Drew Bridges

@bridgesbio.bsky.social

Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon University Department of Biological Sciences. Fascinated by bacterial decision-making. https://labs.bio.cmu.edu/bridges/

New preprint: "A branching cell-fate decision in biofilm dispersal enables long-term surface persistence." When V. cholerae biofilms disperse, it isn’t a uniform exit, rather, an opportunity to bet-hedge. A subpopulation of cells stay behind, primed for biofilm regrowth. doi.org/10.64898/202...

Congratulations to @emmynguyen.bsky.social and our wonderful collaborators. Here we uncover and characterize a periplasm protein that modulates broad physiological changes to V. cholerae by controlling a two component system!

Emmy Nguyen@emmynguyen.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Thrilled to share that my first-author paper is now published in Nature Communications! 🎉 Huge thanks to my PI, Dr. Drew Bridges (@bridgesbio.bsky.social), my collaborators, and all the incredible lab members for their support throughout this project www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Thrilled to have presented my research in the lab of @bridgesbio.bsky.social at three conferences this year: Bacteria and Phages, ABASM, and Rust Belt Microbiome. Grateful for the chance to share my work and connect with inspiring scientists. Can't wait to see what future conferences bring!

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We determine that additional pathogenic organisms also exhibit multicellular community formation in response to lysis. Given the pervasiveness of lysis in the environment, we propose that lysis sensing is a threat-agnostic mechanism by which bacteria can gauge endangerment. (4/4)

We identify the cell lysis signal as an abundant cytoplasmic polyamine, norspermidine, which is detected by an inner-membrane receptor, MbaA, that in turn drives biofilm formation. (3/4)

We find that the mechanism underlying this observation is a process we refer to as "lysis sensing"...whereby surviving cells sense a signal released by the death of their kin. (2/4)

Had a blast writing a commentary #msphere on “Biogeography of a human oral microbiome at the micron scale” by @jmarkwelch.bsky.social et al. The work in this paper made me want to be a microbiologist. I vividly remember an MBL lecture by Gary Borisy on the topic when I was a grad student.

mSphere of Influence: The complex world of bacterial biogeography | mSphere

Historically, bacteria have been thought of as comparatively simple organisms that lack the panache of their eukaryotic, “higher organism,” counterparts. We now know that this is not the case; bac...

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