We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing: a 🧵 1/n Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820 Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/... Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...

Shout out to people routinely working in their 2nd or 3rd language. Yesterday I gave a 1-hour research seminar in French. Afterwards, my brain was pretty much done for the day. Respect to the loads of scientists who do this daily (and usually a lot more effectively than me!)

How can we calibrate instruments that analyse planets outside our solar system and operate the computers of the future? With chip-based optical frequency combs. 🌌 🖥️ Learn more in the profile of Tobias Kippenberg, winner of the #MarcelBenoist Swiss Science Prize 2025.

Un immense merci à nos doctorants, au comité organisateur et à nos orateurs invités @mblokesch.bsky.social, F. Mechta-Grigoriou & E. Crubezy, pour la réussite de ce superbe 10e Symposium des étudiants de l’IPBS. Bravo à toutes et à tous ! Cap sur le 11e Symposium !

A huge thank you to our PhD students, the organizing committee, and our guest speakers @mblokesch.bsky.social, F. Mechta-Grigoriou & E. Crubezy for making the 10th IPBS Student Symposium such a success. Kudos to everyone involved! On to the 11th Symposium! 🎉

#DRC faces one of the worst cholera outbreaks in a decade. Since January, over 58,000 suspected cases and 1,700 deaths have been reported. MSF calls for coordinated action to ensure the provision of medical care, drinking water and proper sanitation. www.doctorswithoutborders.ca/democratic-r...

Cholera is spreading fast, yet it can be stopped. Why haven’t we consigned it to history? | Hakainde Hichilema and Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus

I’m excited to announce the launch of my lab at EPFL in Jan 2026 🎉. We’ll combine evolution & synthetic biology to study and (re)engineer bacterial communication. I’m recruiting PhD students to start in the first semester of 2026. Apply via EPFL PhD programs by Nov 1 drive.google.com/file/d/1cm-t...

Sign up for our annual Impromptu Symposium on Nov. 21 in the Biophore @unil.bsky.social organized by Christophe Keel and Jordan Vacheron, which will explore the fascinating world of microbe–plant interactions with an exciting speaker line up! Registration (lunch included): forms.gle/t4fC8uQV5HQF...

New online: Structure and activation mechanism of a Lamassu phage and plasmid defense system

Happy that the final version of our Lamassu work @yli18smc.bsky.social is now out: www.nature.com/articles/s41... Thanks again to our awesome collaborators @mblokesch.bsky.social and David and co and Mark Szczelkun and @steven-shaw.bsky.social and the DCI Lausanne @fbm-unil.bsky.social

WHO reports 1 in 6 bacterial infections worldwide are antibiotic-resistant, with resistance rising sharply since 2018. Gram-negative bacteria like E. coli and K. pneumoniae pose the biggest threat. Action on #AMR surveillance and responsible antibiotic use is needed. www.who.int/news/item/13...

Phages evolve fast, or do they? In oysters, some stay identical for years. With >1,200 phages & 600 Vibrio genomes, we reveal long-term stability and new mobile elements. Proud of this collaborative work across our teams (Roscoff-UdeM and @epcrocha.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...

How do SMC complexes load onto DNA to get ready for loop extrusion? @roisnehamelinf.bsky.social & co discovered that Wadjet, an SMC complex involved in bacterial DNA immunity, performs some impressive molecular gymnastics 🤸‍♂️🤸‍♂️🤸‍♂️. Check out the new paper: www.cell.com/molecular-ce...

Check it out! A proper team effort from past and present group members and a great collaboration with @sergemostowylab.bsky.social

3rd lab meeting I’m presenting at this year! After two during my sabbatical on my experiments (Helaine & Mekalanos labs), today finally in MY OWN lab 🎉 So much fun to share new work done w/ fantastic technicians Laurie, Sandrine, Loriane & bioinformatician Alexandre. Bonus: cake served by the lab 🍰

What an amazing accomplishment of my colleague/lab neighbor Andrea Ablasser & her team => Citation Laureate on their incredible work on the cGAS-STING pathway together w/ Zhijian ‘James’ Chen & Glen Barber. Big congrats 🥳!! clarivate.com/citation-lau...

Call for a tenure-track position at our Department of Plant Molecular Biology in Lausanne! We are searching for promising early-career researchers in the broad field of plant-organismal interactions. Deadline: November 30, 2025 - Please re-post! career5.successfactors.eu/career?caree...

Looking for a new approach to studying or eliminating phages? Check out our study introducing anti-phage ASOs (antisense oligos) out in @Nature today. nature.com/articles/s4158…

Thrilled to share our two latest papers with the @tcostalab.bsky.social lab! In the first, we uncover a new mechanism of satellite transfer: cf-PICIs hijack tails from diverse phages to spread across species. @imperialcollegeldn.bsky.social www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

The ecology and evolution of bacterial immune systems'. #phage #phagesky A bunch of interesting reviews royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

Some good stuff in here 😊

A new theme issue of #PhilTransB examines the evolutionary history of bacterial immune systems, their modes of action, and the patterns how different bacterial immune systems are distributed across different ecosystems. Read: buff.ly/Z4qdxY1

Excited to share my latest review, now published in the Royal Society theme issue on ‘The ecology and evolution of bacterial immune systems' (available OA): Defence systems encoded by core genomic islands of seventh pandemic Vibrio cholerae royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

Lineage-specific defence systems of pandemic Vibrio cholerae Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B by @mblokesch.bsky.social and Kim Seed royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

Our Wadjet-II paper by @roisnehamelinf.bsky.social is out in polished form: www.cell.com/structure/fu... With a great preview by @kevincorbett.bsky.social & @amardeeep.bsky.social highlighting the potential of Wadjets: Wadjet—Keeping a watchful eye on circular DNA. www.cell.com/structure/fu...

