The lipopeptide daptomycin is used as an antibiotic to treat severe infections with grampositive pathogens, such as methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and drugresistant enterococci. Its precise mechanism of action is incompletely understood, and a specific molecular target has not been identified. Here we show that Ca 2+-daptomycin specifically interacts with undecaprenyl-coupled cell envelope precursors in the presence of the anionic phospholipid phosphatidylglycerol, forming a tripartite complex. We use microbiological and biochemical assays, in combination with fluorescence and optical sectioning microscopy of intact staphylococcal cells and model membrane systems. Binding primarily occurs at the staphylococcal septum and interrupts cell wall biosynthesis. This is followed by delocalisation of components of the peptidoglycan biosynthesis machinery and massive membrane rearrangements, which may account for the pleiotropic cellular events previously reported. The identification of carrier-bound cell wall precursors as specific targets explains the specificity of daptomycin for bacterial cells. Our work reconciles apparently inconsistent previous results, and supports a concise model for the mode of action of daptomycin.

The antimicrobial peptide nisin exerts its activity by a unique dual mechanism. It permeates the cell membranes of Gram-positive bacteria by binding to the cell wall precursor Lipid II and inhibits cell wall synthesis. Binding of nisin to Lipid II induces the formation of large nisin-Lipid II aggregates in the membrane of bacteria as well as in Lipid II-doped model membranes. Mechanistic details of the aggregation process and its impact on membrane permeation are still unresolved. In our experiments, we found that fluorescently labeled nisin bound very inhomogeneously to bacterial membranes as a consequence of the strong aggregation due to Lipid II binding. A correlation between cell membrane damage and nisin aggregation was observed in vivo. To further investigate the aggregation process of Lipid II and nisin, we assessed its dynamics by single-molecule microscopy of fluorescently labeled Lipid II molecules in giant unilamellar vesicles using light-sheet illumination. We observed a continuous reduction of Lipid II mobility due to a steady growth of nisin-Lipid II aggregates as a function of time and nisin concentration. From the measured diffusion constants of Lipid II, we estimated that the largest aggregates contained tens of thousands of Lipid II molecules. Furthermore, we observed that the formation of large nisin-Lipid II aggregates induced vesicle budding in giant unilamellar vesicles. Thus, we propose a membrane permeation mechanism that is dependent on the continuous growth of nisin-Lipid II aggregation and probably involves curvature effects on the membrane.

Super-resolution optical imaging reveals the accumulation of SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid protein at viral replication organelles.

Herpesviruses are large and complex viruses that have a long history of coevolution with their host species. One important factor in the virus–host interaction is the alteration of intracellular morphology during viral replication with critical implications for viral assembly. However, the details of this remodeling event are not well understood, in part because insufficient tools are available to deconstruct this highly heterogeneous process. To provide an accurate and reliable method of investigating the spatiotemporal dynamics of virus-induced changes to cellular architecture, we constructed a dual-fluorescent reporter virus that enabled us to classify four distinct stages in the infection cycle of herpes simplex virus-1 at the single cell level. This timestamping method can accurately track the infection cycle across a wide range of multiplicities of infection. We used high-resolution fluorescence microscopy analysis of cellular structures in live and fixed cells in concert with our reporter virus to generate a detailed and chronological overview of the spatial and temporal reorganization during viral replication. The highly orchestrated and striking relocation of many organelles around the compartments of secondary envelopment during transition from early to late gene expression suggests that the reshaping of these compartments is essential for virus assembly. We furthermore find that accumulation of HSV-1 capsids in the cytoplasm is accompanied by fragmentation of the Golgi apparatus with potential impact on the late steps of viral assembly. We anticipate that in the future similar tools can be systematically applied for the systems-level analysis of intracellular morphology during replication of other viruses.

Observation and tracking of fluorescently labeled molecules and particles in living cells reveals detailed information about intracellular processes on the molecular level. Whereas light microscopic particle observation is usually limited to two-dimensional projections of short trajectory segments, we report here image-based real-time three-dimensional single particle tracking in an active feedback loop with single molecule sensitivity. We tracked particles carrying only 1–3 fluorophores deep inside living tissue with high spatio-temporal resolution. Using this approach, we succeeded to acquire trajectories containing several hundred localizations. We present statistical methods to find significant deviations from random Brownian motion in such trajectories. The analysis allowed us to directly observe transitions in the mobility of ribosomal (r)RNA and Balbiani ring (BR) messenger (m)RNA particles in living Chironomus tentans salivary gland cell nuclei. We found that BR mRNA particles displayed phases of reduced mobility, while rRNA particles showed distinct binding events in and near nucleoli.

No abstract

Super-resolution single-molecule localization microscopy, often referred to as PALM/STORM, works by ensuring that fewer than one fluorophore in a diffraction-limited volume is emitting at any one time, allowing the observer to infer that the emitter is located at the center of the point-spread function. This requires careful control over the incident light intensity in order to control the rate at which fluorophores are switched on; if too many fluorophores are activated, their point-spread functions overlap, which impedes efficient localization. If too few are activated, the imaging time is impractically long. There is therefore considerable recent interest in constructing so-called ‘top-hat’ illumination profiles that provide a uniform illumination over the whole field of view. We present the use of a single commercially-available low-cost refractive beamshaping element that can be retrofitted to almost any existing microscope; the illumination profile created by this element demonstrates a marked improvement in the power efficiency of dSTORM microscopy, as well as a significant reduction in the propensity for reconstruction artifacts, compared to conventional Gaussian illumination.

Many lantibiotics use the membrane bound cell wall precursor Lipid II as a specific target for killing Gram-positive bacteria. Binding of Lipid II usually impedes cell wall biosynthesis, however, some elongated lantibiotics such as nisin, use Lipid II also as a docking molecule for pore formation in bacterial membranes. Although the unique nisin pore formation can be analyzed in Lipid II-doped vesicles, mechanistic details remain elusive. We used optical sectioning microscopy to directly visualize the interaction of fluorescently labeled nisin with membranes of giant unilamellar vesicles containing Lipid II and its various bactoprenol precursors. We quantitatively analyzed the binding and permeation capacity of nisin when applied at nanomolar concentrations. Specific interactions with Lipid I, Lipid II and bactoprenol-diphosphate (C55-PP), but not bactoprenol-phosphate (C55-P), resulted in the formation of large molecular aggregates. For Lipid II, we demonstrated the presence of both nisin and Lipid II in these aggregates. Membrane permeation induced by nisin was observed in the presence of Lipid I and Lipid II, but not in the presence of C55-PP. Notably, the size of the C55-PP-nisin aggregates was significantly smaller than that of the aggregates formed with Lipid I and Lipid II. We conclude that the membrane permeation capacity of nisin is determined by the size of the bactoprenol-containing aggregates in the membrane. Notably, transmitted light images indicated that the formation of large aggregates led to a pinch-off of small vesicles, a mechanism, which probably limits the growth of aggregates and induces membrane leakage.