Cristina Colomer-Winter
@colomer-winter.bsky.social
Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Geneva. Self-confessed Enterococcus and stress response fan. Well travelled and with a balanced experience in academia and industry. 🇪🇸🇩🇪🇺🇸🇨🇭
Super excited to share the final version of our story on how Enterococcus faecalis remodels membrane lipids to protect itself from daptomycin! 🥳 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
A two-component system signaling hub controls enterococcal membrane remodeling in response to daptomycin | PNAS
Daptomycin is a last resort antibiotic used to treat vancomycin-resistant enterococcal infections, but daptomycin resistance (DAPR) arises quickly ...
pnas.org
Adaptation of Enterococcus faecalis to intestinal mucus revealed by a human colonic organoid model #mSystems from Alexandre Persat with @kimingeneva.bsky.social journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...
Adaptation of Enterococcus faecalis to intestinal mucus revealed by a human colonic organoid model | mSystems
Gut microbiota interactions with mucus during early intestinal colonization are critical for establishing stable communities and influencing host health. Using human colonic organoids combined with Tn-seq and live imaging, this study reveals how Enterococcus faecalis adapts to the mucosal surface by forming microcolonies and reprogramming its metabolism. This integrative approach provides a powerful platform to study other microbiota members in the native-like environment of the large intestine and evaluate potential therapeutic interventions.
journals.asm.org
Stress 🧨, bacteria 🦠, Fe-S by @sronneau.bsky.social lab
Stress-induced iron-sulfur cluster damage as a conserved trigger of the bacterial stringent response - Nature Communications
Pathogenic bacteria rely on the stringent response to adapt to environments within the host. Here, Michaud et al. show that iron-sulfur cluster damage acts as a conserved signal that triggers the stri...
nature.com
"Mike Cashel: magic spot magician" journals.asm.org/doi/full/10....
Mike Cashel: magic spot magician | Journal of Bacteriology
In July 2025, we lost Mike Cashel, a gifted scientist and critical contributor to the bacterial research community, after a long illness. Through his studies on (p)ppGpp and its modes of action, Mike ...
journals.asm.org
SCELSE-NTU’s Dr Haris Antypas and Prof Kimberly Kline (UNIGE) show that silencing bacterial communication may worsen infectious endocarditis. Published in Nature Communications, the study finds that when Enterococcus faecalis loses quorum sensing, it forms larger biofilms linked to poorer outcomes.
What if quorum sensing doesn’t promote biofilms - but restrains it? 🤔 New work from @harisantypas.bsky.social shows that the Fsr QS system in Enterococcus faecalis acts as a brake on biofilm formation and pathogenesis during infective endocarditis (IE). www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Loss of Fsr quorum sensing promotes biofilm formation and worsens outcomes in enterococcal infective endocarditis - Nature Communications
Infective endocarditis (IE) is an understudied biofilm-associated infection. Here, analyses of preclinical and clinical data reveal that the Fsr quorum sensing (QS) system of Enterococcus faecalis is ...
nature.com
How can bacterial pathogens weather metal ion stress during infection? @pierredupuy.bsky.social, @oneyrolles.bsky.social et al implicate ‘effluxosomes’, membrane clusters of metal-binding chaperones & exporters coordinating M. tuberculosis resistance to toxic metals link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Membrane-associated effluxosomes coordinate multi-metal resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis - The EMBO Journal
Bacterial pathogens must withstand metal-induced stress during infection, yet the mechanisms by which they sense and respond to toxic metal ions remain incompletely understood. Here, we uncover a prev...
link.springer.com
Strep/Enterococcal colleagues! Streptococcal Biology GRC/GRS are open for applications. Acceptances are underway and the meeting is on track to fill up. If you’re aiming for a short talk (lots of slots), registering early matters for full consideration. Share widely! www.grc.org/streptococca...
2026 Streptococcal Biology Conference GRC
The 2026 Gordon Research Conference on Streptococcal Biology will be held in Lucca (Barga), Lucca Italy. Apply today to reserve your spot.
grc.org
How can we tell whether an antibiotic eradicates an infection? Researchers from the @biomedizin.unibas.ch, at the @unibas.ch, present an antimicrobial single-cell microscopy-based method that measures antibiotic lethality in individual bacteria. 🔗 doi.org/10.1038/s415... @natmicrobiol.nature.com
Some of the longest-lived organisms on Earth aren’t whales, trees or corals, but microbes buried deep in the earth. This eye-opening essay examines the slowest lives on Earth, asking what such lives mean for how we define life itself @karenlloyd.bsky.social
The discovery of aeonophiles expands our definition of life | Aeon Essays
The discovery of organisms that have been alive for many thousands of years requires a revolution in how we understand life
buff.ly
Our new paper from my PhD work is online. It shows how bacterial population structure can trick machine learning—sampling matters! Many thanks to @lbarquist.bsky.social for the support and guidance! dx.plos.org/10.1371/jour...
Biased sampling driven by bacterial population structure confounds machine learning prediction of antimicrobial resistance
Machine learning methods have emerged as promising tools to predict antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and uncover resistance determinants from genomic data. This study shows that sampling biases driven b...
dx.plos.org
Excited to share our first look at Enterococcus faecium infection biology: diabetic wounds are complex, and E. faecium persists despite early immune responses. In diabetic mice, it shows impaired clearance + sustained neutrophil recruitment, worsening healing.
bioRxiv Microbiology@biorxiv-microbiol.bsky.social · 9mo agoEnterococcus faecium colonization and persistence in a model of diabetic wound infection https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.20.689639v1
Bacterial networks #BacNet26 in September 2026 will be chaired by @lalouxlab.bsky.social and co-chaired by @s-lab.bsky.social with @coralietesseur.bsky.social Sneak peak on invited speakers and preliminary program: meetings.embo.org/event/26-bac...
🚀New preprint from our lab! I am very excited to finally share what has been the main focus of my PhD for the past almost 3 years! It is about viral dark matter and a powerful tool we built to shed light on it. 🧬💡 Continue reading (🧵)
Enterococcus being one step ahead when it comes to stress… once again! Loved figuring this one out🤓 bsky.app/profile/kimi...
Kimberly Kline 🏔@kimingeneva.bsky.social · 9mo agoWhy does daptomycin resistance appear so fast in Enterococcus? We finally have a clue. DAP resistance in enterococci pops up quickly. What’s been missing is why resistance-associated membrane changes look the way they do, and why the classic path of mutations is so predictable.