'Botanica No.23' by Gail Potocki

Vibrio crassostreae and its phages interaction show complex evolutionary landscapes. Some pahge lineages show rapid turnover while others persist over years (lysogeny&slow decay)! Oysters are HGT hotspots! What about other Vibrio-host interactions? What about other bacteria-animal systems. Nice!

Huge work! Joint effort over four years of EPC Rocha & Fred Le Roux Labs sampling in the wild for 4 years! www.nature.com/articles/s41... @epcrocha.bsky.social @fredoleroux.bsky.social

The world just lived through the 11 hottest years on record — what now? Earth is increasingly ‘out of balance’, as more heat is trapped in the atmosphere, driving global warming.

¡Buen lunes! Hoy ⛈️ 23° de máx.
La Tierra está crecientemente "fuera de equilibrio", según un reporte de la Organización Meteorológica Mundial, q preside la argentina Celeste Saulo @CelesteSau4049 👇Acabamos de vivir los 11 años más cálidos desde que se llevan registros
www.nature.com/articles/d41...

New preprint out on bioRxiv!

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

Can conjugative plasmids be used to control plasmid and pathogen spread?

Follow me down the rabbit hole that led to this story 🧵

Nice model! How many rRNA and tRNAs? Does it grow fast (DT<5hs.) how did you localize oriC and ter?

bsky.app/profile/alfm...

And its out at Nucleic Acids Research!! Cheers!

It was a particular challenge to get this published from the far South! in the hard times for science we are living around the world but particularly in Argentina! I strongly believe that doing science is particularly valuable in this times , particularly from a peripherical country!

And my wonderful collaborators @amazeld.bsky.social @val-meve.bsky.social @celineloot.bsky.social Briado Llorente @djcomerci.bsky.social

Thanks @icgebofficial.bsky.social , @conicet , @unsamoficial.bsky.social and @pasteur.fr for support! @epcrocha.bsky.social @veeninglab.com @olegigoshin.bsky.social @vslioy.bsky.social @martinlercher.bsky.social for their great science inspiration!!

A new example on genes depending on their location to optimize cell functionning as shown by @martinlercher.bsky.social recently! We were able to rationally reduce the growth of vibrio in an isogenic context. Maybe a potential strategy to attenuate strains?!

We "cirurgically" dissected the locus to demostrante that most of the effect was specifically due to the rpoB and rpoC genes within the operon! We uncoupled the dosage of rpoB and rpoC from the rest of the locus!!

But apparently there are no major alterations in RNAP celular location upon rpoBC relocation! (a story to follow up using supreresolution!)

that was accompanied by a reduction in mRNA and protein levels (and rifampocin sensitivity!)

Relocation was accompanied by a reduction in gene dosage due to multi-fork replication!

We relocated the whole locus to the chrosome termini in V. cholerae! (This bug has two chromosomes). We noticed a nutrient dependent reduction in fitness and growth rate upon rpoBC locus relocation!

In fast growing bacteria, transcription and translation genes are in close proximity of oriC. The core of the sole RNA polymerase is encoded by rpoB and rpoC genes. They form a locus well conserved in the tree of life along with ribosomal proteins and tRNAS! What happens if we alter this?

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/...

Celebrating Next paper by Larotonda et al. ! Really proud of our next work on positional Genetics of RNA polymerase. More news soon on this!!

We thank this our institutions for supporting this 🇦🇷🇦🇺 collaboration! Thanks @unsamoficial.bsky.social @muche-macquarie.bsky.social
And the many PhD Students and Posdocs implicated!

Our work establishes SCRaMbLE as a powerful bacterial genome engineering platform, opening new paths to study genome organization, evolution, and strain optimization.

Unexpectedly, some rearranged strains grew faster than the parental strain! These results reveal a striking phenotypic robustness to genome organization changes and support the idea that genome rearrangements can drive phenogenetic drift in bacteria.

After inducing rearrangements and selecting for fast growth, we found dramatically reconfigured genomes with stable physiology despite altered gene order. This technique enabled on‑demand, large‑scale genome rearrangements—inversions, duplications, and translocations across megabases.

We placed 14 loxPsym sites to enable inversions, duplications, and translocations while preserving near‑wild‑type fitness before rearrangement. Including essential genes allowed avoiding deletions.

Creating bacterial genomic diversity through large-scale reconfigurations reveals phenotype robustness to organizational genome change The ability to generate genomic diversity expands opportunities for understanding and engineering biology. Here, we demonstrate on-demand generation of diversity in bacterial genome configurations and...

After 4 years of joint effort of my Lab and Dr. Llorente Team we took for first time SCRaMbLE to a bacterial system! This allowed us to massively reordered the main chromosome of Vibrio natriegens!

biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Here's a 🧵

Materials-Based spatiotemporal analysis of microbial responses to glyphosate in Winogradsky columns Glyphosate, the active ingredient in many broad-spectrum herbicides, is extensively used in agriculture but has come under increasing scrutiny due to …

Old tools for new problems: how to get glyphosate resistant/degrading bacteria using Winogradsky columns...
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Pioneer of bacterial genetics: the legacy of Esther Miriam Lederberg Abstract. Esther Miriam Lederberg's brilliant scientific lifework, from the discovery of phage lambda, bacterial conjugation, and replica plating, provided

Thanks to the authors of this piece. I love reading about the work of inspiring pioneers in bacterial genetics. Crazy amount of discoveries!

Pioneer of bacterial genetics: the legacy of Esther Miriam Lederberg
academic.oup.com/genetics/adv...

Taming wild replicons: evolution and domestication of large extrachromosomal replicons Bacterial genomes often contain extrachromosomal replicons (ERs), ranging from small, mobile plasmids to large, stably inherited elements, such as meg…

Super honored to have contributed to this excellent Reviews article by @val-meve.bsky.social and @amazeld.bsky.social on how extrachromosomal replicons (secondary chromosomes, chromids, megaplasmids) emerge in bacteria! 🦠 🧫

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Microbiome: First bacteria we meet can keep us out of hospital For the first time, scientists show how our microbiome forms affects the risk of infection.

Nuestros encuentros tempranos con bacterias son cruciales para el desarrollo de nuestro sistema inmunológico, muestra un estudio británico 👇
www.bbc.com/news/article...