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...

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...

Delighted to share our recently published work! Ever wondered how Klebsiella (and others) deals with capsule production’s costs ? The paper: journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/... Thread👇

At last ! A tool specifically for phage-plasmid hunters. Check tyPPing by @karinailchenko.bsky.social and @eugenpfeifer.bsky.social

#phagesky I am looking for phages infecting Streptococcus pneumoniae to test a phenotype - does anyone have some and willing to share ? Repost appreciated :)

Here's our new broad review on the extended mobility of plasmids, about all mechanisms driving and limiting their transfer. From conjugation to conduction, phage-plasmids to hitchers, molecular to evolutionary dynamics, ecology to biotech. The state of affairs. 1/9 academic.oup.com/nar/article/...

Excited to see our work published in @ScienceAdvances ! We present RBPseg, a method for structural prediction of #phage receptor-binding proteins. We applied it to diverse tail fibers and validated the predicted structures using #cryoEM. Read here: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

The study involves our‪ microbiologist @fredoleroux.bsky.social, whom we profiled in late 2023 as a new hire and Canada Excellence in Research Chair: nouvelles.umontreal.ca/en/article/2...

The latest work from my lab, Phage Disco, a method @ellie-rand.bsky.social developed for targeted discovery of bacteriophages based on the bacterial receptor, defense system, or other component they interact with, is now live in mSystems journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

Exciting news!! Our latest paper is out in Nat. Microbiol. @natmicrobiol.nature.com We show that a sub-lineage of 7th pandemic V. cholerae has acquired mobile genetic elements packed with phage defense systems—rendering it multi-phage resistant 😳 ..... 1/3 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Our paper on how integrons are biobanks of novel minimal defense systems is now out www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... Two main conclusions on this excellent work led by @eloilittner.bsky.social @baptistedarracq.bsky.social 1/n

Join the Blokesch lab (@EPFL) as a postdoc in Molecular Microbiology 🤩 Study Vibrio cholerae defense systems (phage/plasmid) in a dynamic, collaborative environment in Lausanne close to Lake Geneva in 🇨🇭! Please visit my lab's webpage for details about the position and how to formally apply.

🚨 Postdoc Alert! Join my lab @ Montréal’s Faculty of Medicine via the 2025 CIB Fellowship Competition 🧬 Project: “The Paradox of Parasitism” – bioinformatics + marine parasite evolution 💸 $63,819/yr + full benefits (2 yrs) Apply 👉 cibmontreal.ca/en/news/laun...

🚨Super happy to see this preprint out!! Main part of Leyre’s PhD journey on the eCIS from Photorhabdus luminescens. Full structure using #cryoEM Check it out! 🎊 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

New postdoc position in our lab (2 y+): evolutionary genomics of integrons and MGEs with focus on vibrio-phage interactions. Great environment @pasteur.fr for science, career building. Super collaborators @celineloot.bsky.social @amazeld.bsky.social @fredoleroux.bsky.social 3 weeks to apply!

Great collaboration with @fredoleroux.bsky.social . Kudos for everyone, esp. Charles Bernard & Yannick Labreuche. Thanks to the funders and @pasteur.fr @cnrsbiologie.bsky.social @umontreal.ca @sbroscoff.bsky.social Here's the paper in OA: doi.org/10.1093/isme...

I was waiting two years to see this out!! The genomic location of bacterial genes is not random!!! Congratulation on the authors (Martin Lercher and Team!). www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

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...

And here it is, the completed BASEL collection finally published as early access in @plosbiology.org - see the thread for more details. 🤗🧬🎣

The BASEL collection of E. coli #phages is limited by its host strain. @humollidorentina.bsky.social @damienpiel.bsky.social @aharms485.bsky.social &co use a modified host to add 36 new phages, revealing roles of O-antigen in recognition & R-M systems in immunity @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4jirGvX

ERC-funded PhD (infection biology) and a Postdoc (genetic engineering) position in my lab. #phagetherapy

Excited to share that our paper on locus visualisation tool LoVis4u is out! Entirely driven by fantastic PhD student Artyom Egorov @egorov.bsky.social academic.oup.com/nargab/artic...

New mechanism of gene transfer! With @tcostalab.bsky.social @imperialcollegeldn.bsky.social, we discovered that cf-PICIs form tail-less elements that, once released, spread among different bacterial species by hijacking tails from various phages. More exciting news soon! shorturl.at/kRJqE

🚨 🧬 Updated preprint on the completed BASEL collection - what's new? Some fun with bacterial immunity and a new P22 relative infecting E. coli K-12. A thread 🧵

This preprint makes a point that is valid for a lot of machine learning approaches. Organisms or genes are linked by evolutionary history; they are not independent. This results in correlation between learning and test sets, and often in over-optimistic evaluations of the methods' outcome.

Do not miss this exciting event!