Excited to share our new paper out today in @science.org 🎉
We show that HGT via natural competence drives diversification of chromosomal integrons in V. cholerae 🤩
Below a 🧵 on key findings incl. background on natural competence in V. cholerae 1/
#microsky #phagesky
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Latest from the lab!
Between clinical S. aureus, most gene transfer mechanisms are blocked, yet lateral transduction remains highly efficient.
Restriction modification-defective strains act as gateways for horizontal gene transfer, enabling DNA flow across populations. rdcu.be/fbNQK
Out in @natcomms.nature.com! We show that while most MGEs are blocked by RM systems🛡️, the chromosome is still mobile! 🧬And that cells with defective systems act as "gateways" for HGT.
Can you find the hidden Easter egg🐇🥚? Hint: There's a nod to my 🇲🇽 heritage in one of the figures!
rdcu.be/fbUC8
New paper from Hugh Cottingham, @katholt.bsky.social , @yekwah.bsky.social @nenadmacesic.bsky.social and co.
Great to see the speed/accuracy tradeoff info here, I don't think I've seen it laid out like this before.
www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour...
🔊 Looking for a Research Assistant in Bacterial Evolution to join my lab 🦠
🥼Main duties: Research (AMR + microbiome) + lab assistance.
⏲️ Post duration: 30 months
🗓️ Closing date for applications: 20th April 2026
💰 Salary: ~£35k
Details and how to apply: tinyurl.com/2a3v66y7
Please share!
Two models for the nature of pleiotropy in adaptation. Left: Schematic of the environmental structure in this study. Environments can be mapped onto a multidimensional environment space characterized by chemical and physical compositions. The large green circle represents an environment where adaptive mutants evolved, and the large pink circle is a distant environment. Around each base, a set of identical environmental perturbations (arrows) is applied, generating clusters of similar environments around distinct base environments. Top right: Schematic of fitnotype map for adaptive mutants near their home base environment. By measuring fitness in each of the green environments, one can infer how many fitnotypes matter for this set of mutants in their home environment. Here, only four of the possible 8 fitnotypes matter. Bottom right: When the mutants are moved to the distant base environment, and their fitness is measured in all pink environments (base and perturbations), there are two possibilities. Either more fitnotypes become important and the space appears higher-dimensional (left, pleiotropic expansion), or the set of fitnotypes that matters remains low-dimensional, but shifts (right, pleiotropic shift).
Predicting the effect of a #mutation on #fitness is hard. @oliviamghosh.bsky.social @petrovadmitri.bsky.social &co use fitness effects of adaptive yeast mutants to show that underlying genotype-phenotype-fitness maps are low-dimensional but context-dependent @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4dLy2Ez
We are pleased to share our last article rdcu.be/fabhM. It offers the most comprehensive analysis so far of Ab+non-Ab resistance genes in human gut microbiome, using an Indigenous population (low industrialization, chronic Hg exposure from gold mining) 6/6👇
New preprint alert!!! 🚀🤓 We are very happy to finally share this with the world — the result of seven years of work and a new tool to study integrons and discover new functions encoded in these bacterial platforms.
If you want to know more, here is a thread 🧵
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Here is it! Super new science from us on horizontal gene transfer & bact defense systems! Liyana OW YONG discovered the first-of-its-kind defense factor AbjA that triggers 'abortive conjugation' as a defense mechanism, by targeting the T4SS! How neat?! #MicroSky 1/7
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Phd Position alert 🚨
Join our project ASTRAfun (Adaptation and Starship Traffic in Root-Associated fungi), in which we will use computational models to unveil the hidden dynamics of fungal evolution.
It’s not going to be just regular fun. It’s going to ASTRAfun. 🤓
www.uu.nl/en/organisat...
Here’s the latest preprint from my work on evolved resistance to Type VI Secretion system (T6SS) weaponry, funded by a @wellcometrust.bsky.social Sir Henry Wellcome Fellowship. So happy to see this out!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Am stoked and thrilled that our latest paper is now out. A longitudinal study of invasive E. coli from children in the Netherlands over 50 years
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Horizontal gene transfer is often depicted as a process distributing pre-existing functions to novel genetic backgrounds. Yet HGT can also increase the rate of functional innovation after transfer. Here's a brief review on the topic: ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v... #evosky #microsky
In the lab, antibiotics can make integrated viruses (prophages) pop out of bacterial genomes. In this (short!) preprint, we asked a simple question: how much does this happen outside the lab, in the human gut?
TLDR: Not much overall, in specific bacterial species.
🧵
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Check out the latest version of our paper — peer-reviewed, polished, and published. Hope you like it!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Out Now! Plasmids promote antimicrobial resistance through insertion sequence-mediated gene inactivation #MicroSky
Muchas gracias, Rafa!! 😁😁
Thanks, David!!! 😊😁
Thank you, Paula!! 🥰
Glad to see our latest work out in Nature Microbiology!!
Extremely grateful to everyone involved in the project.
Check it out!! 👇🏻👇🏻
In this motion we give an overview of the results!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbOY...
Identifican un nuevo mecanismo utilizado por plásmidos para acelerar la aparición de resistencia a los antibióticos.
@sanmillan.bsky.social @uam.es @csic.es
Más info en nuestra web: https://f.mtr.cool/pmappovlkt
Artículo en: https://f.mtr.cool/yvxpgzaraz
@natureportfolio.nature.com
@erc.europa.eu
New preprint out on bioRxiv!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Can conjugative plasmids be used to control plasmid and pathogen spread?
Follow me down the rabbit hole that led to this story 🧵
New preprint on the limits of detecting higher-order interactions in microbial communities.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
We find that the dominance of additive and pairwise interactions on community function may not reflect biological simplicity, but fundamental limits of statistical detection.
Excited to share our latest work! 📝
We measured the fitness effect of 136 AMR genes and found that many are neutral or even beneficial without selection. 🤯🧬
Oxygen availability can flip their fitness and our stochastic model indicates that oxygen fluctuations help maintain them.
Learn more 👇🏼
New paper showing that bacteria with more genes for cooperation can live in a broader range of habitats and that genes for cooperation are more more likely to be in the accessory genome www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... @lauriebelch.bsky.social
🧵 1/10 New paper out in @natmicrobiol.nature.com from my postdoc at @mib-wur.bsky.social! 🎉
How eukaryote-like was the archaeal ancestor of eukaryotes? Sequence searches alone can't tell us — so we used protein structure prediction to look deeper. 🧬
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
In case you missed it: our review titled "Spatial structure: shaping the ecology and evolution of microbial communities" is out! 🚨
Let me hit you with some highlights on why spatial structure matters. (and why you should care!)
Sharing is appreciated 🙏 🧵👇
doi.org/10.1093/fems...
Last year, we proposed a model of plasmid evolution via fusion and fragmentation (via mge mediated recombination) generating mosaics, by studying historical isolates. Excited to see a MASSIVE paper from @jrpenades.bsky.social , @epcrocha.bsky.social expanding on this
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
