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Alexander Harms

@aharms485.bsky.social

Bacteriophages, dormant bacteria, and bacterial immunity. Assistant Professor of Molecular Phage Biology at ETH Zürich.

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Erik van Nimwegen@erikvannimwegen.bsky.social · last mo.

What do single bacterial cells do when they run out of carbon source? If you missed the preprint, check out the official publication: doi.org/10.1038/s443... If the total bacterial population on earth stays roughly constant, then there must on average be as much death as replication. 1/n

E. coli prepares for starvation by dramatically remodeling its proteome in the first hours after loss of nutrients - Molecular Systems Biology

Although in the wild bacteria likely spend most of their time deprived of nutrients and slowly starving to death, very little is known about how bacteria adapt their phenotype to starvation. Here we combine microfluidics with quantitative fluorescence microscopy of transcriptional reporters to comprehensively quantify growth and gene expression at the single-cell level in E. coli during carbon starvation. We find that all cells immediately stop growing upon loss of carbon source and that almost all remain alive for over 30 hours. Furthermore, entry into starvation triggers a dynamic expression program that is remarkably homogeneous across single cells, but highly variable across genes, causing dramatic remodeling of the proteome early in starvation. We further show that, as protein production and the rate of protein degradation both decay approximately exponentially, protein concentrations become essentially ‘frozen’ after the first 5 to 10 hours, setting phenotypes for several days of starvation. Finally, using experiments in which gene expression is inhibited for different periods, we show that protein production in the first 5 hours is crucial for protecting cells from stresses late in starvation.

doi.org

Erol Akcay@akcay.theoretical.bio · 3mo ago

Check out this exciting new paper in @currentbiology.bsky.social from my friend and collaborator @stephaniesimone.bsky.social’s lab on the genomics of novel rhizobium endosymbiosis www.cell.com/current-biol...

The evolutionary genomics of novel endosymbiosis in wild rhizobia bacteria

Resolving early steps in how hosts and microbes unite in novel endosymbiosis is critical for understanding key evolutionary innovations and ecosystem functions. Montoya et al. reveal how mobile geneti...

cell.com