Check out this exciting new paper in @currentbiology.bsky.social from my friend and collaborator @stephaniesimone.bsky.social’s lab on the genomics of novel rhizobium endosymbiosis www.cell.com/current-biol...

After some intense weeks, a few warm, green days in Engadin with the family were perfect to recharge 🏔️☀️🥾

🎊 New Preprint from phagefoundry.org ! Super excited to share our latest work on generating systematic phage-MDR P. aeruginosa interaction dataset & use of ML to predict phage susceptibility & phage cocktails from target genome sequences alone, w validations www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...

Chemical inactivation of a bacterial immune system de-domesticates a temperate phage and promotes its spread bioRxiv from Joseph Gerdt at Indiana University with @annadragos.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... #PhageSky

Some phages are named after gods or rivers, this one was named by journalist Thilo Mischke @thilomischke.bsky.social after his grandma ("Oma Karin") while filming in our lab. It's a cool phage that should be temperate but became virulent due to a transposon at its lysogeny control! ⛓️‍💥💪🏼

Revised story Systematic receptor mapping in acapsular Klebsiella www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Registration opened for our International Symposium of SPP 2330! This is going to be phage-tastic meeting in Berlin! Highlight of the second funding period! @spp2330.bsky.social, @dfg.de

Small fun story from the lab about a slightly crazy rabbit hole or "guess what's living in your agar?" - all the details in the thread by Enea @phagemuffin.bsky.social 👇🏼🔥

Revised version of the Preprint is out with more details. Working on schematics for all of these receptor families 🤩 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

#TEsky #RNA Mobile intron RNA from a bacterial predator accumulates in dead archaeal cells doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Good morning from Kandersteg - board retreat of the Swiss Society for Microbiology 🏞🦠🧬

Our lab is proud to present our latest work harnessing Bridge Recombinase for genome-scale editing in diverse bacteria, microbiome editing, and programmable horizontal gene transfer.

Transposable elements are driving rapid adaptation of Enterococcus faecium -in @nature.com from Ami Bhatt www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Pseudoalteromonas is a symbiont of marine invertebrates that exhibits broad patterns of phylosymbiosis #ISMEJournal from @hollybik.bsky.social academic.oup.com/ismej/advanc...

Really BIG mollusc news! 🧪🦑⚒️ 🐙 Earliest octopuses were giant top predators in Cretaceous oceans Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Beautiful time in Neuchatel today at a science communication workshop for the doctoral school of Swiss-French universities (CUSO) 🌊☀️🧬

Back to the Future with an amazing live orchestra at Basel’s film music festival 🎻⏰⚡️

#sciencetravel going local for once, but no less exciting: visiting @eawag.bsky.social for discussions and a talk on this perfect day! ☀️💧🧬

Black Forest no longer visible from the roof terrace thanks to Basel's growing biomedical skyline, but the barbecue remains unaffected. 🏢🔥🌭

Commuting im Switzerland means that even reviewer #2 can't ruin your day... 🚆🏞

Fantastic trip to Belfast for a talk at the annual conference of @microbiologysociety.org - great chance to meet old & new friends and to explore a beautiful city!

Excited to share the last installation of my PhD work. Worked with an all-star team on this one who really made this all come together beautifully. @ranidreamer.bsky.social @amardeeep.bsky.social @benadler.bsky.social and many others. www.cell.com/cell-reports...

Fantastic work by @phagemorgan.bsky.social and colleagues on AdfM as a viral tool overcoming bacterial DarT2 immunity - congratulations! We only pulled it out of a HIDEN-SEQ screen, but they found it independently and beautifully show mechanism + biology. Great mutual confirmation of results! 🙏🏼🧬

Absolutely brilliant work by @vivekmutalik.bsky.social, @lucasmoriniere.bsky.social, and team on Escherichia coli phage receptor prediction with a huge set of wet lab data as solid basis! 🍿🧬

Thing I learned today: Seal Lice vector seal heart worms! I don't know of another louse species that vectors a nematode. Do any other entofriends? www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Apply now to attend the next EMBO Bacterial Networks meeting #EMBOBacNet 🗓️13-18 September 2026 📍Sant Feliu de Guixols, Spain 📝Program and registration info: meetings.embo.org/event/26-bac... 👩‍🔬Organised with co-chair @s-lab.bsky.social and ECR @coralietesseur.bsky.social #MicroSky

Now out in its final form, our investigation of how Pseudomonas aeruginosa manages resources to permit ongoing adaptations to environment during starvation: journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/... Congrats to first author @findunmun1.bsky.social, and co-authors Claudia Hemsley and Elize Ambulte.

