It is not only antibiotics but also certain viruses – known as bacteriophages – that can kill off pathogenic bacteria. However, Switzerland lacks the legal framework for the use of these viruses in therapy. What would need to change? Researcher Alexander Harms explains. ethz.ch/en/news-and-...

Synthetic lethal TN-seq! #microsky 🦠

You’ve heard of ubiquitination, meet deazaguanylation: Doug Wassarman in our lab discovered phage defense pathways have co-opted Q nucleobase biosynthetic enzymes to catalyze a new form of protein conjugation chemistry @science.org www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

C. elegans is a real animal and we set out to understand how it comes to have its distinctive biogeography. Its ancestral center of diversity is in the higher elevation forests of Hawaii. Its closest relatives are spread across east Asia. Did they travel from Asia? [Preprint 🧵]

I get that the news cycle is packed right now, but I just heard from a colleague at the Smithsonian that this is fully a GIANT SQUID BEING EATEN BY A SPERM WHALE and it’s possibly the first ever confirmed video according to a friend at NOAA 10 YEAR OLD ME IS LOSING HER MIND (a thread 🧵)

Bonjour, Quebec! 🍛🌤🧬 #sciencetravels

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #microsky

I wanted to get a video of this ghost crab but every time I got close to their hole they scuttled back in, so I tried getting clever with it. I made a little sandcastle and shoved my phone into it, hit record, and walked away. Crab was VERY suspicious of this addition to their environment.

You like phages ? In this publication, we use metaHiC and our new version of the MetaTOR pipeline to challenge the traditional view of phages with a narrow host range. @rkoszul.bsky.social @natmicrobiol.nature.com @cnrs.fr @institutpasteur.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

My favorite is the paper on Cacio e Pepe sauce - good science is needed to not mess with excellent pasta! I am sure our local pasta nerd Enea @phagemuffin.bsky.social would agree 😁🍝

My group at Science has been running a big campaign to engineer new channelrhodopsins. Excited to share the first results from it today: a suite of highly sensitive new opsins. We call them "WAChRs". Everyday indoor office lighting is enough to activate them pretty strongly.

Fantastic day for my annual visit at Pestalozzi Schulcamps to discuss phages with primary school classes ☀️🚆🧬

www.cell.com/cell/abstrac... A host organelle (in sea slugs) integrates stolen chloroplasts for animal photosynthesis

📢 The Federal Council plans to reduce the SNSF's budget by 270 million Swiss francs. The SNSF rejects these cuts. However, in order to be prepared, it has decided to cut costs in consultation with all partners. ➡️https://sohub.io/n2b1 #research #science #CHParl

Great bike tour through the vineyards above Basel with a taste of the new fermenting wine #foodmicrobiology 🍷🌤🤗

So great to see Lucy Shapiro — a scientific hero of mine both for her pioneering work and for her incredible communication skills —honored today www.nytimes.com/2025/09/11/h...

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...

🚀 New publication alert! 🚀 We just published in @natbiotech.nature.com: 👉 Targeted DNA ADP-ribosylation triggers templated repair in bacteria and base mutagenesis in eukaryotes doi.org/10.1038/s415...

So excited our antibiotic potentiation story is out 🤩 Led by the extraordinary @manonlang.bsky.social with @fox-science.bsky.social & @amazeld.bsky.social +amazing collaborators @immunobladder.bsky.social @imaneelmeouche.bsky.social 🦠 We believe it can make a difference in #AMR infections!

Pseudomonas aeruginosa senses exopolysaccharide trails using type IV pili and adhesins during biofilm formation by O'Toole, Parsek, & Wong groups www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Medicine Goes Viral – new doc on phage therapy in Switzerland. With antibiotic resistance on the rise, could phages offer hope for untreatable infections? Watch José-Maria Vidal’s story + the debate on making phages accessible ➡️ www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUMJ...

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...

Departmental faculty retreat in a beautiful old monastery - great place to calm down and discuss business!