Together with Melanie Blockesch and David Adams from EPFL, we show that plasmids expressing synthetic anti-defense proteins successfully transform and become retained in V. cholerae, enabling stable plasmid maintenance 7/n

Preprint: De-novo design of proteins that inhibit bacterial defenses Our approach allows silencing defense systems of choice. We show how this approach enables programming of “untransformable” bacteria, and how it can enhance phage therapy applications Congrats Jeremy Garb! tinyurl.com/Syttt 🧵

I had so much fun making this project come to life! Huge thanks to everyone who made it happen 💙 - especially my brilliant collaborators David W. Adams, Eliane Hadas Yardeni, @mblokesch.bsky.social‬, and of course @soreklab.bsky.social‬

It’s not just phages either. We designed inhibitors for DdmDE, a system in Vibrio cholerae that usually clears plasmids from transformed cells. Two of these binders conferred the plasmids with significant resistance against DdmDE-mediated plasmid clearance even in its native bacterial strain.

📢 New preprint alert! We designed synthetic proteins that can block bacterial immune systems, allowing phages + plasmids to overcome natural defenses. This could transform phage therapy + genetic engineering. Here’s what we found 🧵 Preprint🔗: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Congratulations Rotem Sorek @soreklab.bsky.social on receiving the Gruber prize today in Stockholm

Exciting times ahead! Today marks the first day of the Loeff Lab at Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands 🇳🇱. I’m thrilled to begin this new adventure and continue exploring microbial defense mechanisms and their applications through an integrative structural biology approach.

Our latest efforts to understand Enterococcal wound infection. In long-term collaboration with @gthibault.bsky.social, we discovered how E. faecalis makes extracellular ROS - via EET!⚡️Which in turn dysregulates host UPR to delay wound healing. Led by @aarontan.bsky.social - his videos below are 🤩!

Outstanding Faculty opportunity in the broad area of 'life sciences engineering' @EPFL School of Life Sciences, open to both junior and senior researchers. We may prefer metabolism-centric applications but remain open to outstanding applications across domains: www.epfl.ch/about/workin...

🦠🧍‍♀️From bacterial to human immunity. We report in @science.org the discovery of a human homolog of SIR2 antiphage proteins that participates in the TLR pathway of animal innate immunity. Co-led wt @enzopoirier.bsky.social by D. Bonhomme and @hugovaysset.bsky.social www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Super excited to share our paper online 🚨today🚨 in Cell Host & Microbe‬! Xiaomei Ren @xiaomeiren.bsky.social and Mason Clark @rmasonclark.bsky.social‬ co-led discovery of ecological factors for Acinetobacter baumannii carriage in the gut, a reservoir for pathogen spread. 🎉 tinyurl.com/443kfefk

Ready to lead pioneering research that bridges systems-level investigations of biological systems to molecular mechanism? The EMBL Molecular Systems Biology Unit in Heidelberg is hiring a Group Leader!

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.

Congratulations to 2025 GRC Microbial Adhesion and Signal Transduction Poster Award Winners!! 🎆🥂🙌 Thank you @cp-cell.bsky.social and @femsmicro.org for sponsoring! From, Your secret judges 🤫

Fantastic conference! Fab company! Impressive waterfall :)

Griffith and Avery Hastings and Greenberg Barluenga and Meyer

Are you an excellent researcher in the field of genomics of infectious diseases of intracellular pathogens (viruses, intracellular parasites or bacteria)? The apply for this chair of excellence at the University of Geneva, Faculty of Medicine: jobs.unige.ch/www/wd_porta...

Water everywhere 😜 - with Mario @feldmanlab.bsky.social & Amy @flamycain.bsky.social at Acinetobacter conference in Niagara Falls

Is it stressful to be surrounded by infected individuals, even if you're not infected yourself? Might this even increase mortality (if others could have performed work but now won't)? Sounds plausible, but we don't have evidence from very many systems. Here's one! academic.oup.com/evolut/advan...

Words cannot describe how excited I am to share the findings from the second half of my postdoc in @aaronwhiteley.bsky.social's lab where we discover that bacteria use functional amyloids to defend themselves from predatory bacteria. rdcu.be/euu5Y. See thread for details on this epic adventure 1/.

Excited and honored to be joining the EMBO Member community 🥳 Congratulations also to all the other newly elected members! -Martin

Had a fabulous day at the Wadsworth Center in Albany yesterday 🤩 Very impressive place to do science plus everybody is so kind 🤗 Thanks so much Sian @sianowen.bsky.social and Tom Bartlett for the kind invitation 🤩. Glad to see your new labs started so well.

I'm pleased to announce that I will be starting my lab as an Assistant Professor at UMass Chan Medical School in August! My group will study phages that infect corynebacteria and mycobacteria to understand bacterial cell envelope assembly and phage gene function. Website and more info to come soon!

Very happy to share that a large part of my thesis work is out today: B. subtilis uses the second messenger c-di-AMP to modulate its turgor pressure in response to the state of its cell envelope. www.nature.com/articles/s41...