Publication highlights

This reports the first identification, in any species, of the microbiome as a key mediator of developmental stress-induced longevity. We found that mild oxidative stress during development robustly increases lifespan via the selective elimination of Acetobacter from the microbiome. This study also highlights that targeted remodelling of the early-life microbiome can provide an efficient strategy for extending healthspan and lifespan.

This paper provided the first evidence that stem cells in the adult mouse hippocampus are heterogeneous in their behaviour, with most stem cells differentiating and leaving the niche after they have become active but a small fraction returning to a shallow state of quiescence. These “resting cells” have an essential role in the long-term maintenance of an active stem cell pool.

Improving chemotherapies against intracellular pathogens requires an understanding of how antibiotic distribution within infected cells affects efficacy. In this work, we developed an approach to visualise antibiotics in human macrophages infected with the tubercle bacillus. We showed that the antitubercular (anti-TB) drug bedaquiline accumulated in host lipid droplets, which seemed to act as an antibiotic reservoir that could be transferred to bacteria during host lipid consumption. Indeed, alterations in host lipid droplet content affected the anti-TB activity of bedaquiline against intracellular bacilli.

This paper established that intestinal epithelial cells use BTNL/Btnl molecules to select for and regulate tissue-specific gamma delta T cell compartments. It established a biological mechanism by which epithelial cells communicate with local T cells at steady-state (“normality sensing”). Following on from our prototypic discovery of such a mechanism in mouse skin, the work established conservation of the process across tissues as well as across species. The system is unperturbed by microbial colonisation.

This paper shows how temporal information in the zebrafish embryo is transformed into a spatial pattern. We demonstrate how the Nodal signalling gradient is formed in the early zebrafish embryo and show that its size and shape are determined by a temporal signal activation window created by a microRNA-mediated delay in the translation of Lefty, a Nodal antagonist. This paper was important as it not only challenged the long-held view in the field that the Nodal gradient was formed by a reaction–diffusion mechanism, but highlighted the importance of signalling duration in gradient formation.

This paper provides strong evidence that “atypical” B cells are short-lived activated B cells, and are probably the result of chronic stimulation and not the cause of chronic malaria. This questions the commonly held view that atypical B cells are evidence of an aberrant or defective response in malaria.

Here we describe our discovery that preservation of specific cellular geometry across a range of cell sizes is essential for correct division site positioning and survival, demonstrating the organismal-level function for scaling.

The priming signals in sterile chronic inflammatory diseases remained elusive. Moreover, NETs were mostly thought to serve as an antimicrobial defence mechanism. This work showed that NETs are proinflammatory and provide the priming signals for inflammation in atherosclerosis. It has important implications for our understanding of the mechanisms driving many inflammatory conditions and the important amplification mechanisms involving neutrophil-macrophage crosstalk.

The paper was a broad collaboration with a team from one of our Partner Institutions and others, and illustrates how our learning from insights in the PKC field, here concerning kinase nucleotide pocket occupation, can impact our understanding of the broader kinome. Specifically the work demonstrates that the pseudokinase HER3 which is upregulated in cancer and drug resistance settings, undergoes essential nucleotide pocket occupation dependent changes in conformation to drive HER2 partner dependent signalling. Of importance clinically, the paper offers a route to small molecule-based intervention and also raises questions of inhibitor liability associated with HER3.

We demonstrated aberrant intron retention in ALS-causing mutations. This is the first description of abnormal intron retention in ALS. The most significantly retained intron in is the SFPQ transcript, which 'drags' SFPQ protein out of the nucleus. SFPQ nuclear loss is a new universal molecular hallmark of ALS across iPSC, mouse models and in sporadic ALS post-mortem tissue.

We report a new and powerful metabolic anti-stress mechanism, ‘Lysine harvesting’, that protects microbial cells in stress situations. We noticed that extracellular lysine is taken up to reach concentrations up to 100x higher than those required for growth. Uptake is dependent on the polyamine pathway, connected via promiscuous metabolic reactions, and triggers a reprogramming of redox metabolism: NADPH is channelled into glutathione metabolism, leading to a large increase in glutathione, lower levels of reactive oxygen species and increased oxidant tolerance. Therefore, nutrient uptake occurs not only to enable cell growth, but allows cells to reconfigure their metabolism to preventatively mount stress protection.

Conventional dendritic cells (cDCs) originate from a committed precursor in bone marrow (BM) that exits via the blood as a pre-cDC to seed tissues with the cDC1 and cDC2 subsets. We used a multi-colour genetic tracing mouse model to analyse colonisation of tissues by pre-cDC. We found that cDCs in tissues comprise clones mostly composed of a single cDC subset and that ‘flu infection causes an efflux of pre-cDCs from BM and influx into the lungs. The latter finding indicates that cDCpoiesis is responsive to emergency need, which suggests previously undiscovered communication between tissues and cDC progenitors in BM.

In this paper we showed that cDC1 recruitment and infiltration in several mouse tumour models depends on the chemokines CCL5 and XCL1 produced by NK cells. In human cancers, CCL5/XCL chemokine transcripts correlate with gene signatures for NK cells and cDC1 and predict overall survival in melanoma, head and neck cancer, breast cancer and lung adenocarcinoma. Therefore, our data uncovered a mechanism for cDC1 recruitment into tumours that is translatable to humans and cancer patient survival.