We are recruiting postdocs to work on antimicrobial resistance and bacterial cell envelope biology. PLEASE SHARE.

Thank you!

This work is also a great reflection of a fun collaboration with @katehummels.bsky.social whose help with protein purification was critical for in vitro DNA binding assays!

While our work was ongoing, another group independently made the same discovery: academic.oup.com/nar/article/.... DdaA also regulates expression of phage defense genes, and Song et al. focused on this aspect of DdaA function while our group focused on its function upon DNA uptake by type IV pili

Excitingly, we found that DNA uptake during natural transformation stimulates the DNA repair pathway through this transcriptional activator (DdaA) - since DNA enters the cell as ssDNA, DdaA can sense this ssDNA to activate expression of crucial DNA repair pathway genes including recA

A WYL transcriptional regulator activates the DNA damage response pathway in Acinetobacter species Abstract. The ability to sense DNA damage and activate DNA damage response pathways is critical for repairing DNA damage in all domains of life. The most w

I am pleased to share my lab’s latest publication - Acinetobacter species lack canonical DNA repair pathway activation mechanisms, and we discovered a conserved transcriptional activator that fills this role: academic.oup.com/nar/article/...

New paper alert! Outstanding work by PhD candidate Nathan Roberge, great collab with the Ellison and Maxwell labs. #Pseudomonas #phage DMS3 encodes Aqs1, an inhibitor of #T4P assembly ATPase PilB, but how it binds and leads to loss of function was unknown. @mcmasteriidr.bsky.social

🧵 Proud to present a tour de force by postdoc @gregbwhitfield.bsky.social solving the mystery of how bacterial Tad pili can extend and retract with a single motor ATPase. Great collaboration with Lynne Howell, @dr-lori-burrows.bsky.social, @ianyyen.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Fluorescence micrograph. Emma Miller and Alex Merz, unpublished.

🧵 After years out of the field, I and my lab are again working on bacterial type IV pili. We have just posted our first preprints, and I'm excited to share what we have discovered.

This shows Neisseria gonorrheae bacteria infecting a human epithelical cell. Here, you can see the pili in red.

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Twitching motility suppressors reveal a role for FimX in type IV pilus extension dynamics Author summary Type IV pili enable Pseudomonas aeruginosa to attach to surfaces, move (twitch), and form biofilms. Pilus extension is powered by the motor protein PilB, which is regulated by other fac...

New paper alert! We used our fav technique, genetic suppression, to understand how FimX controls function of the T4P PilB motor ATPase in Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Great collab with the Ellison lab at U Georgia who helped with some fancy microscopy to capture pilus dynamics! doi.org/10.1371/jour...

FimX regulates type IV pilus localization via the Pil-Chp chemosensory system in Acinetobacter baylyi Type IV pili (T4P) are widespread dynamic appendages required for diverse prokaryotic behaviors including twitching motility, biofilm formation, and DNA uptake leading to natural transformation. Altho...

Excited to share the newest preprint from the lab for my first post! Driven by @tayellisonwrites.bsky.social and @ianyyen.bsky.social with Lynne Howell we show the protein FimX has diverged in function away from regulating pilus extension to instead regulate pilus localization in A. baylyi

Old 😂😂 feels like it was only a couple years ago

10 years?! 😱