Excited to share our new paper out today in @science.org 🎉 We show that HGT via natural competence drives diversification of chromosomal integrons in V. cholerae 🤩 Below a 🧵 on key findings incl. background on natural competence in V. cholerae 1/ #microsky #phagesky www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

We are really interested in #phages that use the type IV pilus as receptors, and the ways in which bacteria - like #Pseudomonas - try to escape those phages without crippling themselves permanently in the process. healthsci.mcmaster.ca/hiding-in-pl... @mcmasteriidr.bsky.social

New paper showing how tailed #phages recognize diverse #Pseudomonas #T4P! Outstanding work by PhD candidate Ikram Qaderi, building on work started a decade ago during my sabbatical in the McArthur lab and in collaboration with the Guarné lab, now at #McGill. @mcmasteriidr.bsky.social

Cracked, but still there: the glass ceiling persists for senior women in science www.nature.com/articles/d41...

New paper alert! Outstanding work by PhD candidate Nathan Roberge, great collab with the Ellison and Maxwell labs. #Pseudomonas #phage DMS3 encodes Aqs1, an inhibitor of #T4P assembly ATPase PilB, but how it binds and leads to loss of function was unknown. @mcmasteriidr.bsky.social

Correction on the start time - NOON EDT! Clearly I'm not awake because of the recent switch to daylight savings time.

Join us online tomorrow 11am EDT to catch PhD candidate Veronica Tran talking about work from her recently accepted mBio paper on #Pseudmonas mutants selected by type IV pilus-targeting #phages! @mcmasteriidr.bsky.social @mcmasternexus.bsky.social

🧵 Proud to present a tour de force by postdoc @gregbwhitfield.bsky.social solving the mystery of how bacterial Tad pili can extend and retract with a single motor ATPase. Great collaboration with Lynne Howell, @dr-lori-burrows.bsky.social, @ianyyen.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Beautiful, now I can retire 😁

Happy International Day for Women and Girls in Science! @mcmasteriidr.bsky.social @mcmasternexus.bsky.social @mcmasteruniversity.bsky.social

Summer REU in biofilms! Pls share. www.binghamton.edu/centers/biof...

Are you trying to kill #MRSA? The Burrows & the Pinho labs are too, and we found that an old anti-inflammatory compound can resensitize it to pen G and other beta lactams in a wall teichoic acid-dependent way, but unlike other WTA adjuvants. @mcmasteriidr.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...

Now available - PhD student Veronica Tran reviews the importance of identifying & reporting #phage receptors to build better therapeutic cocktails with diverse #bacteriophages for tough pathogens like #Pseudomonas journals.asm.org/doi/epub/10.... @mcmasteriidr.bsky.social @mcmasternexus.bsky.social

The report, issued Tuesday by the Council of Canadian Academies, takes a comprehensive look at the state of science and technology in Canada – the first such assessment since 2018. At its focus is the role that research and development plays in economic growth across the country.

New paper alert! PhD candidate Veronica Tran asked what types of resistance mutations were selected in #Pseudomonas by type IV pilus-specific #phages & whether they were reversible, Qs relevant to #phagetherapy - she got some interesting answers! Read the paper here: www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...

New paper alert! We used our fav technique, genetic suppression, to understand how FimX controls function of the T4P PilB motor ATPase in Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Great collab with the Ellison lab at U Georgia who helped with some fancy microscopy to capture pilus dynamics! doi.org/10.1371/jour...

New paper! Specific PilA and PilY1 sequences make PilU dispensable for T4P-dependent twitching motility in P. aeruginosa. However, most suppressors still had high cAMP levels from loss of PilU, showing that motility and surface sensing responses can be uncoupled.🧐 ⏩ journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

@knutdrescher.bsky.social is advertising a PhD position in their group in Basel 🇨🇭 with a focus on bacterial biofilms Application deadline: 14 November 2025 www.biozentrum.unibas.ch/open-positio...

Such a fun project & massive team effort. We sampled tree cores my 1st yr of grad school then took a year to figure out how to grind wood… ! But we were amazed to find such a complex & unexpected ecosystem inside trees. And we’ve just scratched the surface! We explored 150 trees— 3 trillion to go!

Zip "prevents internalization and destruction of newly released phage progeny, a phenomenon that we call the anti-Kronos effect after the Greek god who consumed his offspring. Zip activity promotes the accumulation of free phages in bacterial lysogen communities, thereby enhancing viral spread."

