Thus, this study indicates S. angustifolium is better adapted in comparison to S. fallax for drier and warmer conditions.The Picornaviridae are a diverse family of positive-strand RNA viruses that includes numerous human and veterinary pathogens1. Among these, hepatitis A virus (HAV), a common cause of acute hepatitis in humans, is unique in that it is hepatotropic and is released from hepatocytes without lysis in small vesicles that resemble exosomes2,3. These quasi-enveloped virions are infectious and are the only form of virus that can be detected in the blood during acute infection2. By contrast, non-enveloped naked virions are shed in faeces and stripped of membranes by bile salts during passage through the bile ducts to the gut4. How these two distinct types of infectious hepatoviruses enter cells to initiate infection is unclear. Here, we describe a genome-wide forward screen that shows that glucosylceramide synthase and other components of the ganglioside synthetic pathway are crucial host factors that are required for cellular entry by hepatoviruses. We show that gangliosides-preferentially disialogangliosides-function as essential endolysosome receptors that are required for infection by both naked and quasi-enveloped virions. In the absence of gangliosides, both virion types are efficiently internalized through endocytosis, but capsids fail to uncoat and accumulate within LAMP1+ endolysosomes. Gangliosides relieve this block, binding to the capsid at low pH and facilitating a late step in entry involving uncoating and delivery of the RNA genome to the cytoplasm. These results reveal an atypical cellular entry pathway for hepatoviruses that is unique among picornaviruses.Despite longstanding appreciation of gene expression heterogeneity in isogenic bacterial populations, affordable and scalable technologies for studying single bacterial cells have been limited. Although single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) has revolutionized studies of transcriptional heterogeneity in diverse eukaryotic systems1-13, the application of scRNA-seq to prokaryotes has been hindered by their extremely low mRNA abundance14-16, lack of mRNA polyadenylation and thick cell walls17. Here, we present prokaryotic expression profiling by tagging RNA in situ and sequencing (PETRI-seq)-a low-cost, high-throughput prokaryotic scRNA-seq pipeline that overcomes these technical obstacles. PETRI-seq uses in situ combinatorial indexing11,12,18 to barcode transcripts from tens of thousands of cells in a single experiment. PETRI-seq captures single-cell transcriptomes of Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria with high purity and low bias, with median capture rates of more than 200 mRNAs per cell for exponentially growing Escherichia coli. These characteristics enable robust discrimination of cell states corresponding to different phases of growth. When applied to wild-type Staphylococcus aureus, PETRI-seq revealed a rare subpopulation of cells undergoing prophage induction. We anticipate that PETRI-seq will have broad utility in defining single-cell states and their dynamics in complex microbial communities.Brown algae are important players in the global carbon cycle by fixing carbon dioxide into 1 Gt of biomass annually, yet the fate of fucoidan-their major cell wall polysaccharide-remains poorly understood. Microbial degradation of fucoidans is slower than that of other polysaccharides, suggesting that fucoidans are more recalcitrant and may sequester carbon in the ocean. This may be due to the complex, branched and highly sulfated structure of fucoidans, which also varies among species of brown algae. Here, we show that ‘Lentimonas’ sp. CC4, belonging to the Verrucomicrobia, acquired a remarkably complex machinery for the degradation of six different fucoidans. The strain accumulated 284 putative fucoidanases, including glycoside hydrolases, sulfatases and carbohydrate esterases, which are primarily located on a 0.89-megabase pair plasmid. Proteomics reveals that these enzymes assemble into substrate-specific pathways requiring about 100 enzymes per fucoidan from different species of brown algae. These enzymes depolymerize fucoidan into fucose, which is metabolized in a proteome-costly bacterial microcompartment that spatially constrains the metabolism of the toxic intermediate lactaldehyde. Marine metagenomes and microbial genomes show that Verrucomicrobia including ‘Lentimonas’ are abundant and highly specialized degraders of fucoidans and other complex polysaccharides. Overall, the complexity of the pathways underscores why fucoidans are probably recalcitrant and more slowly degraded, since only highly specialized organisms can effectively degrade them in the ocean.The study of postsynaptic excitation to inhibition (E/I ratio) imbalances in human brain diseases, is a highly relevant functional measurement poorly investigated due to postmortem degradation of synaptic receptors. We show that near-simultaneous recording of microtransplanted synaptic receptors after simulated morgue conditions allows the determination of the postsynaptic E/I ratio for at least 120 h after death, expanding the availability and use of human diseased tissue stored in brain banks.Background In clinical practice, carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) and carbohydrate antigen (CA) 19-9 are the most common markers measured before and after surgery for gastric cancer (GC). However, which pre- or post-operative combined tumour markers (CEA and CA19-9) have more prognostic value remains unclear. Methods Consecutive patients undergoing a resection for GC at the Fujian Medical University Union Hospital were included as a discovery database between January 2011 and December 2014. TMP269 The prognostic impact of pre- and post-operative tumour markers was evaluated using Kaplan-Meier log-rank survival analysis and multivariable Cox regression analysis. The results were then externally validated. Results A total of 735 and 400 patients were identified in the discovery cohort and in the validation cohort, respectively. Overall survival rates decreased in a stepwise manner in association with the number of pre- and post-operative positive tumour markers (both P less then 0.001). Multivariable analysis revealed that the number of pre-operative positive tumour markers was an independent prognostic factor (P less then 0.