Nice light tonight

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.

An enhanced domestication method for uncultured bacteria Abstract. When environmental bacteria transition to laboratory conditions, a process termed domestication, the shift from the native habitat to a culture m

Most bacteria remain uncultured with vast microbial ‘dark matter’ awaiting discovery.. to address this am excited to share EDEN - an enhanced domestication method to grow uncultured bacteria & new diversity. Using EDEN we isolate a new species active against MDR pathogens..

doi.org/10.1093/isme...

J’avais pas vu désolé !

Et il la rend peu créative. Tout-projet, évaluations court-termistes, taux de succès dérisoires : la prise de risque est étouffée, la véritable exploration sacrifiée. On finance le prévisible, pas la découverte.

Depuis 20 ans, on nous vend le modèle anglo-saxon (US, UK) comme LA référence : financement sur projet, compétition. Sauf que l’excellence de ces systèmes ne tenait pas à la structure du financement, mais à son niveau. Nous en avons importé les contraintes sans jamais importer les moyens.

À cette liste, j’ajouterais toutes les tribunes de Sauvons la Recherche (2004-2005). Tout était annoncé. Et nous nous sommes fait enfumer : ANR saluée comme une bénédiction, effondrement des crédits récurrents et des infrastructures accepté par résignation.

One of the coolest genetic elements turned into a genetic engineering tool 😎
Congratulations @raphael-microb.bsky.social @dbikard.bsky.social lab et al. for this tour de force !!

Diversity-generating retroelements for programmable targeted hypermutagenesis - Nature Biotechnology Diversity-generating retroelements are engineered for directed evolution in E.coli.

🔈Paper out! We turned the most fascinating phage host-switch mechanism, diversity-generating retroelements, into a programmable mutagenesis tool, DGRec. You can perform targeted hypermutation of any 50-200bp sequence directly in vivo in E. coli www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Félicitations à Emmanuelle Bayer du Laboratoire de Biogenèse Membranaire à Bordeaux 🎉🍾

On dirait une punaise. Nous en avons plein dans le sud-ouest. Inoffensif.
Par contre, elle relâche une forte odeur pour se défendre ou si on l’écrase.
Rien à voir avec les punaises de lit qui sont plus petites.

The diverse molecular mechanisms of cellular motility. (A) The rotary T9SS and conveyor belt of Flavobacterium johnsoniae. (B) The focal adhesin complex of Myxococcus xanthus. (C) The leg-like attachment machinery of Mycoplasma mobile. Additional mechanistic models of motility for Mycoplasma genitalium (21) and Mycoplasma pneumoniae (22–26) are described in the text, with additional details available in the cited literature. (D) Multiple Type IV pili strategically arranged at both sides of the septal wall ensure smooth, coordinated gliding in filamentous cyanobacteria. The molecular organization depicted is based on well-characterized Type IV pilus systems of cyanobacteria. (E) The actin and myosin-based glidosome of the apicomplexan Toxoplasma gondii. (F) The proposed raphe and actinomyosin system of the diatom Craspedostauros australis. (OM, outer membrane; IM, inner membrane; PG, peptidoglycan; IMC, inner membrane complex; pPM, parasite plasma membrane; hPM, host plasma membrane).

#MicrobiologyMonday: Gliding motility allows cells to move smoothly along surfaces without flagella. Although this strategy has evolved independently across many microbial lineages, common mechanical principles emerge. Learn more in #JBacteriology: asm.social/2SJ

Anti-type VI tactics: bacterial defenses against type VI secretion system attacks Survival of bacteria in dense and competitive microbial communities depends on their ability to access nutrients or outcompete neighboring cells. One of the key players in competition is the type VI s...

www.cell.com/trends/bioch...

Yes that’s indeed the point of this image

I can almost see my house on the picture !!!

Still…
A little planet in an immense universe. Hard to stay indifferent

Impressive image

www.nasa.gov/image-articl...

Glad to see this out in the open! Preprint from Anna Brachet and colleagues from @iins-bordeaux.bsky.social looking at the relative organization and roles of ßII-/ßIII-spectrin in the dendritic membrane-associated periodic skeleton (MPS), including cool MINFLUX data: doi.org/10.64898/202...

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_...

I have exactly the same feeling. Not so excited about the Artemis mission.

😂

Le cliché de diffraction comme avatar est un indice…

Je vois un certain Brice K dans le palmarès également
@bkauffmann.bsky.social ??

It’s incredibly hard to study lipids in biological membranes on the nanoscale. You need near-perfect information on both membrane ultrastructure and lipid density. Lipid-CLEM, now out in @natcellbio.nature.com brought to you by @mathilda95.bsky.social changes that:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

1) The Herzik lab is excited to announce our newest preprint in collaboration with the Grotjahn lab! We have developed a surfactant cocktail that seeks to overcome one of the more nefarious problems in #cryoEM, Air-water interface (AWI)-induced damage and preferred orientation (PO).

Dans les Alpes, la popularité du ski avec dépose en hélicoptère : « Pour certains, c’est un graal, le summum du hors-piste » Même s’il est interdit en France, l’héliski, cette pratique du hors-piste avec trajet en hélicoptère, est proposé par de multiples agences savoyardes, qui emmènent leurs clients en Suisse ou en Italie...

Le summum du hors piste est de monter en ski de rando.
Bien content que cette abomination soit interdite en France. Qu’elle le reste

Breaking news: incompetence has consequences!

We're excited to announce the beta-release of #RELION-5.1! 🥳 This release has important updates on our #amyloid processing pipeline, as described in this preprint: doi.org/10.64898/202... There are also some tweaks for #teamtomo.

#OpenSoftwareAcceleratesScience

No pasarán

Pendant que les pays européens et les États-Unis réduisent leurs budgets de la recherche depuis des décennies (en France en tout cas), la Chine investit toujours plus. Après, les politiques viennent nous faire croire qu'ils se battent pour la souveraineté économique de nos pays…

Optical illusion of a woman bent over some papers. Her sunglasses are pushed up and she is wearing a hair band so the top of her head looks exactly like a Muppet face

Sorry I know the world is in a terrible fix but I've been laughing at this for ten minutes now