If you check out my lab's recent work, you'll notice how much biofilm structure is destroyed by dehydration & vacuum during standard scanning electron microscopy. These are both images of P. aeruginosa PA14 #biofilm on pig lung tissue at 48h p.i: using cryoSEM retains the biofilm matrix. #MicroSky

Zhi-Soon and Jacob also found that the AsmA sf protein YhdP interacts stably/specifically with DedD, which binds cell wall primarily at the division site. We offer some prelim thoughts for why/when this interaction might occur, despite seemingly distinct localization patterns. Lots to think abt! 3/3

New paper alert 🚨 I am super happy about it, for many reasons! 👥 It was a great collaborative project with Calum @chgjohnston.bsky.social and J. Pablo Radicella, designed a long time ago (in the pre-AlphaFold era - can you imagine?) together with @polardlab.bsky.social and @raphguerois.bsky.social

Congratulations to Prof. Adelle Coster, UNSW, to whom I was honoured to present the 2025 Australian Society for Biophysics (ASB) Bob Roberston medal during ASB2025 at @griffith.edu.au. Adelle is pictured with ASB President, @lisannes.bsky.social; inaugural awardee Hans Coster; & myself 2009 medal.

Our new paper is out in @natcomms.nature.com! We uncover how the Salmonella SPI-1 injectisome reshapes macrophage translation, resulting in a sustained decrease in inflammatory gene expression. Grateful to all my co-authors and collaborators for an incredible team effort!

Scientists feel that the pressure to publish is rising, but that the time and resources they have to do the necessary research are falling, according to a survey of 3,200 researchers go.nature.com/4hNDvuN

An Archaea bacterium with an internal membrane system! Amazing and beautiful work!

great idea to collaborate with courtney ellison for "...fancy microscopy to capture pilus dynamics!" 👏

📢 𝙰𝚋𝚜𝚝𝚛𝚊𝚌𝚝 𝚂𝚞𝚋𝚖𝚒𝚜𝚜𝚒𝚘𝚗𝚜 𝙲𝚕𝚘𝚜𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚂𝚘𝚘𝚗!! 𝙳𝚘𝚗’𝚝 𝚖𝚒𝚜𝚜 𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚌𝚑𝚊𝚗𝚌𝚎 𝚝𝚘 𝚜𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚎 𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚛𝚎𝚜𝚎𝚊𝚛𝚌𝚑 𝚊𝚝 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝙻𝚘𝚛𝚗𝚎 𝙿𝚛𝚘𝚝𝚎𝚒𝚗 𝙲𝚘𝚗𝚏𝚎𝚛𝚎𝚗𝚌𝚎 𝟸𝟶𝟸𝟼. 𝙰𝚋𝚜𝚝𝚛𝚊𝚌𝚝 𝚜𝚞𝚋𝚖𝚒𝚜𝚜𝚒𝚘𝚗𝚜 𝚌𝚕𝚘𝚜𝚎 𝟸𝟺𝚝𝚑 𝙾𝚌𝚝𝚘𝚋𝚎𝚛 – 𝚜𝚑𝚘𝚠𝚌𝚊𝚜𝚎 𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚠𝚘𝚛𝚔 𝚝𝚘 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚐𝚕𝚘𝚋𝚊𝚕 𝚙𝚛𝚘𝚝𝚎𝚒𝚗 𝚜𝚌𝚒𝚎𝚗𝚌𝚎 𝚌𝚘𝚖𝚖𝚞𝚗𝚒𝚝𝚢 𝚒𝚗 𝚐𝚕𝚘𝚛𝚒𝚘𝚞𝚜 𝙻𝚘𝚛𝚗𝚎! 🏖️ 🏄‍♀️ 🏊 👉 𝚂𝚞𝚋𝚖𝚒𝚝: www.lorneproteins.org/submissions

Cryogenic electron microscopy has been used to determine the detailed structure of an intermediate state called a “D-loop” that forms when strands of DNA are exchanged during homologous recombination. buff.ly/pZZfIso

Our paper on the Bacteroidota BAM complex is out in @natmicrobiol.nature.com! With @madejmar.bsky.social We found that BAM in Bacteroides and Porphyromonas gingivalis has a distinct architecture from BAM in Proteobacteria. doi.org/10.1038/s415...