New paper alert! PhD candidate Nathan Roberge is studying regulation of the #T4P assembly ATPase PilB and identified suppressors of FimX with enhanced motility. Where did they map? Find out here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Lovely work by @ianyyen.bsky.social and @gregwhitfield99.bsky.social on the bifunctional ATPase that powers assembly and disassembly of #T4cP type IV pili! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Nifty - circular pilins! Cryo-EM structure of the conjugation H-pilus reveals the cyclic nature of the TrhA pilin | PNAS www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

While I watch chaotic dismantling efforts in the name of efficiency: 'Few humans on their deathbed have celebrated their achievement of “Inbox Zero.”' www.forkingpaths.co/p/against-op...

If I was 30 years younger...awesome lab!

Please repost!!!!! Abstraction submission for the next Great Wall Symposium is now open! Come to Sicily in September and learn the latest on bacterial cell wall biology. thegreatwall-symposium.org/abstract-sub...

Great week at BLAST XVIII in Cancún - terrific science and conversations with smart people, plus no polar vortex!

Distribution of the four type VI secretion systems in Pseudomonas aeruginosa and classification of their core and accessory effectors @naturecomms.bsky.social from Daniel Unterweger www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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!

“Now is the time to halt the spread of #H5N1 that is encroaching all around us.”—Bright 6 steps that Biden or Trump admin can take now to prevent a pandemic... fortune.com/well/2025/01... #BlueSky  #MedSky 🧪 #IDSky #scisky #medtwitter #EMSky #EMedSky #nurseSky #MedEd #fmSky #PedSky #birdflu

🤯

Another newly discovered mechanism of bacteria inhibiting competitors - increasing their sensitivity to phages - fascinating www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Trojan horse peptide conjugates remodel the activity spectrum of clinical antibiotics doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

We found that many bacterial species use exogenous peptidoglycan fragments - released by lysis of neighboring cells - as a general danger signal, triggering a danger response that protects bacteria against many dangers: biofilm formation. Details here 👇 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Peptidoglycan as danger signal promotes biofilm formation - great article by the Drescher lab www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Lay abstracts are hard. It's surprisingly difficult to thread the needle between: "Streptomyces are Gram-positive actinobacteria that biosynthesise a spectrum of bioactive metabolites," and "There is a tiny magic creature that lives in the soil and will make the bad-bad go away." 🧪🦠

Isolation and Characterization of a Novel Jumbo Phage HPP-Temi Infecting Pseudomonas aeruginosa Pa9 and Increasing Host Sensitivity to Ciprofloxacin. DOI: 10.3390/antibiotics13111006 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39596701/

Ten species comprise half of the bacteriology literature, leaving most species unstudied https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.04.631297v1

Cool octopus or elephant vibes.

Antibiotic emergency ‘could claim 40 million lives in next 25 years’

Azithromycin is not typically used for Gram-negative infections due to their outer membrane resistance, but this study shows that VIM-2-induced membrane disruptions unexpectedly increase susceptibility, offering a novel treatment option. Encouraging news 👍 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Beautiful antibiotic discovery data visualisation, and bang up to date too #MicroSky

15 years data on infections from the US VA: www.thelancet.com/journals/lan... My 3 takeaways: (1) Infection prevention and control works; (2) We still need better antibiotics; and (3) the choice of the denominator in such studies should be carefully made www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

Structure of the Pseudomonas aeruginosa PAO1 Type IV pilus Finally out in PLOS Pathogens. Congrats Hannah Ochner and co-authors. @mrclmb.bsky.social journals.plos.org/plospathogen...

#ASMBiofilms Mark your calendars - This is shaping up to be a fantastic conference in Fall of 2025 in Portland, Oregon

Supercool work!! Diverse phage coexistence in a clonal bacterial host 🧫

Cool!

Are you working on natural products? We’ve just released version 4.0 of the MIBiG data standard and repository! It now includes 3059 biosynthetic gene clusters, thanks to the combined efforts of 288 expert contributors. A thread: (1/8) academic.oup.com/nar/advance-...

If an #H5N1 pandemic starts tomorrow or in three months, there will be little mystery as to how it happened. The conditions are all there. They have been for a while. So in some ways the more interesting question to me at the moment is: Why aren’t we in a pandemic yet? Story here, 🧵 to come: 🧪#IDSky