Essays That Kill

Single-Cell Analysis: The Differences That Kill

Using single-cell RNA sequencing, Avraham et al. investigate how variability in macrophage response to infection is controlled by variability within the pathogen population. They find that heterogeneous expression of the Salmonella virulence factor PhoP and subsequent cell-wall modifications lead to the bimodal induction of the interferon-response in infected macrophages.

Drugs that Kill Cancer Stem-like Cells

Designing surfaces that kill bacteria on contact.

Poly(4-vinyl-N-alkylpyridinium bromide) was covalently attached to glass slides to create a surface that kills airborne bacteria on contact. The antibacterial properties were assessed by spraying aqueous suspensions of bacterial cells on the surface, followed by air drying and counting the number of cells remaining viable (i.e., capable of growing colonies). Amino glass slides were acylated wit...

COMMENTARY Challenging the Political Assumption That “ Guns Don ’ t Kill People , Crazy People Kill People ! ”

E very time an infamous mass shooting takes place, a storm of rhetoric sweeps across this country with the fury of a wild fire. “Why are we letting these people carry guns?” “Why were they not hospitalized?” “The government needs to crack down on this issue!” What is the government’s response to these cries of concern? Politicians and the media attempt to ease public fears by drawing tenuous co...

To kill or not to kill, that is the question: cytocidal antimalarial drug resistance.

Elucidating mechanisms of antimalarial drug resistance accelerates development of improved diagnostics and the design of new, effective malaria therapy. Recently, several studies have emphasized that chloroquine (CQ) resistance (CQR) can be quantified in two very distinct ways, depending on whether sensitivity to the growth inhibitory effects or parasite-kill effects of the drug are being measu...