Do plasmids really move around that much? Well, maybe not always Thrilled to have contributed to this story with two of my favourite microbiologists: @jrpenades.bsky.social & @sanmillan.bsky.social This great work was led by Akshay Sabnis & @wfigueroac3.bsky.social www.cell.com/cell-reports...

New paper with my (amazing) friend and mentor @jrpenades.bsky.social Really looking forward to see what plasmid aficionados think of this one!! With @asantoslopez.bsky.social @wfigueroac3.bsky.social Akshay Sabins and others www.cell.com/cell-reports...

✨New paper from @jrpenades.bsky.social and @sanmillan.bsky.social labs. We found that non-conjugative plasmids 🧬 tend to have low mobility to promote functional diversity ⚔️💊 in bacterial communities🦠🦠. Brilliant work by Akshay, @asantoslopez.bsky.social and others. www.cell.com/cell-reports...

📢¡Oferta de trabajo en el CBM! El grupo de David Ruano ofrece un contrato predoctoral para desarrollar un nuevo método diagnóstico del SIBO (Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth). Plazo hasta el 30 oct. Info👇 www.cbm.uam.es/index.php/jo...

🚨🚨🚨 Two super well-funded PhD grants from our MSCA Doctoral Network @evomg-dn.bsky.social at our lab at @melisupf.bsky.social, @crg.eu and the @evomg-bcn.bsky.social Program. If you're excited about evolution, genomics and biomedical research, this is your DN! 😃 Further info: www.evomg-dn.eu and 👇

Session 3 (Thr 09/10 in the afternoon) was dedicated to Microbes, microbiome and antibiotic resistance.

Nuestro compañero Álvaro San Millán (@sanmillan.bsky.social), investigador en el #CNB_CSIC ha recibido el Premio María Moliner, que reconoce la labor de quienes se inician en la dirección de tesis doctorales, destacando su compromiso en el acompañamiento del talento emergente. ¡Enhorabuena!👏

New preprint! Ever wondered why only a fraction of genomes encode CRISPR immunity? 🧬 🦠 Turns out CRISPR is rarely beneficial against virulent phages, being most beneficial against those for which resistance mutations are rare! An epic effort by Rosanna Wright www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Imagine we could travel back in time ⏪⌛️to explore the world of bacterial pathogens before humans discovered and industrialised antibiotics We just did that to study the history of #AMR spread @science.org doi.org/10.1126/scie... If you like time travel & biology, this 🧵is for you👇

Published in Current Biology! P. aeruginosa can use its filamentous phage to inhibit competitors but high phage production is susceptible to cheater miniphage invasion. Subsequent phage tragedy of the commons can lower bacteria and phage fitness. Link: authors.elsevier.com/c/1lt5I3QW8S...

View from the lab now. Did I mention that we are recruiting faculty microbiologists? www.linkedin.com/posts/vaughn...

Delighted to see our paper studying the evolution of plasmids over the last 100 years, now out! Years of work by Adrian Cazares, also Nick Thomson @sangerinstitute.bsky.social - this version much improved over the preprint. Final version should be open access, apols. Thread 1/n

🚨 Microbiologists! We are recruiting Assistant / Associate Professors in 3 collaborative areas of our U. Pittsburgh School of Medicine. 1) MMG (my dept): fundamental research in med micro 2) Peds ID / I4Kids institute 3) Center for Vaccine Research 🔗 to all 3 w/info: www.linkedin.com/posts/vaughn...

We are hiring a PhD student! Are you fascinated by microbes and evolution? Come join us in Barcelona!

Our second paper with @tcostalab.bsky.social and GoogleDeepMind reports our experience with Google’s co-scientist: remarkably, the AI independently recapitulated our experimental discovery on cf-PICIs, showcasing AI’s potential to accelerate biology. www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

We discovered a new horizontal gene transfer mechanism: tail-less cf-PICIs hijack free phage tails extracellularly, forming infectious chimeric virions that drive both intra- and inter-species transfer among bacteria. @jonaszpatkowski.bsky.social @tcostalab.bsky.social @jrpenades.bsky.social

Check out @julielebris.bsky.social’s thread on our latest manuscript describing phenotypic heterogeneity in capsule production in Klebsiella & Acinetobacter @klebclub.bsky.social This work started when I was still in @pasteur.fr & got finished in @cbitoulouse.bsky.social #microsky #phagesky

New preprint from my lab! We describe how transposable elements are activated in Parkinson’s disease, which is linked to an interferon response. We believe this study significantly advances our understanding of transposons and their role in human brains. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

El próximo 5 de septiembre en nuestro #47congresosebbm tendrá lugar la entrega del Premio Fundación Lilly a la Mejor Tesis Doctoral en Bioquímica y Biología Molecular a Alberto Hipólito Carrillo por el trabajo de su tesis. https://f.mtr.cool/rnstpoiucs

Extremely glad to see this out!! Wonderful work by all the lab, especially @aliciapcv.bsky.social. Don't miss her thread!!

