The Social Lives of Viruses is coming to Vancouver, Canada, from 4th-8th August 2026!
This is a free meeting dedicated to all aspects of virus-virus interactions & evolution.
To apply: socialviruses.zoology.ubc.ca
@sociovirology.bsky.social #socialviruses #evosky #lovevirology #virosky
Across scales from cells🦠 to atoms⚛️ – We reveal how anaerobic #bacteria break down very stable aromatic compounds found e.g. in oil spills 🛢️ #Bioremediation #TeamTomo 🧪 🧶🧬 🔬
Awesome collab with Lena, Matthias, @schullerjm.bsky.social @rnfr2d2.bsky.social @tomaspascoa.bsky.social @tamb-o.bsky.social
My latest for @sciam.bsky.social is all about the real biology, ecology, and climate science that is used to create the world of Pokémon, and how scientists use it to teach science in the real world.
This is just about the most fun I’ve ever had interviewing anyone, and I hope you enjoy! 🧪🌎
🆒 new pub!
Rapid evolution of Klebsiella pneumoniae biofilms in vitro -> adaptations selected during infection by @gretazabo.bsky.social & Linus Sandegren
*hypermucoidy evolves via 📈c-di-GMP, overlaps w/ mutations in UTI and wound isolates.
*pleasure to advise this!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Molecular kinetics dictate population dynamics in CRISPR-based plasmid defense | PNAS https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2525424123
Our ms on re-sampling 4 years apart vibrio phage in natural environments is now out with some improvements. First, clearer evidence of cryptic population dynamics between phage and vibrio, presumably because of genetic diversity. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
A star scientist showed that better genetics lessons could reduce racism. It was the death knell for his career
The loss of Brian Donovan’s grants and job speak volumes about federal funding priorities — and academia
www.statnews.com/2026/04/07/b...
Out Now! Local peptidoglycan composition defines division site selection in Streptococcus pneumoniae #MicroSky
"The real threat is a slow, comfortable drift toward not understanding what you're doing. Not a dramatic collapse. Not Skynet. Just a generation of researchers who can produce results but can't produce understanding."
🥳 Excited to share our #diatom work out in @pnas.org. In a great collaboration with @nic-poulsen.bsky.social and @ulrichschwarz.bsky.social we show that diatoms modulate the curvature of their paths by dynamic switching of their cell–substrate contact sites.
doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2506122123
Phage receptor prediction from genome sequencing alone. Bacterial receptor (blue) interacting with phage proteins (purple) is shown here
📣Huge preprint 🔔
Today we share something our group has been working toward for a long time, led by @lucasmoriniere.bsky.social We asked can we predict which receptor a phage targets from its genome sequence alone? For most phages, we couldn’t. So Lucas set out to do something I had only dreamed of.
Now available as a Version of Record.
Thanks a lot again to everyone involved in this project!
doi.org/10.7554/eLif...
I'm hiring! I have 2 open positions:
🔬 Postdoc
🧪 Research associate
We study how animal multicellularity evolved by exploring the molecular logic of cell adhesion using cell biology, 'omics, and tool-building in non-model organisms.
Come join us!
Details and application links 👇
Please repost
Congrats!
An overview of bacterial multicellular formations: biofilms, filaments, free-floating aggregates, motile collectives and fruiting bodies. For each form, we mention an analogous eukaryotic multicellular form (respectively animal epitelia, filaments in fungi, Volvox, Dictyostelium/social animals, Dictyostelium and other slime moulds)
How common is multicellularity in bacteria? And archaea?
And how does it evolve?
We wrote a short review "On the architecture and evolution of prokaryotic multicellularity".
Preprint link: bit.ly/4ta06Gq
Sharing and comments are much appreciated.
1/4
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/...
Figure 1. Cryo-EM of abundant protein complexes in native membranes.
Figure 2. Cryo-EM of membrane proteins in vesicles.
Figure 3. 3D reconstruction of V-ATPase in native synaptic vesicle membranes.
Figure 4. Generation of membrane vesicles for structure determination of proteins in their native lipid bilayer.
I've written a review on what I think is an extremely exciting direction in cryo-EM:
Cryo-EM of endogenous membrane proteins in their native lipid bilayer
Open access in Quarterly Reviews of Biophysics:
doi.org/10.1017/S003...
In the context of carboxysome positioning, @azaldegui.bsky.social found that the aggregation of a bacterial microcompartment is prevented by a self-organizing DNA-binding ATPase! #SingleMolecule #SuperResolution #Microscopy
with @cellforganized.bsky.social and JianLiu
doi.org/10.64898/202...
