieu et al, 2021).
How a neosynthesized protein traffics to its final destination within a cell is a challenging question to address because of the numerous intracellular trafficking routes that co-exist in the cytoplasme.

In this review published in Trends in Cell Biology (IF = 16), the authors Raphael Gaudin (IRIM, CNRS – University of Montpellier) and Jacky Goetz (INSERM – University of Strasbourg) describe how cell biologists and virologists developed relevant in vivo models to study the molecular mechanisms governing viral dissemination.

In this article, Daussy et al show that autophagy, induced by the HIV-1 envelope glycoproteins (Env), leads to an excessive production of reactive oxygen species in CD4 + T cells, responsible for their death by apoptosis. Moreover, peroxisomes, organelles involved in the control of oxidative stress, are selectively targeted by Env-mediated autophagy.

An interdisciplinary work led by the team of Laura Picas in collaboration with Adrian Carretero-Genevrier’s team (Institue of Electronics and Systems) published in ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces (IF = 8.76).

In a work published in PNAS (IF=9.35), the Matteo Bonazzi’s team “Cell Biology of Bacterial Infections” unveils the existence of new C. burnetii effector proteins with eukaryotic-like features (EUGENs).

The discrimination between the nodulation factor (friend) and chitin (foe) by legumes is ensured by a family of receptors called LysM-RLK.