New prepint ‼️ We studied how the 3 T6SSs of P. putida shape the rhizobiota of tomato plants. Spoiler alert: K2- and K3-T6SS do not kill E. coli, but they are functional in the rhizosphere. In collaboration with the lab of Prof. Marta Martin & Rafael Rivilla @uam.es www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Our new manuscript is out! A bit of everything cool: Plasmids ✅ Insertion Sequences ✅ AMR Evolution ✅ Microbial Communities ✅ Databases analyses ✅ Mathematical modeling ✅ See the scientific thread below of Jorge Sastre, who has brilliantly led this work with @palomarodera.bsky.social

Oxygen levels can affect how resistance genes work, impacting antibiotic efficacy. This can be relevant for the most used ones: for example, resistance to fosfomycin varies with oxygen. Learn more in our latest paper 👉 bit.ly/3T8sdpp a work led by @jaescudero.bsky.social #AntibioticResistance

New pre-print from my lab! Plasmids link antibiotic resistance and phage defense. E.coli plasmids are hotspots for both antibiotic resistance and phage defense. Phage therapy has the potential to accidentally select for antibiotic resistance!!! #microsky#AMR#phage www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1....

New mini-review on the respiratory microbiome and its contribution to human health from biotechnology 🫁🦠 @tmcoque.bsky.social @microbiotech.bsky.social enviromicro-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

New paper alert! 🚨 Plasmids promote bacterial evolution through a copy number-driven increase in mutation rate. We combine theory, simulations, experimental evolution, and bioinformatics to demonstrate that mutation rates scale with plasmid copy number. Let's dive in! 🧵👇

Curious about plasmid biology? Our latest paper is out now in Nature Communications! 🚨 doi.org/10.1038/s414... We analyzed thousands of diverse bacterial plasmids to shed light for the first time on a key aspect of plasmid biology: plasmid copy number. 1/7 👇

🚨🚨New paper out in @natcomms.nature.com!! Come for the first large-scale analysis of plasmid copy number across species, stay for one of the most intriguing results of my lab: universal scaling laws in plasmid biology! 📈🧬 👉 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

One of my favourite serendipitous results from the lab came about because we were long-read sequencing bacterial: Vibrio cholerae, which is "supposed to" have TWO circular chromosomes (3 + 1 million base pairs) often has just ONE fused chromosome (4 Mbp). www.nature.com/articles/s41... (1/n)

🏆 Los Premios a jóvenes investigadores e investigadoras UAM 2024 reconocen la contribución significativa al desarrollo de la actividad investigadora en la #UAM. ¡Enhorabuena a todas las personas galardonadas en esta edición!👏🏻

Two strains isolated 60 years apart. One pan-sensitive, one MDR. How do they evolve under the same antibiotic pressure? Check out our new publication. 👇👇

This is awesome! Congrats to @vscooper.micropopbio.org, Abi, and the EvolvingSTEM team — amazing work. Super inspiring stuff.

This is so cool, @vscooper.micropopbio.org 👏 #EvolvingSTEM at its best!

Super honored to get the Best PhD Thesis award from @sebbm.bsky.social 🎓✨ Big thanks to everyone who supported me along the way. Huge congrats to all the other amazing winners too! 🙌

New opinion paper from the lab! www.cell.com/trends/micro...

When things add up: environmental structure and microbial interactions drive antibiotic-resistance plasmid evolution. New paper from the lab, and the third chapter of Lars Zandbergen’s thesis! www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...

🧪 Finally out after peer review, our work showing that "Mobile #Integrons carry Phage Defense Systems" is now published in Science 🎉 Short 🧵 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

What a milestone!!! I’m really glad I got to add my two cents to the growing knowledge about integrons — this paper is totally worth checking out!

Can resistance genes really hold their breath like pros? 🤔🤿 Outstanding work by Laura, Amalia, Nico and Ester from @jaescudero.bsky.social lab in collab with @sanmillan.bsky.social, Fernando Baquero and Rafael Cantón. Dive into our latest paper to find out! 👇🏼 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Our review on recent advances in #PhageTherapy against Klebsiella pneumoniae is out! We analyze KP-phage interactions from an eco-evo perspective, summarize many lab and clinical trials, and discuss novel approaches like genetic engineering & machine learning. #microsky doi.org/10.1371/jour...

Our new preprint by @nanamikubota.bsky.social shows that P. aeruginosa, and likely many other bacteria carrying filamentous prophages (like V. parahaemolyticus), risk being exploited by these phages in a runaway process that reduces fitness of both host and virus. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 🧵

Delighted to share our new study. A collaboration with the Thurlow lab. Antibiotic resistance rapidly emerges and thrives in diabetic mice. A worrying coming together of two major and growing health problems worldwide www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Preprint out! Bacteria w/ hyper-replicative filamentous phage lead to overnight emergence of cheater phages. Bacteria w/ both phages can outcompete wildtype, then rapidly lose phage via a phage Tragedy of the Commons @shellyscrib.bsky.social @vscooper.micropopbio.org www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Fantastic new preprint of Vaughn Cooper's lab @vscooper.micropopbio.org - filamentous phages can get cancer and it's contagious. 🔥👇🏼 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Prize Medal 2025 Prize Winner Prof Richard Lenski speaks to Early Career member, James Croxford about his up and coming lecture. Find out more about his work here: 🔗https://microb.io/PrizeWinner2025

... and finally the paper is out on microbial genomics! www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour...

Telomeric transposons are pervasive in linear bacterial genomes | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Pittsburgh universities receive $840M from the NIH annually, making us one of the nation’s leading biomedical research centers. It’s part of our bedrock and it’s being undermined. www.wtae.com/article/pitt...

Happy 37th birthday to the LTEE! the-ltee.org/history/