Fantastic snow excursion of the lab together with our friends in Martin Loessner's group 🏔😁☀️

Many thanks to you and @annechevallereau.bsky.social for hosting me in Lyon - great company, great discussions, and a great city! 🇫🇷🧬🚀

We found a viral Trojan Horse: a virus can hide inside another virus.This one surprised us: deltaviruses don’t just borrow a helper virus. They can travel inside it. A literal Trojan Horse “virus-in-a-virus” route into cells. 🤯 Kudos to 1st author @viroscope.bsky.social and co-authors !

New preprint of our friend Aritz Roa @aritz-roa.bsky.social with Nicholas Taylor @nmitaylorlab.bsky.social - even if phage mechanics are not your thing, check out their MAGNIFICENT video of T4 host recognition + infection directly im the post! 🎬🧬🔥

🚨Preprint! Happy to share the research from my PhD “Genome delivery of a contractile tailed phage and its superinfection exclusion mechanism”. We use cryoEM to study the genome ejection of the phage T4, revealing how the tape measure protein regulates the process. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

After >10 years of our lab studying bacterial cGAS-like enzymes, @hobbslabutah.bsky.social finally reconstitutes viral sensing in vitro and discovers how these ancient receptors sense phage protease enzymes to detect virion assembly and activate antiviral immunity www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Convergent MurJ flippase inhibition by phage lysis proteins www.nature.com/articles/s41...

4am today - Morgestraich! Lights out, lanterns on: Basler Fasnacht begins. 🎭🥁🌠

Another cross-country trip (for a doctoral defense) - quiet office time with a view! 🚆🌊❄️

Excited to share our preprint on integrase directionality here. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

A tribe of weevils has cracked a rare evolutionary puzzle: shifting hosts between parasitic and non-parasitic plants across distantly related families. Phylogenomic analysis reveals how plant-plant parasitism creates unique opportun... https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.04.03.587887

It's not even carnival yet and feels like spring already ☀️🌇

Reality check at the food microbiology practical course - molds from a sample of dried herbs... 🧫🍂 @contamclub.bsky.social

First events of our initiative debating access to phage therapy in Switzerland took place in Basel over the last weeks - great and constructive debates with the people as well as politicians, patients, clinicians, and regulators! Together we can make things happen. 🇨🇭🧬🌟

It seems that NCBI GenBank is currently not active beyond the repository itself and has also been unresponsive to requests for a while already. Do you think this may be a transient inconvenience or a sign that we should explore alternatives such as ENA at EMBL-EBI?

Making the home office more social - lunch in the city with university friends 🍝🏙

Spent most of my working day on silent + comfortable trains and I have rarely been more productive... also: Sunshine in Lausanne! ☀️🧬🇨🇭

🍄Transposon traffic in the mycocosmos🍄 Fascinating work reveals extensive horizontal TE transfer across fungi (@jromeijn.bsky.social, Iñigo Bañales & @mfseidl.bsky.social; doi.org/10.1016/j.cu...). I wrote a Dispatch to prime non-specialists,check it out here: doi.org/10.1016/j.cu.... #TEworldwide

Happy to share our recent preprint: "DNA-intercalating antiphage molecules trigger abortive infection through mutual destruction and synergize with bacterial immunity" www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... @spp2330.bsky.social, @mibinet.bsky.social, @dfg.de @hhu.de @fzj.bsky.social

Massive revision to our paper on relaxed selection of male reproductive genes in gorillas. TL;DR, they are eroding away coincident with the shift to polygyny in gorillas; big bodies no need for good sperm. 🦍 🤷 🧪 #EvoBio #SpermCompetition www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Secret life of prophages: template-directed synthesis of DNA superstructures via prophage activation and rolling circle replication in bacterial biofilms bioRxiv by Gabriel Antonio S. Minero et al with @thethormannden.bsky.social, Rikke Louise Meyer www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Happy new year to everybody - let's make it a good one (though the world seems to be seriously off track...)! 🌟🎉🧬

#microsky #synbiosky www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...