Anthony Vecchiarelli
@cellforganized.bsky.social
How do bacteria organize their innards? Associate Prof at UMich
Remembering the life of Brandon Jutras gone far too soon www.nhscotthanekamp.com/obituaries/D...
Obituary information for Dr. Brandon Lyon Jutras
View Dr. Brandon Lyon Jutras's obituary, contribute to their memorial, see their funeral service details, and more.
nhscotthanekamp.com
I'm not even on sabbatical yet and i'm already getting emails starting with "I know you're on sabbatical, but..."
A minimal lipid kinase/phosphatase system, two effector proteins from Legionella pneumophila, self-organizes together with its lipid substrates (PI/PI3P) into dynamic patterns on membranes. Check out our preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
I'm heartbroken to share that Dr. Brandon Jutras, a former postdoc, has tragically passed away. He built a thriving lab at Northwestern Feinberg and became a leading voice in Lyme disease research. A brilliant scientist, devoted family man, and generous friend & colleague. He will be deeply missed.
Bacteriology-Focused Assistant Professor Position in Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Michigan Application deadline: August 15, 2026 Come be my colleague!
👥 MEET THE EDITOR 👥 For those of you at Photosynthesis 2026: Ben Long, the editor of our special issue on Engineering Photosynthesis, is here all week. 🗨️ Do you have a paper to submit? Come and have a chat! #ICPR26 #plantscience #photosynthesis @botbml.bsky.social
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
A polarity-controlled Tad nanomachine enables prey invasion in a bacterial predator
Type IV pili are dynamic surface appendages assembled by envelope-spanning nanomachines that mediate diverse bacterial interactions, yet how these systems are adapted to predatory lifestyles remains p...
biorxiv.org
Pls share: U of Washington has an opening for a tenure-track faculty position at the rank of Assistant Professor. This position is expected to specialize in molecular virology or bacteriology. Here is a link: microbiology.washington.edu/index.php/ne...
Micro is Hiring! | UW Microbiology
microbiology.washington.edu
“Startups funded by venture capital are not a good way to develop potentially an important climate solution. If we want to scale [CO₂removal] , it should be government-funded and government-led.” 🌊🧪
Startups overhyped marine carbon dioxide removal – it may never happen - Land and Climate Review
Many overestimate how close we are to scaling up carbon removal deployment, says leading oceanographer David Ho.
landclimate.org
Machine learning-assisted directed evolution of plant Rubisco www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Machine learning-assisted directed evolution of plant Rubisco
Ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase (Rubisco) is foundational to life on Earth, catalyzing carbon dioxide (CO2) fixation to generate biomass. However, Rubisco is a slow and inefficient enz...
biorxiv.org
5 (+?) independent plant lineages evolved to text the same bacteria for nitrogen. we just need to learn the language they're using. www.cell.com/trends/plant...
Plant–cyanobacterial symbioses: mutualism with emerging translational possibilities
Engineering rhizobial–plant nitrogen fixation in crops is a major goal in plant synthetic biology. We propose expanding efforts to plant–cyanobacterial symbioses as an alternative path. Targeting the ...
cell.com
And two more pre-prints from the lab, focusing on MreB polymerization cycle and dynamics! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
A genetic screen unveils the polymerization cycle of the bacterial actin-like MreB
MreB, a bacterial actin homologue that organizes cell wall synthesis in most rod-shaped bacteria, assembles into membrane-associated filaments through mechanisms that have remained elusive despite dec...
biorxiv.org
We built a a self-dividing synthetic cell ! Check out this #CDlab preprint on BioRxiv: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Great work by 1st author Charu Sharma who encoded dynaminA in a genome and expressed that in liposomes that then divide into daughter cells! Collaboration with Koenderink lab!
Today's breakthroughs rest on yesterday's curiosity-driven science. This is why these arguments matter. It has long been understood that every transformative technology ultimately traces back to fundamental discoveries made years or decades earlier through basic research. 2/3
"Sorry about the Bridge. You guys are the greatest neighbors. Just hold on. There will be relief." - Broken Social Scene Fox Theater Detroit
@dereklowe.bsky.social lets loose again (and I am still here for it). www.science.org/content/blog... 1/2
The Assault On Science Funding Continues
science.org
A self-organized geometry sensing oscillator spatially regulates cell division in archaea https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.07.23.738820v1
I just still cannot help myself from looking that these beautiful real-time dynamics videos from @anjbadri.bsky.social lab! thanks to all the authors from @joeloparo.bsky.social / @anjbadri.bsky.social and TJ Ha labs.
Miloš Tišma@tismaa.bsky.social · 2w agoI'm happy to share the first paper from my postdoc work: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... How does RecA find one homologous sequence in an entire chromosome -and what turns that encounter into a repair-competent one? We find that DNA topology is the gatekeeper !! 1/10
A wonderful collaboration between Tomo Higashi and Ann Miller's labs about how the kinase PAK4 regulates cell junction remodeling to allow cell rearrrangment 🧪
Journal of Cell Biology@jcb.org · 2w ago@babliadhikary.bsky.social, Higashi et al. show that PAK4 drives dynamic vertex remodeling in cells and embryos through spatiotemporal regulation of #myosin II. Inhibition of PAK4 disrupts tissue packing and compromises junctional continuity and barrier function. rupress.org/jcb/article/...
Nice write-up of our latest paper: news.uark.edu/articles/82610 And could not have been done without the support of NSF and NIH.
