Specialized RNA decay fine-tunes monogenic antigen expression in Trypanosoma brucei Nature Microbiology, Published online: 30 March 2026; doi:10.1038/s41564-026-02289-4To evade the immune system, Trypanosoma brucei relies on a specialized ‘expression site body’. Protein condensates within this nuclear compartment modulate expression of virulence genes via a targeted RNA decay mechanism.

Out Now! Specialized RNA decay fine-tunes monogenic antigen expression in Trypanosoma brucei #MicroSky

Nontuberculous Mycobacteria: The Common Infections You’ve Possibly Never Heard Of Twenty facts about a surprisingly common group of infections.

Latest for @nejm.org, an attempt to bring much-needed attention to these challenging ID cases that for some reason receive so little attention -- NTM. #IDSky

Nontuberculous Mycobacteria: The Common Infections You’ve Possibly Never Heard Of | NEJM Voices voices.nejm.org/doi/full/10....

Structural basis for EtfD-mediated coupling of β-oxidation and the respiratory chain in mycobacteria - The EMBO Journal Targeting β-oxidation has been proposed as a strategy for shortening tuberculosis (TB) treatment by killing non-replicating Mycobacterium tuberculosis within granulomas where the pathogen relies on ho...

Coupling fatty acid β-oxidation with the respiratory chain in mycobacteria:
@courbongautier.bsky.social , @johnrubinstein.bsky.social et al reveal the unusual structure of the electron-shuttling protein EtfD and an assay to study its pharmaceutical targeting
link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Angelika Amon was an inspiration, and I’m deeply grateful for my time in her lab. Please encourage PhD students outside the US who embody her excellence in research & infectious passion for biology to apply. ki.mit.edu/events/prize...

Myself and @immunoah.bsky.social are looking to hire a postdoctoral scientist to build a next-generation high-throughput high-resolution light sheet microscope for imaging entire cleared organs/tissues and to further develop live & fixed tissue clearing methods.

www.nature.com/naturecareer...

Why developers using AI are working longer hours Studies find AI helps developers release more software—while logging longer hours and fixing problems after the code goes live

This feels like a helpful primer for understanding AI in general. It makes programmers more efficient on the front end because they can generate more code. But it makes them less efficient afterwards because it vastly increases the amount of time they spend tweaking and fixing bugs.

Discovery and development of a new oxazolidinone with reduced toxicity for the treatment of tuberculosis - Nature Medicine MK-7762 is a new oxazolidinone antitubercular agent that is structurally similar to linezolid, and demonstrated in vivo efficacy, lesion penetration and limited toxicity compared to linezolid, indicat...

Congrats Brendan, Clif, David, and team! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Estimating the global burden of viable Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection: A mathematical modelling study Alvaro Schwalb and colleagues conducted a mathematical modelling study to estimate the global burden of viable Mycobacterium tuberculosis--that which can cause disease and be transmitted--to help guid...

1/📢 In our new publication, we estimate that in 2022, 134 million people worldwide had a recent Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) infection and were at high risk of progressing to TB disease. Read the full paper in PLOS Medicine (tinyurl.com/mtbinfection). #TBSky

Still 2 weeks left to apply for this position.

Such a fun collaboration with @mel-foulon.bsky.social from the TS lab 🤝-👀 We combined dual RNA-Seq 🧬 and advanced imaging 🔬 to uncover how intracellular compartmentalization drives niche-specific metabolic phenotypes in mycobacteria!!
Fantastic team effort ✨
#Tbsky #microsky

pH-responsive substrate switching in mycobacterial Type VII ESX secretion. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02...

Cartoon representing the mycobacterial oxidative phosphorylation system, including cytochromes, NDH-2, and ATP synthase. Taken from Figure 1 of the article.

#Microbiology

The anti-tuberculosis drug bedaquiline targets the mycobacterial ATP synthase, but how that leads to bacterial death is unclear

Here the authors clarify how bedaquiline works

@jnblab.bsky.social @morwan.me
#TBSky #antibiotics #AMR

http://dlvr.it/TQjZ0W

Some bacterial pathogens play dead to dodge antibiotics. A new test watches them closely—and helps choose drugs that finish the job. (Symbolic image: Adobe Stock)

How can we tell whether an antibiotic eradicates an infection? Researchers from the @biomedizin.unibas.ch, at the @unibas.ch, present an antimicrobial single-cell microscopy-based method that measures antibiotic lethality in individual bacteria.

🔗 doi.org/10.1038/s415...

