As recently indiscriminate abuse of existing antibiotics in both clinical and veterinary treatment leads to proliferation of antibiotic resistance in microbes and poses a dilemma for the future treatment of such bacterial infection, antimicrobial resistance has been considered to be one of the currently leading concerns in global public health, and reported to widely spread and extended to a large variety of microorganisms. In China, as one of the currently worst areas for antibiotics abuse, the annual prescription of antibiotics, including both clinical and veterinary treatment, has approaching 140 gram per person and been roughly estimated to be 10 times higher than that in the United Kingdom, which is considered to be a potential area for the emergence of “Super Bugs”. Based on the integrons surveillance in Guangzhou, China in the past decade, this review thus aimed at summarizing the role of integrons in the perspective of both clinical setting and environment, with the focus on the occurrence and prevalence of class 1, 2 and 3 integrons.

The coordination of single or multiple microorganisms are required for the manufacture of traditional fermented foods, improving the flavour and nutrition of the food materials. However, both the additional economic benefits and safety concerns have been raised by microbiotas in fermented products. Among the fermented products, Lactobacillus and Saccharomyces cerevisiae are one of the stable microbiotas, suggesting their interaction is mediated by coexistence-relevant mechanisms and prevent to be excluded by other microbial species. Thus, aiming to guide the manufacture of fermented foods, this review will focus on interactions of coexistence-relevant mechanisms between Lactobacillus and S. cerevisiae, including metabolites communications, aggregation, and polymicrobial biofilm. Also, the molecular regulatory network of the coexistence-relevant mechanisms is discussed according to omics researches.

Zhenbo Xu , Yuting Luo , Yuzhu Mao , Ruixin Peng , Jinxuan Chen , Thanapop Soteyome , Caiying Bai , Ling Chen , Yi Liang , Jianyu Su , Kan Wang , Junyan Liu and Birthe V Kjellerup . J. Microbiol. Biotechnol. 2019;29:. https://doi.org/10.4014/jmb.1908.08069

Microorganisms mainly exist in the form of biofilm in nature. Biofilm can contaminate food and drinking water system, as well as cause chronic wound infections, thereby posing a potential threat to public health safety. In the last two decades, researchers have made efforts to investigate the genetic contributors control different stages of biofilm development (adherence, initiation, maturation, and dispersal). As an opportunistic pathogen, C. albicans causes severe superficial or systemic infections with high morbidity and mortality under conditions of immune dysfunction. It has been reported that 80% of C. albicans infections are directly or indirectly associated with biofilm formation on host or abiotic surfaces including indwelling medical devices, resulting in high morbidity and mortality. Significantly, the outcome of C. albicans biofilm development includes enhanced invasion, exacerbated inflammatory responses and intrinsic resistance to antimicrobial chemotherapy. Thus, this review aimed at providing a comprehensive overview of the regulatory network controls microbial biofilm development, with C. albicans as a representative, served as reference for therapeutic targets.

Summary: Chemokine receptors are important in the entry of leucocytes into the inflammatory sites of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). CCR7⁺ and CCR7^– memory T cells exert different functions in homing, cytokine production and cytotoxicity. To determine whether differential expression and functions of the CCR7 occur in SLE patients, we examined CCR3, CCR4, CCR5, CCR7 and CCR9 on CD4⁺ and CD8⁺ T cells from normal and SLE subjects. Flow cytometry, real‐time quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reactions and Northern blotting were used to detect the expression of chemokine receptors and cytokines; a chemotaxis assay was used to detect their functions. CD4⁺ T‐cell stimulation with syngeneic CCR7⁺ CD8⁺ CD45RO⁺ T cells and dendritic cells (including transwell chambers) was used to induce cytokine expression. We demonstrated that CCR7 was selectively, frequently and functionally expressed on CD8⁺ (94·8%) but not on CD4⁺ (16·1%) T cells from patients with active SLE, whereas this phenomenon was not seen in normal subjects and in those whose SLE was inactive. CCR7⁺ CD8⁺ CD45RO⁺ memory T cells from patients with active SLE, themselves T helper type 2 (Th2) biased, were inducers of Th2 bias in CD4⁺ T cells in a cell–cell contact manner in vitro, meanwhile, the cells from both normal subjects and those whose SLE was inactive drove CD4⁺ T cells into a regulatory T‐cell‐derived cytokine pattern. Our findings might provide new clues to understanding the functions of CCR7⁺ CD8⁺ CD45RO⁺‘central’ memory T cells in autoimmue diseases (such as SLE). We suggest that in the case of active SLE, CCR7⁺ central memory T cells were able to enter peripheral blood and inflammatory sites from secondary lymphoid organs, were continuously expressing CCR7, and interacted with dendritic cells and functioned as CCR7^–‘effector’ memory T cells, which were described in normal humans.