Structural basis for DNA processing and membrane translocation by ComEC in natural transformation Natural transformation is one of the major pathways of horizontal gene transfer in bacteria, enabling the acquisition of extracellular DNA and its integration into the host genome. ComEC is a membrane...

ComEC structure is out!! 😍
Congratulations to the authors! That’s not an easy one. We have been trying for years to get that structure…
We failed and gave up.

Finally published. Many thanks to a wonderful collaborative team and scientific platforms!!! And thanks to editors and reviewers for enthusiasm and a great review.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Open Positions -

Open postdoc position in my lab on HGT and interbacterial competition. We seek candidates with a PhD in microbiology (or related fields)+ strong 1st-author publications.
Curious, highly motivated, and dedicated team players ready to contribute fully are encouraged to apply. Details: tiny.cc/cz01101

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

An Asgard archaeon from a modern analog of ancient microbial mats (Current Biology)

Beautiful microscopy of an Asgard archaeon, in the same family as Lokiarchaea, in syntrophy with a sulfate-reducing bacteria

Very very nice paper we saw in preprint form:
www.cell.com/current-biol...

How diverse is bacterial immunity ?

We report in @science.org how language models allowed us to predict 2.4M antiphage proteins spanning >23K novel potential systems.
👏 @emordret.bsky.social, @alexhv.bsky.social & al doi.org/10.1126/scie...

Explore them here defensefinder.mdmlab.fr/wiki/refseq_...

We've been we've been working on this for quite a while now (hopefully published soon). Grateful to @proftracypalmer.bsky.social for concinving me & @lislowe.bsky.social that mycobacteria produce inter-bacterial toxins. Team science, led by @sambenedict5.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Convergent extreme reductive evolution in ancient planthopper symbioses - Nature Communications Symbiotic bacteria can have exceedingly small genomes. This study finds that ancient bacterial symbionts of planthoppers have repeatedly evolved the smallest known genomes, losing most biosynthetic fu...

Madness. A bacterium with a 10kb genome, lost replication initiation, translation.., relies on symbiotic host.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Image of the cover of the 1st volume of ISME Host Microbe a new official journal of the International Society for Microbial Ecology. Cover images shows a plant stomata with bacteria around and entering.

Excited to announce our new journal from @isme-microbes.bsky.social ISME Host Microbe is live and now accepting submissions. Look forward to receiving your papers! #Microsky 🧫 🦠

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...

Top: Diagram showing Type VI Secretion System–mediated interbacterial antagonism integrated with a computational pipeline used to identify and classify previously uncharacterized antibacterial effector families. Created in BioRender. Bayer-Santos, E. (2026). Bottom left: E. coli toxicity assay. Serial dilutions of E. coli carrying pBRA and pEXT22 constructs. Bottom right: Time-lapse microscopy of E. coli carrying pBRA SP-Tox-Act1 grown on repressed or induced conditions. Scale bar: 5 µm. Timestamps in hours and minutes.

During microbial warfare, #bacteria deploy toxins to inhibit or kill competitors. @ebayersantos.bsky.social &co reveal lipid-targeting #antibacterial #toxins & novel toxin domains within #Salmonella T6SS effectors, broadening known toxin enzymatic diversity @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/40zTyEP

Evolutionary constraints on RNA polymerase gene positioning in the genome of fast-growing bacteria Abstract. How gene order along chromosomes affects cellular homeostasis and genome evolution remains poorly understood. Bacterial chromosomes are organized

Just published! at @narjournal.bsky.social . A new example of how gene order in bacterial genomes impacts cell physiology. Inthis episode we messed up with RNA polymerase genes! academic.oup.com/nar/article/...

Very happy that our work on the T6SS ADP-ribosylcyclase toxin made the Cover at JBC @asbmb.bsky.social y.social ! Congratulations Julius @jmartinkus.bsky.social for designing this Cover !
@dukasju.bsky.social @laurentterradot.bsky.social

Workflow of CURE. All students use the sequence data that they generated from their individual specimens to execute steps 1–3. Students then break up into small groups (two to three students) to execute independent analyses (4) and generate products to contribute to the final class poster presented at the Purchase College Natural and Social Science Symposium (5).

Modern genetics increasingly relies on genomic data sets; teaching students how to work with these data sets is important. In #JMBE: an undergrad research experience designed for modern genetics and biodiversity courses uses a classroom benchtop sequencer: asm.social/2Mx

Bacteria sense the antibiotic rifampicin through a widespread dual-promoter based alarm system Abstract. Most antibiotics are natural compounds or their derivatives, and bacteria have evolved defensive mechanisms to resist them. Many of these mechani

Bacteria sense the antibiotic rifampicin through a widespread dual-promoter based alarm system

@narjournal.bsky.social from Libor Krasny

academic.oup.com/nar/article/...

🚨Our new article is out in #PLOS Pathogens!

