Bacterial rRNAs are highly modified, but their functions are often mysterious. Zac Park says that methylation of 16S rRNA by MraW(RsmH) enhances translation of structured mRNAs. Thus, mRNA structure and rRNA modifications likely co-evolved to fine-tune protein dosage.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Electromagnetic field-inducible in vivo gene switch for remote spatiotemporal control of gene expression The EMF-inducible gene switch (Ei) platform provides precise spatiotemporal control of gene expression through Cyb5b-mediated calcium oscillations. This system enables Ei-OSK-driven in vivo rejuvenati...

Cool Cell pub. Korean team report finding EMF sensor Cyb5b & use it to make inducible gene expression system. Essentially remote-controlled EMF-driven mouse model. They use this including for OSK in vivo reprogramming. www.cell.com/cell/abstrac... Makes you wonder about human EMF exposure!

High-throughput characterization of Mycobacterium tuberculosis gene function across diverse conditions Limited-throughput genetics has slowed discovery of gene functions in Mycobacterium tuberculosis. This study develops a genome-wide barcoded transposon library and tests it across 95 environmental conditions, providing a rich resource of new gene functions, including metabolic and drug-resistance pathways.

High-throughput characterization of Mycobacterium tuberculosis gene function across diverse conditions | PLOS Biology journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article

Epistasis and co-adaptation in bacterial genome evolution - Nature Reviews Genetics Bacterial genome evolution is shaped by epistasis, which can constrain or promote specific evolutionary paths. The authors review how integrating the effects of epistatic interactions into population-...

Cool paper !

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

...for the vibriologists #MicroSky

Dissecting host stress responses for predictable heterologous gene expression in E. coli Abstract. Predictable expression of heterologous genes remains a key challenge in biotechnology, largely due to cellular stresses imposed on the production

Dissecting host stress responses for predictable heterologous gene expression in E. coli url: academic.oup.com/nar/article/...

#microsky

Rsfs dissociates vacant 70S ribosomes www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 🦠Bacteria adapt nutrient deprivation by reducing vacant 70S ribosomes via the silencing factor RsfS

Functional characterization of dynamic nascent RNA folding ensembles in real time Single-molecule imaging shows the role of various factors in selectively reshaping nascent RNA molecules to modulate function.

(2/2) By tracking five fluorescent signals at once, they can observe multiple folding pathways and observe how proteins and other molecules interact with specific RNA structures, facilitating the development of drugs that target RNA.

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

Excited to share the first preprint from the lab! We show that ApeA defends against RNA phage infection by cleaving the phage genome:

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Amazing work and congrats Jade for untangling this complex and fascinating story!

Este paper del MIT demuestra que el uso continuado de ChatGPT y otras LLM provoca un considerable descenso en la capacidad intelectual.

La IA te jode el cerebro. Es así. Por eso hay que prohibirla. Como mínimo, en toda la comunidad educativa y en todo el sector público.

arxiv.org/pdf/2506.08872

New preprint from the Sternberg lab!
We used pooled oligonucleotide library mutagenesis + high-throughput sequencing to systematically dissect the molecular determinants of IStron transposition, RNA-guided DNA cleavage, and self-splicing.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Arabinose isn't only an inducer!

@peterfineran.bsky.social gave a talk in our Hebrew Univ. microbiology journal club and mentioned his recent amazing finding that some phages add up to 3 arabinoses (!!) to their DNA to evade bacterial defense.

Mahler et al. CHM 2025
www.cell.com/cell-host-mi...

AF2BIND: predicting small-molecule binding sites using the pair representation of AlphaFold2 www.nature.com/articles/s4...

Structural similarities of molecules selectively binding the prfA thermosensor RNA www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03...

Humanity is notorious for leaving problems for the next generations, but animals reveal the biology: C. elegans develop germline tumors if THEIR GRAND GRANDPARENTS’ cells fail to clear garbage from their body cavity… What the hell, you ask? Read our new preprint! 👇
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Just a reminder, we not only wrote about the profiteering nature of the Springer-Nature Discover journal series, but we made a "guess the publisher" game!

hal.science/hal-05113253

Game by @pagomba.bsky.social

pagoba.shinyapps.io/publi_guess/

#OpenAccess #AcademicSky #FoSci #MDPI #SciPub

A Cinderella story: raising CLIP-tag from the ashes to shine in fluorescence labeling.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

We are excited to share our new preprint: iCLIP3 — an improved protocol for transcriptome-wide mapping of protein–RNA interactions at single-nucleotide resolution.

Interstep compatibility of a model for the prebiotic synthesis of RNA consistent with Hadean natural history | PNAS Models for prebiotic syntheses often have many steps, each separately validated by laboratory experiments. The challenge then asks whether these st...

RNA from scratch.. 💫 Interstep compatibility of a model for the prebiotic synthesis of RNA consistent with Hadean natural history | PNAS
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

U2AF2 controls alternative splicing in speckle-proximal regions in an RS domain-dependent manner Abstract. Splicing factor U2AF2 is known to play a pivotal role for 3′ splice site recognition at an early step of spliceosome assembly. Here, using proxim

Happy to share the last part of my PhD work
academic.oup.com/nar/article/...

Unraveling posttranscriptional regulatory networks in phage infection Phages employ sophisticated transcriptional regulatory networks to optimize replication. Recently, Silverman et al. used RIL-seq (RNA interaction by l…

Like bacteria, phages use sRNAs to regulate gene expression! Out today in @cp-trendsmicrobiol.bsky.social, @mvelascogomariz.bsky.social and I highlight a recent RIL-seq study from the @saharmelamed.bsky.social lab that looked into posttranscriptional regulation of lambda!

tinyurl.com/lambda-RIL-seq

Check out the Retraction Risk Scanner we built! It evaluates a paper's overall risk by aggregating PubPeer comments, negative discussions on BlueSky and X, and the paper's current retraction status. retractionrisk.com
@retractionwatch.com @altmetric.com

Yet another awesome single-phage paper from Ido Golding's lab #phagesky

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

...the various ways bacteria can use their flagella👇

thx césar for pointing this out 🙏
#MicroSky

Congrats on a really interesting piece of work on (planktonic) bacterial resilience to antibiotics, beautifully reinforcing the point that physiological micro-environment matters in infection modelling. This can undoubtedly be extrapolated to many infections, including #UTI #UTISky #MicroSky

Pleased to share the final version of this behemoth of a paper, now finally published. I guess I can retire now?
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

More functional data, many thousands of words removed, and a few other updates from last year's preprint.

New paper from my group in @science.org : "A small polymerase ribozyme that can synthesise itself and its complementary strand" www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Outstanding work by @edogia.bsky.social

beautiful work by Gaurav Dugar, who taught me my first RNA stuff and even a bit of Campylobacter :)

Starvation-independent alarmone production inhibits translation through GTP depletion in Bacillus

#MicroSky