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Scientists have discovered how a unique bacterial enzyme can blunt the body's key weapons in its fight against infection. Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Newcastle University in the U.K. are investigating how infectious microbes can survive attacks by the body's immune system. By better understanding the bacteria's defenses, new strategies can be developed to cure infections that are currently resistant to treatments, the researchers said.

How big you are may be as important as what you look like, at least to immune system cells watching for dangerous bacteria and viruses. The size of pathogenic particles and the density of the molecular information stored on them provides additional danger signals to the body's immune system and helps guide the resulting immune response, suggests cellular and animal research published this week in the journal Cell Reports. Understanding these biophysical cues may help vaccine developers fine tune the signals they already knew were being transmitted by the molecular information presented to the immune system.

A panel of small molecules that inhibit Zika virus infection, including one that stands out as a potent inhibitor of Zika viral entry into relevant human cell types, was discovered by researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Publishing in Cell Reports this week, a team led by Sara Cherry, PhD, an associate professor of microbiology, screened a library of 2,000 bioactive compounds for their ability to block Zika virus infection in three distinct cell types using two strains of the virus.