Insanity! 🐜❤️‍🔥👇🏻

Cool preprint by Mathieu Berge @polardlab.bsky.social showing that the Spr1630 toxin (RipA) toxin targets the replication sliding-clamp (DnaN) and that this induces competence in Streptococcus pneumoniae. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

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 🧵

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...

Fantastic weekend in Norwich - great city and great food! ☀️🇬🇧🥂

A fantastic meeting of the Swiss Society for Microbiology has come to an end, full of amazing science and wonderful people! Still mind-blown by the keynote of Rafa Pinilla Redondo 🧬🎙️🏔️

Lost it in a train two days ago, could pick it up this morning at the local train station for a symbolic fee. Sometimes the efficiency in this country is (positively) scary! 🚆🇨🇭🧳

Good morning, Interlaken - fantastic venue for the annual meeting of the Swiss Society for Microbiology! 🇨🇭🏞️🦠

And the best room view award goes to SSM2025 in Interlaken🇨🇭

I cannot fully put into words what publishing this Review has meant to me, so I leave you with how we closed the paper. "The humble bacterium is still a relevant tool for the study of the underlying mechanisms that are conserved throughout life." 🧪🧫🧬📚 doi.org/10.1093/gene...

New in @asm.org #MMBR Computational function prediction of bacteria and phage proteins. How to annotate your #phage and #bacteria genomes by @susiegriggo.bsky.social @bedutilh.bsky.social @gbouras13.bsky.social and Bob #phagesky #microsky journals.asm.org/doi/epub/10....

schaechter.asmblog.org/schaechter/2... #MicroSky

Finally got my dissertation artwork tattooed (art by @fsantoriello.bsky.social) They're super adorable, based on the Ramones and the colors are the seasons since my work was seasonal changed in wastewater microbiome (red-summer, orange-fall, blue-winter spring-green)

Our final lakes for this expedition were the two largest of the Lacs de Vens in Mercantour National Park, France. One of the longer hikes, but as we stayed at the rustic hut (refuge) nearby, we could finish the filtration the following day. #CAPSOLUTION @mpimarinemicrobio.bsky.social @erc.europa.eu

My tip is to buy rock band T-shirts. 30 years from now, you can either be cool because you like classic rock or you can wear the shirt ironically.

Dialog with society about phage therapy - our Agora project is taking off! Getting ready for lots of events across the country (D/FR): phagenforum.ch 💊🎙️🇨🇭

The movie about phage therapy in Switzerland and beyond is available online now 🍿🎬💊 - link to the English version here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUMJ...

Fantastic paper for all the lovers of science and chocolate 👇🏻🍫🧬

Phages on the big screen! 🎬 Premiere of a brilliant film about phage therapy by our friend Thomas Häusler - powerful story, a great panel discussion, and inspiring conversations over the apero. 🧬🥂 #PhageTherapy

www.nature.com/articles/s42... Recent work from our lab, PhD work of Valentinna Floccari in collab with @bramkamplab.bsky.social lab and @evolvedbiofilm.bsky.social and many others. 🥳🤓

"We show that unrelated proteins have a universal tendency towards convergent evolution of secondary and tertiary motifs, causing an excess of high-scoring FP alignment... previous methods routinely overestimate significance by up to six orders of magnitude." www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Many spores from the Firmicutes group are decorated with hair-like structures. Since the 60s, they remained a mystery. @remaut-lab.bsky.social named these fibres ENdospore Appendages (ENAs). Using Cryo-ID, we report the identity, structure and function of F-ENA. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Guests on a summer evening means souvlakia from the roof barbecue 😁☀️🇬🇷

Elio Schaechter, eminent microbiologist and great human, leaves us his memoirs that tell the story of an extraordinary life: www.eliosmemoirs.org. What a fantastic and impactful journey!

Saddened to learn of the passing of Moselio "Elio" Schaechter—Distinguished Professor at Tufts, SDSU and UCSD—humanist and visionary leader in the fields of microbiology and scientific communication—mentor, friend, and inspiration to me and so many others Small Things Considered Big Things Achieved

#phage #phagesky Single cell viral tagging of Faecalibacterium prausnitzii reveals rare bacteriophages omitted by other techniques www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....