Patrick R. Secor
@prsecor.bsky.social
Associate Professor at Montana State University. Studying bacteria and their viruses with a focus on phage-host-microbe interactions. Lab Website: https://secorlab.org Faculty profile: https://www.montana.edu/mbi/directory/2553333/patrick-secor
We said farewell to @dominickfaith.bsky.social last Friday with a float on the Yellowstone River with the Secor, Wiedenheft, and Jennings labs from Montana State University. Dom is off to do a postdoc with @pbollyky.bsky.social at Stanford and we wish him the best! #MicroSky #PhageSky 🔬🧪🦠🧫
Check out this fun collaboration on phages and Polyamines with the Marshall Lab! #microsky #phagesky 🧪🧫🧬🔬
Chris Marshall@sirmicrobe.bsky.social · 3w agoThis is our 2nd recently posted paper where we wanted to build off the fantastic 2023 PNAS paper by @prsecor.bsky.social group (www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...) 1/3
Nice write-up in Mountains & Minds on the Lyme disease research we’re doing at Montana State University. #MicroSky #PhageSky 🧪🦠 @ortizdeora.bsky.social 🔬 www.montana.edu/news/mountai...
From discovery to defense
As the Schutter Lab confirms the first blacklegged tick in Montana, MSU scientists continue exploring the microscopic viruses that influence the Lyme disease bacterium
montana.edu
Excited to share a 6 yr long journey to develop & validate a biomarker-based acute #Lyme disease diagnostic test using urine. Herculean effort by Osas and Saadman, which wouldn’t have be possible w/o outstanding collabs @harvard.edu, @tuftslyme.bsky.social, @pireschembio.bsky.social #Microsky
🆒 new pub! Rapid evolution of Klebsiella pneumoniae biofilms in vitro -> adaptations selected during infection by @gretazabo.bsky.social & Linus Sandegren *hypermucoidy evolves via 📈c-di-GMP, overlaps w/ mutations in UTI and wound isolates. *pleasure to advise this! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Rapid evolution of Klebsiella pneumoniae biofilms in vitro delineates adaptive changes selected during infection - Nature Communications
Biofilm formation on implanted medical devices facilitates infection by the pathogen Klebsiella pneumoniae. Here, Zaborskytė et al. use experimental evolution to show that the bacteria rapidly evolve ...
nature.com
Watching this wild fire burn during a rainstorm from my living room
Advancing “Science of Science” Research to Understand and Strengthen the Biomedical Research Ecosystem 🧪 "This topic encourages research projects focused on a better understanding of the biomedical research ecosystem and strengthening the study of the 'science of science' within biomedicine."
Advancing “Science of Science” Research to Understand and Strengthen the Biomedical Research Ecosystem | Grants & Funding
grants.nih.gov
‼️Please share‼️ Nemudryi lab is looking for postdocs to join our team and study: 🦠 Bacterial phage defense mechanisms 🧬 RNA repair & CRISPR-based RNA editing Excited about RNA, host-virus interactions & mechanistic biology? Let's talk! Apply: explore.jobs.ufl.edu/en-us/job/53...
University of Florida - Details - Postdoctoral Associate
explore.jobs.ufl.edu
📣Huge preprint 🔔 Today we share something our group has been working toward for a long time, led by @lucasmoriniere.bsky.social We asked can we predict which receptor a phage targets from its genome sequence alone? For most phages, we couldn’t. So Lucas set out to do something I had only dreamed of.
New paper 🔔 Collaboration @sullivan-lab.bsky.social Marissa Gittrich led the work Klebsiella phage biology has focused almost entirely on capsulated strains, but capsule loss is the #1 resistance mechanism under phage predation. We used a naturally acapsular host to reveal the receptor landscape
🚨Preprint! Happy to share the research from my PhD “Genome delivery of a contractile tailed phage and its superinfection exclusion mechanism”. We use cryoEM to study the genome ejection of the phage T4, revealing how the tape measure protein regulates the process. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
🖥️ 🧬 ⚛️ 🔬 Plz spread the word. 2-week computational biology workshop in Singapore. No registration fee or expenses for US citizens. Protein annotation, function, structural modeling, and simulation. ~35 attendees. Lectures and hands-on tutorials with intensive instructor interaction. compbioasia.net
Compbio Asia
compbioasia.net
Travis Wheeler@wheelerlab.org · 6mo agoPlease spread the word: We invite applications to a two-week Computational Biology workshop in Singapore, June 14-27. This NSF-funded workshop brings together 16-20 US grad students with international peers. Apply by March 21: compbioasia.net 🧵 Details below:
📣new preprint from the phagefoundry.org team 🎉 Jessica Trinh and Catherine Mageeney (Sandia National Laboratories)!! Systematic analysis of prophages from ~1000 Acinetobacter baumannii isolates, induction & screening. We found this 😎 looking phage with bunch of 💍💍
bioRxiv Microbiology@biorxiv-microbiol.bsky.social · 6mo agoDiscovery, induction, and screening of prophages in clinical Acinetobacter baumannii isolates https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.16.706188v1
🧵 New preprint! Our 4-lab team evolved Streptococcus pneumoniae in antibiotic-treated mice of varying immune states and discovered something surprising: bacteria rarely evolved resistance. Instead, they found a different way to survive — by rewiring RNA turnover. 🔗 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
Happy to share a preprint—the last chapter of my dissertation with @mcsymbiont.bsky.social and Co—on what happens when bacterial endosymbionts accumulate huge numbers of pseudogenes during early genome reduction. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Friends, please help spread the word about our microbiology REU program at Montana State University. www.montana.edu/mbi/reu/ Each student receives a stipend ($7000 for 10 wks). Travel compensation, room, and board are also provided. Details in the attached pic--Feb 14 deadline 🧫🧪🦠#microsky
Check out our exciting new paper out now in @plos.org where Dr Ahmad manipulated #peptidoglycan chemistry to understand Lyme disease and arthritis 👇👏 #Microsky #glycotime journals.plos.org/plospathogen...