@natmicrobiol.nature.com

A Divergent Cytochrome c in Malaria Parasites with an Anomalously Low Redox Potential Eukaryotic cytochrome (cyt) c is a highly conserved mitochondrial protein central to cellular respiration, featuring a covalently attached hexacoordinate heme whose redox potential is tuned by axial H...

Happy to share a new preprint exploring the unusual biochemistry of a "weirdly" diverged cytochrome c in malaria parasites that exemplifies a lineage common to many apicomplexan parasites. @uofubiochem.bsky.social @uuhsresearch.bsky.social @uofutahcihd.bsky.social
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

microphone, pop filter, and interface Never Used Podcast Equipment

did it in four words hemmingway

I can’t believe a technical solution to a complex social problem didn’t work. Ah well, nevertheless

Essential redundancies fuel Mycobacterium tuberculosis adaptation to the host Redundancy in biology is, at a glance, counterintuitive because if the function of two gene products completely overlaps then, throughout the course of evolution, one of the genes will likely accumula...

Mycobacterium tuberculosis is an outlier in many ways. One of them is keeping a high degree of functional redundancy despite its obligate pathogen lifestyle. In this review, we reflect on the biological meaning of M. tuberculosis functional redundancies.

journals.plos.org/plospathogen...

1/ A year ago, a 71-year-old Louisiana man died from H5N1, marking the first avian flu death in the US. Now we report in @jem.org that the cause of his death is rogue autoantibodies neutralizing type I IFN (AutoAb-IFN). doi.org/10.1084/jem....

Hey friends. I’m looking for a postdoc interested in studying host-pathogen interactions and immunology of tuberculosis. Send me some good people! We have a great group here! Email me joanne@pitt.edu. Thanks!

If you or someone you know is looking for a post-doctoral position working on mycobacterial envelope biology, please get in touch. I am recruiting here at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario, Canada.

Now properly published at @natcomms.nature.com with few additional experiments incl. demonstration of Daptomycin's ability to depolarise non-growing cells.
See the original preprint-thread for a summary of our findings.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
#microsky

Are you looking for female speakers in CryoEM for seminars and conferences? Are you a woman in CryoEM and not yet on the ‚woman in CryoEM‘ list? Find your speakers and add/update name and affiliation! docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

Hydrophilic metformin and hydrophobic biguanides inhibit mitochondrial complex I by distinct mechanisms - Nature Structural & Molecular Biology He, Teng and Yang et al. report how metformin, the widely used antidiabetic drug, inhibit its target, the respiratory complex I, through a distinct state-dependent, inhibitor trapping mechanism, thus ...

How does the well tolerated anti-hyperglycemic drug #metformin inhibit mitochondrial complex I?
In our new paper, we use structures, MD and kinetics to show that metformin inhibits by a distinct mechanism that more hydrophobic, less well tolerated, biguanides.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The diderm cell envelope is not a stack of layers but a unified scaffold of Inner Membrane–Peptidoglycan–Outer Membrane.
We discuss how tethering the OM to the PG in E. coli preserves integrity — and extend the concept across diderm bacteria.
Curr Opin Microbiol: doi.org/10.1016/j.mi...
#microsky 🔬

Assembly, architecture and functional roles of microbial surface layers - Nature Reviews Microbiology Surface layers (S-layers) are ubiquitous protein assemblies that coat prokaryotic cells, with their functional roles increasingly coming into focus. In this Review, Isbilir and colleagues discuss rece...

Assembly, architecture and functional roles of microbial surface layers www.nature.com/articles/s41... #jcampubs

The panic that kicks in at 2pm every day when I realize it gets dark in two hours

mRNA-based tuberculosis vaccines BNT164a1 and BNT164b1 are immunogenic, well-tolerated and efficacious in rodent models We designed and preclinically tested two mRNA-LNP-based vaccine candidates to protect against tuberculosis (TB). BNT164a1 and BNT164b1 encode the same eight Mycobacterium tuberculosis ( Mtb ) antigens...

I presented our preclinical work on the BNT164 #Tuberculosis candidates. This work is now also available as a preprint!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Still from news coverage of the exploding whale, showing an enormous explosion on a beach

It’s 12 November, so it’s time to mark the 55th anniversary of the exploding whale of Oregon, an attempt to clear a cetacean carcass from a beach which prompted one reporter to say “The blast blasted blubber beyond all believable bounds”

Exciting news! I have two positions open in my lab at the UoManchester: one PDRA and one Research Tech.
Join our team to study evolutionary mycology and help us understand antifungal resistance in fungal pathogens. A fantastic opportunity to join the brilliant Manchester Fungal Infection Group!