Posts by Didier Mazel
So happy to be here, and see all my friends, Rocio, Joaquin @lopezigual.bsky.social @joaquinbernal.bsky.social
a quick reminder!
🔬 Call to create junior research groups at the Institut Pasteur
Focus: Infectious diseases, host-microbe interactions, vaccines
Special interest: AI methodologies
📅 Deadline: Feb 9, 2026
👥 2-12 years post-PhD
Apply now 📝 research.pasteur.fr/en/call/crea...
#JobOpportunity #Research
The role of these additional PDFs is not always clear, many copies confer resistance to natural and synthetic anti-deformylases, and what's more, they are already found in integron cassettes! Congratulations to @morgan-lamberioux.bsky.social my student who led this "Back to the Future" project.
We've come full circle! I began my postdoctoral career by identifying the peptidyl deformylase gene. Today, we show that half of bacterial species harbor multiple PDF genes (up to 7, for always a single Met-tRNA transformylase), and while the role of these PDFs ... academic.oup.com/mbe/article/...
Let’s wrap things up: my commentary on the Asgard hypernucleosomes.
Congratulations to all the authors of the paper 🍾!
kwnsfk27.r.eu-west-1.awstrack.me/L0/https:%2F...
Cryo-EM reveals open and closed Asgard chromatin assemblies: Molecular Cell www.cell.com/molecular-ce...
A key observation, explaining the easiness of cassette exchange among vibrios! Another brick from our lab. Kudos @kdebatisse.bsky.social and @celineloot.bsky.social as well as @eloilittner.bsky.social and @epcrocha.bsky.social !
Our new paper is out in @narjournal.bsky.social We show that natural transformation enables bacteria to shuffle integron cassettes, boosting their phenotypic diversity.
academic.oup.com/nar/article/... 1/5
A fresh view on phage specificity, which challenges the traditional view of a narrow host spectrum of phages by unveiling that multihost associations are common across ecosystems kudos at @mmarbout.bsky.social &
@rkoszul.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...
I am so proud to be part of this work, that we initiated Fernando de la Cruz and I, when he was on sabbatical in my lab in 2009... it took so much time for this achievement, 1000 thanks to Raúl Fernández-López! this brought me back to my PhD on cyanobacteria genetics. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Striking and frightening 😒 "They found multiple instances of insecticide-resistance variants in this malaria vector, although most of these weren’t shared with museum specimens collected as recently as 1967, suggesting rapid emergence"
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Congratulations to PhD students Jasmin Ostermayer and Noa Guzzi (co–first authors 🎉), together with Jakub Czarnecki and Alfonso Soler-Bistué, for compressing the diverse, lineage-wide literature on large extrachromosomal replicons into <5000 words and 80 references 😅
For those who love bacterial replicons, The ultimate review, from our lab, signed by the master of their evolution.
@val-meve.bsky.social www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Message received…
A 2-year postdoc position in my lab, under the supervision of P-Alex Kaminski, on Z-DNA phages and the benefit given by ZTGC DNA and the replication machinery, with attempt to create a Z based minireplicon
research.pasteur.fr/en/job/a-two...
A 2 yr postdoc position at the Bacterial
Genome Plasticity Unit of the Institut Pasteur (Paris) led by @amazeld.bsky.social in collaboration with Pierre-Alexandre Kaminski, funded by the French National Research Agency 👇
A great step for archaea : connection between chromosome organization to genome segregation in Archaea
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
congrats to @danielabarilla.bsky.social
Thrilled to share my first PhD paper, out of the Mazel lab! @amazeld.bsky.social
We discovered that accessory peptide deformylases (PDFs) are widespread in bacteria and may provide resistance to natural inhibitors, posing a challenge to future antibiotic strategies
doi.org/10.1101/2025...
Our paper is published back2back with one from @amazeld.bsky.social and @epcrocha.bsky.social labs where @baptistedarracq.bsky.social, @eloilittner.bsky.social and co. show that Sedentary Chromosomal Integrons are biobanks of phage defense systems. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
🤣
Next Tuesday Clement Gilbert and myself will discuss impact and extent of HGT in both prokaryotes and eukaryotes! It will be broadcasted on France Culture (in French)
A spectacular discovery! Sequence-dependent activity and compartmentalization of foreign DNA in a eukaryotic nucleus | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
La directrice de l'Institut Pasteur prévient que "les maladies infectieuses ont toujours représenté un risque, mais elles sont aussi l’une des principales menaces de santé publique à l’avenir."
Longue interview, morceaux choisis ⤵️ @leparisien.fr
1/12 www.leparisien.fr/so...
7/ The actors (II)
This was truly a memorable collaborative experience, involving multiple labs: Eric Le Cam (Gustave Roussy), Ole Skovgaard @oskov.bsky.social (Roskilde University), Abel Garcia-Pino (Université libre de Bruxelles), and the Mazel team @amazeld.bsky.social at Institut Pasteur !