Peptidoglycan architecture dictates protein interactions, tissue tropism, and arthritis in the Lyme disease spirochete Borrelia burgdorferi
Author summary Many of the pathogenic mechanisms by which Borrelia burgdorferi causes disease involve cell envelope interactions with host components. To further elucidate the role of peptidoglycan in...
journals.plos.org
I’m thrilled to share our work on phage triggers of the bacterial immune system in its final form @natmicrobiol.nature.com www.nature.com/articles/s41...
A phage protein screen identifies triggers of the bacterial innate immune system - Nature Microbiology
A library of 400 phage protein-coding genes is used to find a trove of antiphage systems, revealing systems that target tail fibre and major capsid proteins.
nature.com
Are you a graduate student or postdoc who wants to apply your science to policy? The Gulf Research Program’s Science Policy Fellowship provides experience for one year on the staff of federal, state, local, NGO in the Gulf region and impt networking. www.nationalacademies.org/programs/GUL...
Gulf Research Program Science Policy Fellowships
The Gulf Research Program’s Science Policy Fellowship helps scientists hone their skills by putting them to practice for the benefit of Gulf Coast communities and ecosystems. Fellows gain first-hand e...
nationalacademies.org
Here, we find that many Genomic islands have origins of transfer (oriT) mobilisable by conjugation, incl. known Pathogenicity & defense islands. iOriT use only an oriT for transfer by hitching on conjugative elements: they make abundant, diverse, ancient families of mobile genetic elements. See🧵
Manuel Ares-Arroyo@aresarroyom.bsky.social · 7mo agoBacteria chromosomes contain Genomic Islands that provide virulence, antibiotic resistance, MGE-defence,... They transfer between cells, but the mechanism of most remains elusive. Here we explore the conjugative capacity of these mysterious Genomic Islands. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
🚨Call for papers🚨 Microbial Evolution: Impacts on Human Health in the society journal Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health Guest Editors: Bob Woods, Silvie Huijben & Camilo Barbosa EIC: me This will be great, please submit and share! academic.oup.com/emph/pages/m...
Now published in PLoS Pathogens! #microsky #phagesky journals.plos.org/plospathogen...
Patrick R. Secor@prsecor.bsky.social · last yr.🚨New paper! A prophage-encoded sRNA limits lytic phage infection in adherent-invasive E. coli. Huge thanks to members of the Round Lab, @duerkoplab.bsky.social, Wiedenheft Lab, and phage legend Sherwood Casjens. #microsky 🦠🧫🧪🧬 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
A prophage-encoded sRNA limits phage infection of adherent-invasive E. coli #PLoSPathogen from @prsecor.bsky.social journals.plos.org/plospathogen...
A prophage-encoded sRNA limits phage infection of adherent-invasive E. coli
Author summary Prophages—viral genomes integrated into bacterial chromosomes—are common in enteric bacteria and can profoundly influence bacterial physiology and ecological fitness. Here we show that ...
journals.plos.org
The final form of my 2nd postdoc paper with the Bassler Lab! Turns out our favorite quorum-sensing phage isn’t a one-off, but rather a member of a globally dispersed family of phages that sense a universal autoinducer. #phagesky #microsky journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...
A family of linear plasmid phages that detect a quorum-sensing autoinducer exists in multiple bacterial species | mBio
The discovery of quorum-sensing responsive linear plasmid phages has transformed understanding of phage-bacterial interactions by demonstrating inter-domain chemical communication. To date, however, e...
journals.asm.org
