Now out in @acs.org JACS Au, the manuscript by #BarbaraTerlouw et al. describing PARAS, a high-accuracy machine-learning algorithm to predict substrate specificities of nonribosomal peptide synthetase (NRPS) adenylation domains, key for estimating natural product structures from BGC sequence. 1/n

A penicillin-binding protein inhibitor series to target drug-resistant Neisseria gonorrhoeae Nature Microbiology, Published online: 08 April 2026; doi:10.1038/s41564-026-02309-3Emerging multidrug-resistant Neisseria gonorrhoeae is a global health threat in the treatment of gonorrhoea. This study reports the discovery and characterization of a promising antigonorrhoea agent that addresses antibiotic resistance.

Out Now! A penicillin-binding protein inhibitor series to target drug-resistant Neisseria gonorrhoeae #MicroSky

Metabolic flexibility and an unusual route for peptidoglycan muramic acid recycling in mycobacteria www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03...

Now out in @natcomms.nature.com :
versions 2.0 of both BiG-SCAPE and BiG-SLiCE! With significant speed and accuracy increases, as well as new interactive functionalities.
Read the full paper here #openaccess:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Aerocavin is an antibiotic with potent and specific anti-Neisserial activity www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02...

Unveiling the taxonomic diversity and unprecedented biosynthetic treasure of the phylum Myxococcota www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02...

Streptavidins play a multifunctional role within a biotin-pathway antibiotic network encoded in a biosynthetic supercluster www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11....

Screening of expanded GRACE mutant collection at six temperatures reveals distinct functional enrichment in genes clustered by fitness profile. Top left: Schematic of GRACE mutant construction. Bottom left: Summary of GRACE mutant collection expansion based on manual curation of biological process gene ontology annotation on Candida Genome Database (CGD). Pie chart with four concentric rings visualizes the relative proportion of genes from various versions of the GRACE collection with biological process descriptions completely unannotated or annotated based on: experimentally characterization, S. cerevisiae ortholog, S. pombe ortholog, orthologs in other fungal species, conserved protein domains, or unannotated; see Materials and methods for full details. Right: Heatmap of genes ordered by hierarchical clustering of essentiality scores across screening temperatures. A score of 4 (red) represents no growth and 0 (yellow) represents growth comparable to wild type.

#Candida albicans is a leading opportunistic fungal #pathogen of humans. Ci Fu, Leah Cowen &co expand the GRACE #Calbicans #FunctionalGenomics resource, identifying genes important for temperature-dependent fitness & highlighting its power to reveal vulnerabilities @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/3Wft0Xg

Very nice Sharok

Thanks Fabrice - you as well!

Congrats Fabrice!

I'm delighted to share a useful FREE web-based app portal of powerful bioinformatics tools for microbial genomes and shotgun microbiome sequences!

It's called Micromics and is built by Middle Author Bioinformatics, led by co-founder @ironark.bsky.social
omix.midauthorbio.com

Comparison of B. theta and E. coli BAM machineries. Only BamAD components are shared, and B. theta BAM has five novel components, BamF-I.

New preprint 🚨: with @madejmar.bsky.social we found that the Bacteroidetes beta-barrel assembly machinery is quite different to E. coli. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #cryo-EM

LoVis4u: a locus visualization tool for comparative genomics and coverage profiles Abstract. Comparative genomic analysis often involves visualization of alignments of genomic loci. While several software tools are available for this task

Excited to share that our paper on locus visualisation tool LoVis4u is out! Entirely driven by fantastic PhD student Artyom Egorov @egorov.bsky.social academic.oup.com/nargab/artic...

E. coli prepares for starvation by dramatically remodeling its proteome in the first hours after loss of nutrients It is widely believed that due to nutrient limitations in natural environments, bacteria spend most of their life in non-growing states. However, very little is known about how bacteria change their p...

What do bacterial cells do when they run out of nutrients? Although most bacterial studies focus on cells in exponentially growing states, in the wild bacteria likely spend most of their time slowly starving to death. 1/n
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Confirmed speakers for the next Great Wall Symposium is coming along! thegreatwall-symposium.org/program/
Abstracts will open next week 15th so start thinking!
September 15-17th, Catania, Sicily

Its a Microbiological opportunity you cant refuse!

A new class of penicillin-binding protein inhibitors to address drug-resistant Neisseria gonorrhoeae www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.12....

Chemical genomics informs antibiotic and essential gene function in Acinetobacter baumannii www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.12....

tagging #MicroSky

🚨 PhD opportunity 🚨 The Whelan lab, along w @brockhurstlab.bsky.social, are looking for a PhD student w bioinformatic experience/interest to investigate the evolution of transmissibility in bacterial pathogens, with a focus on P. aeruginosa. More info & link to apply below.

Please spread the word!

Cryo-EM characterization of the anydromuropeptide permease AmpG central to bacterial fitness and β-lactam antibiotic resistance - Nature Communications AmpG is an MFS importer of bacterial cell wall fragments. Here, authors present a cryoEM structure and supporting mutagenesis to illuminate AmpG’s essential role in bacterial fitness and derepression ...

Just in time for #WAAW - new collab paper with the Strynadka lab at UBC on structure/function of #peptidoglycan fragment recycling transporter AmpG involved in AmpC-related beta lactam resistance. www.nature.com/articles/s41... @yaegerluke.bsky.social