New Study Finds Heat Shock Can Drive Changes in Protein Modifications
Research provides insight into how yeast cells respond to stressful conditions with implications for larger organisms that share the same proteins.
news.uark.edu
Jeff Lewis@lewislab.bsky.social · 3w agoExcited to share the published version with some added experiments and analyses: link.springer.com/article/10.1...
🧪 Excited to finally share the published version of our work showing that P. melaninogenica (affectionately called 'P. mel' in my lab) has more superpowers... Aerotolerant capacity of the lung symbiont Prevotella melaninogenica | Journal of Bacteriology journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...
Aerotolerant capacity of the lung symbiont Prevotella melaninogenica | Journal of Bacteriology
This study provides a correction to the 100-year-old classification of Prevotella melaninogenica as a strict obligate anaerobe. We demonstrate that this key member of the human microbiome is capable o...
journals.asm.org
With Prevotella recently split into many new genera (over 55 species down to ~21!), what's left? Our new review explores the remaining mucosal species, with a particular focus implications for the human oral, airway, and vaginal niches. 🧪 Journal of Bacteriology journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...
The redefined identity of Prevotella: new implications for oral, respiratory, and vaginal health | Journal of Bacteriology
Over a century ago, Dr. William Wherry and his student, Wade Oliver, reported the isolation of a bacterium they called Bacterium melaninogenicus (1). This organism was described as a pigmented, Gram-negative, strictly anaerobic organism found frequently in the human mouth on carious teeth, but also recovered from the throat, tonsils, genitalia, and wound abscesses. Later classified under the genus Bacteroides, these and related organisms were frequently described as difficult to grow and maintain in pure culture, with biochemical assays yielding inconsistent fermentation and proteolytic profiles (2, 3). In 1947, Schwabacher, Lucas, and Rimington found that the characteristic pigments were not composed of melanin, as the name suggests, but rather hematin (4). In the 1960s, others showed that some strains required both hemin and vitamin K/vitamin K derivatives for growth (5). Consequently, as similar organisms were isolated from human oral and mucosal sites in the following decades, Shah and Collins proposed the reclassification of several species into their own genus, Prevotella, in 1990. Shah and Collins had previously argued that Bacteroides contained considerable heterogeneity, particularly with regard to fermentative capacity. They suggested that inclusion in Bacteroides should be limited only to highly fermentative species phenotypically similar to B. fragilis. The “nonsaccharolytic Bacteroides” were reclassified into the genus Porphyromonas, while the remaining 15 “moderately saccharolytic Bacteriodes” became Prevotella. Using a combination of biochemical and 16S rRNA-based analyses, they described Prevotella as organisms that may or may not produce pigment, are sensitive to bile salts, are moderately saccharolytic, and lack both glucose 6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PDH) and 6-phosphogluconate dehydrogenase (6PGDH) (6).
journals.asm.org
Scientists--if your funding was cut over the last year (for research on climate, global health, DEI, LGBTQ or womens health, etc) but you managed to keep the research going, I want to talk to you for an upcoming article! Plz contact me: gewin at me dot com. Re-posts appreciated!
we greatly support this roadmap: 1/2 "Understanding that history requires treating the emergence of life not merely as a chemical event, but as the emergence of evolving and ecologically embedded, persistent populations." ...
Mathieu M.J.E. Rebeaud@chercheurjuteux.com · 4w agoThe Origin of Life in the Light of Evolution Another food for thought paper with @lauraeme.bsky.social and a lot of fantastic scientists. arxiv.org/abs/2605.05464
New preprint! We show that the bacterial predator B. bacteriovorus deploys a unipolar Tad nanomachine for irreversible attachment to prey and invasion. @coralietesseur.bsky.social used CRISPRi+microfluidics to overcome barriers associated with essential systems in an obligate predatory lifestyle 🦠
A polarity-controlled Tad nanomachine enables prey invasion in a bacterial predator
Type IV pili are dynamic surface appendages assembled by envelope-spanning nanomachines that mediate diverse bacterial interactions, yet how these systems are adapted to predatory lifestyles remains p...
biorxiv.org
The concept of microbial compartments is a very big deal to me. When I came up for tenure, a professor argued that I was teaching students things that "weren't true," such as bacteria and archaea having compartments. 1/2 journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...
Check out our latest article, in which we present recent work by Naresh Yandrapalli, Tom Robinson, Reinhard Lipowsky and Tina Seemann on the production of asymmetric membranes (published in Nature Communications) edu.nl/7degt #SyntheticCell #SynCell
#MicrobiologyMonday: Many bacterial species contain specialized subcellular compartments that help organize and protect essential cellular functions. These structures may contribute to pathogen survival and virulence during infection. #mBio: asm.social/2ZP
🚨 New in @natmicrobiol.nature.com! We reveal how the antibiotic target PBP1b fortifies the E.coli division site against osmotic rupture. Proud this was completed in our independent labs @dmf-unil.bsky.social, with @avettiger.bsky.social. Congratulations to all authors! 🦠❄️🔬 #teamtomo bit.ly/3SCbOg1 👇
The penicillin-binding protein PBP1b fortifies the Escherichia coli division site against osmotic rupture - Nature Microbiology
A specific isoform of PBP1b functions independently of the activator protein, LpoB, to drive generation of a wedge-like peptidoglycan structure that strengthens the division site in Escherichia coli.
doi.org