A phylogenetic tree of insects is shown annotating the presence or absence of a an antimicrobial peptide gene across winged insects
Various phylogenetic secondary loss events are mapped to a tree of insects to explain the parsimony calculations necessary to explain the diversity of insect Drosomycin antimicrobial peptide genes
Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are key defence molecules of the innate immune system of plants and animals. Understanding the evolutionary origins of AMPs can help to explain how immune systems acquire novelty and vary in their defensive capabilities. However, AMPs evolve rapidly, and so the origins of similar AMPs across organisms is often unclear. Furthermore, false negatives due to low search sensitivity are common and can hinder confident annotations about true absences. Due to these difficulties, understanding whether similar AMP genes found in diverse organisms represent ancestral molecules or evolutionary novelties has been challenging. In this report, we present evidence of horizontal gene transfer (HGT) of the antifungal peptide gene Drosomycin across insects. We show that in Diptera, the presence of Drosomycin is restricted to the Melanogaster group and additionally the distant relative Drosophila busckii. We go on to recover Drosomycin genes in cockroaches (Blattodea), mantises (Mantodea), one katydid (Orthoptera), various beetles (Coleoptera), and a recently acquired pseudogenized Drosomycin locus in Liposcelis booklice (Psocodea), but no other insects. Explaining this diversity through shared ancestry requires at least 50 independent loss events, or just seven HGT events. Previous studies have suggested that similar AMPs found across divergent species reflect conservation from a common ancestor, or due to their small size, that they arose via convergent evolution resulting from pathogen-imposed selection. Our findings suggest horizontal gene transfer can be responsible for the presence of some AMP genes found scattered across the tree of life. By presenting a mechanism through which immune systems can acquire novelty, our study also suggests a possible explanation for certain lineage-specific competencies for defence against infectious disease. While loss of AMP genes is common in certain lineages, here we suggest gain of AMPs can occur just as suddenly.
Pleased to finally share this fun collab that began at #Ento23
@cedricaumont.bsky.social presented & I had seen NCBI annotated some cockroach genomes as "contaminated." Turns out NCBI & I were wrong (much more fun).
Horizontal transfer of an #AntimicrobialPeptide across insects
bit.ly/DrsHGT
1/🧵
In the standard SEM image, aggregates of bacterial cells with no visible matrix sit on top of a network of collagen fibrils. In the cryo image, interconnected aggregates are covered with a smooth coat of matrix, and no collagen is visible - it is under the aggregates, and the only tissue structures visible are patches of elastin fibres.
If you check out my lab's recent work, you'll notice how much biofilm structure is destroyed by dehydration & vacuum during standard scanning electron microscopy. These are both images of P. aeruginosa PA14 #biofilm on pig lung tissue at 48h p.i: using cryoSEM retains the biofilm matrix. #MicroSky
Structural basis for curvature generation and functional specialization in spirochete flagella
#MicroSky
New post-doctoral research position in my phage-host interactions (Phi) laboratory in @otagomicroimmuno.bsky.social at @universityofotago.bsky.social New Zealand. The project is focused on defences against jumbo phages. Please share and if interested apply using the link in the comments.
Really fantastic piece of work from @christianlandry.bsky.social et al.,
-elegant set of experiments to uncover mechanisms that contribute to understanding of duplicate retention & redundancy-
Paralog interference contributes to the preservation of genetic redundancy www.cell.com/current-biol...
➡️ preprint from the lab! Bacteria have loads of antiviral defences in their mobile genetic elements (MGEs). So when MGEs move between bacteria, the defences move with them, generating a fast turnover of defences in bacteria. But what about the antiviral defence turnover in the MGEs themselves? 🤔
🧵👇
Faculty position in Plant Molecular Biology (Associate Professor or Tenure-Track Assistant Professor) at Aarhus University, Denmark
mbg.au.dk/aktuelt/ledi...
New preprint from my lab‼️
We describe how cations in the media remodel the Geobacter envelope for reciprocal control of cytochrome-loaded vesicles and conductive pili.
Important phenomenon to understand discrepancies in the literature about the true nature of nanowires.
doi.org/10.21203/rs....
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...
Explore how genetics, evolution and ecology intertwine at EMBO Workshop "Evolving together: From genomics to biological interactions" in #Taipei, TW, 24–27 Apr 2026.
Abstract submission/Registration by 20 Jan/28 Feb
https://meetings.embo.org/event/26-bio-interactions
#EMBOEvoGenBio #EMBOevents 🧪
Happy to share a new review proposing a unified nomenclature for T4SSs.
Great collaboration with Peter J Christie, Gabriel Waksman, Ronnie Per-Arne Berntsson and our team.
academic.oup.com/femsre/artic...
#T4SS#Microbiology