🚀 Check out our new preprint on extending the scope of single-particle cryo-EM with 2D template matching! Improved cryo-EM reconstruction of sub-50 kDa complexes using 2D template matching is now available on bioRxiv! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Bacterial cell widening alters periplasmic size and activates envelope stress responses Kerwyn Huang, @typaslab.bsky.social et al find that E. coli outer-membrane protein RcsF senses reduced periplasm thickness due to increased cell width, & activates Rcs signaling www.embopress.org/doi/full/10....

🚨 Exciting PhD Opportunities with MACSYS! The MACSYS team at Monash University is offering multiple fully funded #PhD scholarships for students eager to explore the cutting edge of computational biology, microbiology, & systems modelling. 👉More info/apply: macsys.org/monash-phd-s...

RNA is far more than a messenger. Its structures regulate, evolve, and catalyze — carrying out functions DNA alone cannot. But predicting #RNA structure from sequence is still extremely difficult. In our recently published paper in @narjournal.bsky.social we present a way forward. 🧵 ⤵️

Aggresomes protect mRNA under stress in Escherichia coli www.nature.com/articles/s41... "prolonged stress leading to ATP depletion in Escherichia coli results in increased aggresome formation, compaction and selective mRNA enrichment within these aggresomes" 🦠 #microsky #rnasky

#News&Views Bacterial prions form amyloids in response to phage infection and induce cell death to prevent viral replication, similar to the processes in fungi and across the tree of life. #MicroSky www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Our paper is out in its final form! Back in April 2023, my coauthor Aleks Radakovic, then a PhD student, approached me after a talk in Chicago to ask what I thought an aminoacylated tRNA would look like if we pulled it through a @nanopore. doi.org/10.1038/s414...

one small consolation of being a 60+ year old investigator is the ability to submit to 𝘔𝘈𝘛𝘜𝘙𝘌 family journals — sure they’re low impact (for our knees) but they have an early bird special if you submit between 4:00 and 5:30 on weekdays

Meet the minds in MACSYS shaping the future with our series of profiles featuring our Postdoctoral Research Fellows. Dr TrungTin Nguyen is with MACSYS at QUT. His research investigates the mathematical & statistical foundations of #AI: www.linkedin.com/pulse/dr-tru... @trungtinnguyen.bsky.social

In this system, bacteria detect phage infection through a sensor protein (YjbH) and respond by severing the infected part of the cell via aberrant division. The rest of the cell survives and continues growing happily, essentially, bacterial autotomy!

#microsky We challenge the long-standing view that peptidoglycan alone protects cells from bursting. Our study shows that the periplasm — enclosed by OM–PG connections — acts as a pressure buffer essential for osmoprotection in Gram-negative bacteria. 📄 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🍹Sharma, Jiao et al. report glycosylation of small RNAs within #exosomes and propose a glycosylation-dependent mechanism for #RNA targeting into exosomes, which may influence intercellular communication and RNA stability in the extracellular environment. 👉https://rdcu.be/eykKY bit.ly/455vyuP

We have been working on ways to find #phage with long shelf-life and this one is a winner. 12 months freeze-thawing as much as you like, no loss of viability #phageSky #microSky rdcu.be/ewnzT

📣NAR Breakthrough Article!📣 ✂️ Removal of a single tRNA^Gly gene copy in Staphylococcus aureus via CRISPR weakens the cell wall, biofilm formation and increases antibiotic susceptibility💊 📖 doi.org/10.1093/nar/... #Microbiology #CRISPR #tRNA #AntibioticResearch #BacterialGenetics

Check out these amazing lipid-monolayer-trapping oligomeric OMPs published by @lalouxlab.bsky.social and Lovering Labs. The BAM complex in these bugs must be wild! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

What better way to use my first proper post than to share my first big piece of post-doctoral work with @cg-martini.bsky.social! Here, we used integrative modelling to build and simulate a mitochondrial cristae. Find the paper here (rdcu.be/eujAC) or see below for a quick overview 👇