What drives nestedness in phages–bacteria interactions network in an agro-ecosystem? 🌱

📖 journals.plos.org/plospathogen...

#Phagesky @inrae-pv.bsky.social @phimresearch.bsky.social @phagedirectory.bsky.social

(Yes, that's a phage in those kinetics!)

What if even the core of bacterial nanomachines wasn’t static?

We found that the T3SS core protein SctD in Yersinia dynamically exchanges subunits — and this flexibility is essential for proper assembly & function.

🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

@kit.edu @t3sss.bsky.social

Ecology and health – phages interact with many bacteria in ecosystems Phages (bacteriophages), viruses that infect bacteria, are the most abundant genetic entities in our environment. A study published in Nature Microbiology challenges the common preconception that they...

🦠 Phages (bacteria-killing viruses) aren't as picky as we thought.
5-10% can infect multiple bacterial species, even genetically distant ones.
Potential implications for phage therapy against antibiotic-resistant infections 💊
@rkoszul.bsky.social study in Nature Microbiology
#Phages

Extracellular ATP is an environmental cue in bacteria Extracellular ATP acts as a signal regulating physiology and immunity in eukaryotes and is elevated during intestinal infection or damage. Tronnet et al. show that extracellular ATP reprograms the tra...

Extracellular ATP is an environmental cue in bacteria

@cp-cellreports.bsky.social

www.cell.com/cell-reports...

Type IV secretion systems: from structures to mechanisms
Kévin Macé and colleagues summarize recent structural insights into the assembly and function of bacterial type IV secretion systems
www.embopress.org/doi/full/10....

Open position to work on Type IX secretion (#T9SS) in our lab, in collaboration withe the group of Eric Reynolds at the Dental School of the University of Melbourne. Please spread the word, and forward to anyone potentially interested ! Apply here:
emploi.cnrs.fr/Offres/Docto...

Post-doc Position in Molecular Microbiology Post a job in 3min, or find thousands of job offers like this one at jobRxiv!

We have an open posdoc position to work on Type VI secretion system in a collaboration with Leonardo Talachia lab, at Unicamp, Brazil.
jobrxiv.org/job/institut...

Pre- and postantibiotic epoch: The historical spread of antimicrobial resistance Plasmids are now the primary vectors of antimicrobial resistance, but our understanding of how human industrialisation of antibiotics influenced their evolution is limited by a paucity of data predati...

Imagine we could travel back in time ⏪⌛️to explore the world of bacterial pathogens before humans discovered and industrialised antibiotics

We just did that to study the history of #AMR spread @science.org
doi.org/10.1126/scie...

If you like time travel & biology, this 🧵is for you👇

#MicroSky
𝘗𝘦𝘯𝘪𝘤𝘪𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘶𝘮 𝘩𝘰𝘳𝘥𝘦𝘪 vs 𝘉𝘢𝘤𝘪𝘭𝘭𝘶𝘴 𝘴𝘶𝘣𝘵𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘴

what a cool story! thx ákos for the shoutout 🙏

Check out the first preprint from our lab describing a direct molecular cross-talk between (p)ppGpp and c-di-GMP nucleotide messengers! Great work from first-author Corentin Jaboulay who was a postdoc in our lab, and great collaborations! @mmsb-lyon.bsky.social @cnrsbiologie.bsky.social

Fanny Angelina Hesse and the Discovery of Agar YouTube video by American Society for Microbiology

Since the late 19th century, microbiologists have relied on agar and its derivatives for growing and separating microbes. However, how many of us really know the story of how this ingredient changed science? The remarkable story of Fanny Angelina Hesse youtu.be/qyTjqIKTQLo

Pre- and postantibiotic epoch: The historical spread of antimicrobial resistance Plasmids are now the primary vectors of antimicrobial resistance, but our understanding of how human industrialisation of antibiotics influenced their evolution is limited by a paucity of data predati...

Apologies, forgot to add the actual paper link!!!!!

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Microbes Without Borders: Uniting Societies for Climate Action

Microbes know no borders, nor should efforts to harness their potential for climate solutions. ASM & 9 other partners have launched a global strategy to position microbial science as a pillar of climate action.

🔗Read the press release & #mbio editorial: asm.org/climatestrat...

#ClimateAction

Welcome to the social media account of the International Microbiology Literacy Initiative (IMiLI). Nearly 1,000 researchers freely contribute to the IMiLI project integrating microbiology into education providing downloadable resources for all. Explore at imili.org

Proteolytically activated antibacterial toxins inhibit the growth of diverse Gram-positive bacteria Many species of bacteria produce small-molecule antibiotics that enter and kill a wide range of competitor microbes. However, diffusible antibacterial proteins that share this broad-spectrum activity ...

A recent cool preprint by John Whitney's lab on a new family of antibacterial proteins secreted by Gram-positive bacteria that enter and kill a broad spectrum of bacteria. Cell entry is receptor-independent and relies on cleavage by a co-secreted protease and the PMF.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...