Long-read metagenomics reveals phage dynamics in the human gut microbiome - Nature Complex prophage integration dynamics, including low-level induction, cross-family host range and transposase-mediated mobilization, challenge existing paradigms and deepen our understanding of phage–...

Long read Metagenomics, #phage and #prophage in the gut by Ami Bhatt's group. Beautiful data showing changes in phages over two years

#phagesky

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

Omnipresent Allies: The Role of Temperate Phages in Microbial Adaptation Across Ecosystems This review synthesises evidence from culture-dependent systems and complex environments, concluding that temperate phages drive microbial adaptation across individual, population and community level....

Omnipresent Allies: The Role of Temperate Phages in Microbial Adaptation Across Ecosystems

- #EnvironMicrobiol Review

enviromicro-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

#PhageSky

I’m excited to share my recent postdoc work. Here, we interrogate how different phage infection outcomes (productive vs. restrictive) affect the expression of phage defense systems. We find that a restricted infection not only inhibits the phage but also induces increased immune protein abundance.

We built GenoPHI: a machine learning workflow that predicts phage-host interactions at strain level. This could help rapidly select phages to treat drug-resistant bacterial infections or for microbiome engineering without exhaustive lab testing.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Fantastic paper by James Bean and colleagues on phage Bas63 - this has been one of the first phages I ever isolated just for fun as a PhD student (in 2012!). It's #2 on this plate of Rhine river water on an E.coli K-12 lawn....

How it started /// How it's going

Promotional image for Aussie Bird Count event, scheduled for 20-26 October 2025. Features illustrations of various birds and a mobile device displaying a bird app. Text encourages registration at www.aussiebirdcount.org.au, with BirdLife Australia logo displayed at the bottom.

🐦 The Aussie Bird Count starts TODAY! 20–26 Oct, spend just 20 minutes counting birds wherever you are – backyard, balcony, park, anywhere!
With 1 in 6 Aussie birds facing extinction, every count matters. Last year 57k people spotted 4.1M birds. Help make 2025 even bigger!

Emergence of antiphage functions from random sequence libraries reveals mechanisms of gene birth | PNAS De novo gene birth—the emergence of genes from nongenic sequences—drives biological innovation, yet its adaptive potential remains poorly understoo...

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

#phagesky #phage defence #synbio #microsky

Another fab opportunity in a fantastic group!

Easy and interactive taxonomic profiling with Metabuli App.
It integrates database curation, read QC, taxonomic profiling, and visualization right on your desktop.
No command line, server, or internet required.
Now published in Bioinformatics! 🧵1/5
doi.org/10.1093/bioi...
github.com/steineggerla...

A great opportunity in a great group!

Reclaiming microbiology: scientists as community members and advocacy leaders Microbiology Society journals contain high-quality research papers and topical review articles. We are a not-for-profit publisher and we support and invest in the microbiology community, to the benefi...

To celebrate and support the great @blackinmicro.bsky.social initiative and what joining could mean for you, please take a look through the commentary in Microbial Genomics @microbiologysociety.org hot off the press today! #MicroSky #MicrobiomeSky 💻🧬🧪🦠 www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour...

Phages communicate across species to shape microbial ecosystems Arbitrium is a communication system that helps bacteriophages decide between lysis and lysogeny via secreted peptides. In arbitrium, the AimP peptide binds its cognate AimR receptor to repress aimX ex...

Our latest work reveals that arbitrium phages cross-communicate across species! These tiny viruses “listen” to signals from others, coordinating lysis-lysogeny decisions across species.
Original idea from @albertomarina.bsky.social and, as usual, he was right.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

I am thrilled to be attending my first Australasian conference, #AGTA2025 here in Sydney, NSW. Looking forward to connecting with established, new & upcoming Australasian scientists in all things genomics! #Genomics #microsky

Genomic constraints shape the evolution of alternative routes to drug resistance in prokaryotes Background Variation within the prokaryotic pangenome is not random, and natural selection that favours particular combinations of genes appears to dominate over random drift. What is less clear is wh...

New preprint reveals bacteria can't just collect all resistance genes like Pokemon cards.
We found mutually exclusive evolutionary pathways to multidrug resistance in E. coli & P. aeruginosa - some resistance mechanisms actively prevent others from coexisting www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Gabija restricts phages that antagonize a conserved host DNA repair complex Anti-bacteriophage systems like restriction-modification and CRISPR-Cas have DNA substrate specificity mechanisms that enable identification of invaders. How Gabija, a highly prevalent nuclease-helica...