It's seem like arginine is emerging as a major host cue. So we wrote an IAI minireview on how arginine levels vary between host tissues and affect microbial behavior. The review is online today! journals.asm.org/doi/epdf/10.... @brookeeryan3.bsky.social #microsky

Our paper reporting a highly conserved mechanism by which arginine positively regulates hypervirulent K. pneumoniae mucoid phenotype is now fully online. rdcu.be/euiWG Summary picture is below, but details in the 🧵

After an unexpectedly long editorial process, our paper describing the structures of the E coli TolAQR and TonB-ExbBD complexes is finally out. The coordinates are to be released on July 9th on the PDB. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The peer-reviewed version of our article on the flagellum filament assembly is out! A masterpiece from duo extraordinaire Kailin and Rosa, and an incredibly productive collaboration with Marc Erhardt and Morgan Beeby.

Here is a new paper by C. Peterson, D. Gandhi, A. Carlson, A. Lubkemann, E. Richardson, J. Serralta, M.S. Allen, S. Roy, C.M. Kribs & H.V. Kojouharov on A SIMPL Model of Phage-Bacteria Interactions Accounting for Mutation and Competition. link.springer.com/article/10.1... 🧪

Molecular interplay between peptidoglycan integrity and outer membrane asymmetry in maintaining cell envelope homeostasis https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.19.660527v1

It is online since a few days, so time to recap: Our first steps in a new field of bacterial polysaccharide secretion, focused on Pel system from Pseudomonas aeruginosa: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Super excited to share our latest work revealing impt of protein-lipid interactions for the pri fn of the Tol-Pal complex in maintaining outer memb lipid homeostasis in E. coli! Huge discovery by Nadege Lim in collab @pstansfeld.bsky.social @robincorey.bsky.social 1/7 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

@weeboont.bsky.social talked about our lab's recent preprint where we report AsmA superfamily proteins, believed to be phospholipid transporters, localizing to cell poles in E. coli. Really interesting observations, with impt implications for OM assembly! Read it 👇! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

www.linkedin.com/posts/macsys... Please follow us, and join us if you want to get into building comprehensive whole cell models

Learning starts today 😂 #puffingbilly #souvenir #aussieslang #melbourne #goodbook

How does your favorite species elongate? 🧵 "Phenotypic plasticity in bacterial elongation among closely related species". Happy to see this paper in print @natcomms.nature.com. Nice work by @mariedelaby.bsky.social, Liu Yang et al. See original 🧵, different colours, same data and conclusions.

We are looking for a postdoc to study biomolecular condensates and/or mechanosensitive membrane proteins. Please help spread the news 🙏 sites.rutgers.edu/shi-lab/look...

Bacterial genomes still contain many hidden genes. This article reports a high-resolution map of translated proteins, incl. small ones, in the pathogen Campylobacter jejuni @uniwuerzburg.bsky.social @campy-bara.bsky.social @sharmalab.bsky.social

The further a researcher or inventor moves from their previous work, the less cited their latest work will be https://go.nature.com/44VjEW9

The nucleoid of rapidly growing E. coli 🦠 localizes close to the inner membrane & is organized by transcription, translation, & cell geometry @michriscopy.bsky.social @uni-wuerzburg.de @heilemannlab.bsky.social @goetheuni.bsky.social #microbiology

The MACSYS team was well represented at this year's InSTEM Conference in Melbourne. The InSTEM Conference brings together leaders, allies, and members of marginalised groups with a goal to foster inclusive environments, share effective diversity strategies, and strengthen allyship.

Great science looks at big unknowns. In bacteria, sRNAs control gene expression but ‘how’ they do this at systems level is far from known. @MACSYS is recruiting for courageous PhD students who would learn, know and report how sRNAs deliver systems level phenotypes macsys.org/monash-phd-s... for

Working on #klebsiella genomes? ✅ Want to collaborate globally to advance Klebs genomic epi? ✅ Please join us via the KlebNET-GSP Epidemiology consortium ⬇️ #microsky #AMR

We are recruiting for a PhD student who wants to understand how bacterial membranes are built and how they function. It would be a biology meets maths project … if this piques your interest take a look here: macsys.org/monash-phd-s... for project details and contact info