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

#phagesky #phage

Article 8 of the ECHR is the protection on which not only all positive trans law rests but also most LGB rights to, as well as those of families where one parent wasn't born in the UK. It prevents asylum seeking families from being split.

It is utterly monstrous for Labour to want to weaken rights.

Police arrest 474 people at protest over Palestine Action ban in London Number of arrests was highest recorded in relation to single operation in at least past decade, according to Met police

It's just so depressing to have a government with a historic majority and a clear mandate for change and all they can think of to do with it is try to appease fascists who will never ever vote for them anyway
www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...

AIDS Conference Activists Protest ‘Systemic Racism’ Behind Canadian Visa Denials To African Delegates - Health Policy Watch MONTREAL - Activists took over the stage at the opening of the International AIDS conference in Montreal on Friday morning to protest Canada's denial of visas

To everybody criticising the visa denials to bat researchers in Australia, thank you.
I am always reminded of this previous humiliation, where hundreds of AIDS researchers were denied entry into Canada healthpolicy-watch.news/aids-confere...

Since Brexit the UK is turning on itself and anyone critical of it or the governments rules are liable for arrest. Such as this Palestine Action protest today has shown. It's also not just a normal arrest but on TERRORISM charges.

Post Brexit Britain has GONE INSANE.

Instead of relatively inexpensive vaccination to enable the body to produce its own antibodies, people are gonna pay $$$$ to inject monoclonal antibodies to treat the disease

What are we even doing here

Great to see this out. The impact of antibiotics on the gut phages and what it tells us of the disruption associated with antibiotics . www.cell.com/cell-reports... Check @eugenpfeifer.bsky.social thread

A Phylogenetic Host‐Range Index Reveals Ecological Constraints in Phage Specialisation and Virulence Phages are typically known for having a limited host range, targeting particular strains within a bacterial species, but accurately measuring their specificity remains challenging. Factors like the g...

After many years in the making, here is our host range #phage paper with #ecology, #evolution and #biocontrol perspectives published in Molecular Ecology! @phimresearch.bsky.social‬ @inrae-pv.bsky.social‬ #PVBMT #JulianGarneau onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
These are our key findings:

Kiwa is a membrane-embedded defense supercomplex activated at phage attachment sites Zhang, Todeschini, and Wu et al. show that the bacterial defense system Kiwa senses phage attachment at the membrane and assembles a transmembrane complex that halts infection by blocking phage DNA re...

Thrilled to see our Kiwa story out today! A membrane-associated supercomplex that senses infection and blocks replication and transcription.

www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Huge congratulations to Yi and Zhiying for bringing it home, to Thomas for starting us off, and to all the collaborators.

🥰🥰

Sydney, Aus ➡️ Norwich, UK Graduation 2025 @uniofeastanglia.bsky.social has been a blast! It was amazing to celebrate with friends and family, and catch up with @evelienadri.bsky.social and colleagues from @quadraminstitute.bsky.social.

Distribution of capsule and O types in Klebsiella pneumoniae causing neonatal sepsis in Africa and South Asia: meta-analysis of genome-predicted serotype prevalence and potential vaccine coverage Background: Klebsiella pneumoniae causes ~20% of sepsis in neonates, with ~40% crude mortality. A vaccine administered to pregnant women, protecting against 70% of K. pneumoniae infections, could aver...

I'm super happy to share this preprint on ‘Distribution of capsule and O types in #Klebsiella pneumoniae causing neonatal sepsis in Africa and South Asia: meta-analysis of genome-predicted serotype prevalence and potential vaccine coverage’
doi.org/10.1101/2025...

The Cloud Infrastructure for Microbial Bioinformatics (CLIMB) is the world’s only cloud computing service dedicated to microbiology and was developed by UK scientists 🇬🇧

Find out more ➡️ buff.ly/mUotVVS

Tagging 🖥️🧬

As a trans Australian, I was kicked out of a UK toilet. This is not the open-hearted Britain I remember | Jack Nicholls I used to be proud of my birthplace for its cosmopolitan tolerance. Visiting now, it feels like stepping back decades

‘That’s the thing about oppression: it widens. It affects us all.’
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

#phagesky #phage