Super excited to share my postdoctoral work at @imbavienna.bsky.social @viennabiocenter.bsky.social - We discovered that some retrotransposons, or "jumping genes" 🧬, are able to spread from cell to cell via a new viral infectivity route. A short thread: 🧵👇 (1/7)

The final version of our manuscript on TnSeq in bacteriophages (“HIDEN-SEQ”) is out today – if you have an interesting phage phenotype and want to know the underlying genetic basis, this one is for you! 1/4

Excited that our new paper with @henrylabsymbio.bsky.social and Kerry Oliver is out @pnas.org! We show that mobile genetic elements can spread adaptive host-benefiting traits across heritable insect symbionts on eco-evolutionary timescales.🧵 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Phenotypic divergence is driven by mobile genetic elements in a heritable insect symbiont | PNAS

Heritable microbes profoundly influence insect biology, yet the traits they confer often evolve rapidly and differ among closely related symbiont s...

pnas.org

New paper from the lab, out in Nature Microbiology. We ran CRISPRi screens to ask what genes E. coli needs in order to live in a gut and what this can tell us about the gut environment itself. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41564-026-02471-8

🚨 We are excited to share the first preprint of our lab ! We discovered an NADase enzymatic domain in bacterial immunity and in the human protein TEP1. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

A widespread NADase domain links bacterial immunity with human TEP1

Recent discoveries on bacterial immunity have revealed that several protein domains involved in anti-phage defense are conserved in eukaryotes, such as SIRim, TIR, PNP and gasdermin. Bacterial immune ...

biorxiv.org

It’s out! 🥹🎉 We’re so incredibly happy and proud to see this work out in the world. And once again, a huge thank you to the great mastermind @jaescudero.bsky.social and all the co-authors; this wouldn’t have been possible without you! doi.org/10.1038/s415... @natmicrobiol.nature.com

High-throughput recovery of integron cassettes for gene discovery screens - Nature Microbiology

Integron insertion sites engineered into counterselection markers allow large-scale and high-throughput capture of integron-encoded genes from genetically tractable bacteria or DNA samples.

doi.org

Filipa Trigo da Roza@filipatr.bsky.social · 7mo ago

New preprint alert!!! 🚀🤓 We are very happy to finally share this with the world — the result of seven years of work and a new tool to study integrons and discover new functions encoded in these bacterial platforms. If you want to know more, here is a thread 🧵 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

#microsky New preprint from the lab! Widespread immune systems protect bacteria against conjugative plasmids www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Kudos to the extremely talented lead author Ludovic Poiré! Key contributions by @francoisrousset.bsky.social and also help from C. Lesterlin/TacC lab. 🧵⬇️

Widespread immune systems protect bacteria against conjugative plasmids

Conjugative plasmids are a class of mobile genetic elements capable of efficient transfer between bacterial cells. Although they can introduce beneficial traits such as antibiotic resistance to recipi...

biorxiv.org

Congrats @baptistedarracq.bsky.social & @marialopopolo.bsky.social two Pasteurians awarded the Academy of Sciences' "Major Advances in Biology" Prize for groundbreaking Science publications on bacterial defense & ancient leprosy. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40339013/ pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40440428/

Sedentary chromosomal integrons as biobanks of bacterial antiphage defense systems - PubMed

Integrons are genetic systems that drive bacterial adaptation by acquiring, expressing, and shuffling gene cassettes. While mobile integrons are well known for spreading antibiotic resistance genes, t...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Viral theft of light: A cyanophage protein dismantles cyanobacterial photosynthesis to accelerate infection www.cell.com/cell-host-mi...

Viral theft of light: A cyanophage protein dismantles cyanobacterial photosynthesis to accelerate infection

Auxiliary metabolic genes, acquired by cyanobacterial viruses (cyanophages) from their hosts, are thought to manipulate host metabolism during infection. A recent study by Nadel et al. performed in vi...

cell.com

This one means a lot. Our paper, “Large extrachromosomal replicons are widespread across bacterial lineages and show coordinated replication termination and spatial coupling with the chromosome,” is out! doi.org/10.1038/s414...

Excited to share our discovery of a new programmable RNA-guided DNA-targeting system hiding inside bacteriophages that predates CRISPR. We call it VIPR (Viral Interference Programmable Repeat), and it uses an entirely new logic to find its targets. Thread + link below.

"The selfish ribosome" paper is now published in @plosbiology.org . Have a look! Many thanks to the editors and reviewers! doi.org/10.1371/jour...

The selfish ribosome

In this Essay, the evolution of life is construed as a ribosomal takeover, whereby the ribosome evolved to consume most of the cell’s resources, while other cellular componentry ensured the propagatio...

journals.plos.org

Mart Krupovic@mkrupovic.bsky.social · 7mo ago

With Eugene Koonin, we propose a concept of “the selfish ribosome”, under which evolution of life is viewed as a ribosomal takeover, where the ribosome evolved to consume most of the cell’s resources, while other cellular componentry ensures the propagation of the ribosome. arxiv.org/abs/2602.23268

Excited to share our new findings in @science.org on how the DRT3 bacterial defense system uses a reverse transcriptase that builds DNA repeats without a nucleic acid template. Microbes never cease to amaze! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Our ms on re-sampling 4 years apart vibrio phage in natural environments is now out with some improvements. First, clearer evidence of cryptic population dynamics between phage and vibrio, presumably because of genetic diversity. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

How diverse is bacterial immunity ? We report in @science.org how language models allowed us to predict 2.4M antiphage proteins spanning >23K novel potential systems. 👏 @emordret.bsky.social, @alexhv.bsky.social & al doi.org/10.1126/scie... Explore them here defensefinder.mdmlab.fr/wiki/refseq_...

New preprint alert!!! 🚀🤓 We are very happy to finally share this with the world — the result of seven years of work and a new tool to study integrons and discover new functions encoded in these bacterial platforms. If you want to know more, here is a thread 🧵 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

New preprint out on bioRxiv! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Can conjugative plasmids be used to control plasmid and pathogen spread? Follow me down the rabbit hole that led to this story 🧵

A short research stay in 2019 (back in the pre-COVID era) at José R. Penadés lab turned into the third chapter of my PhD and today it finally sees the light.

Happy to share the last work of @jmartinkus.bsky.social, led by @dukasju.bsky.social Immunity arrays associated with Rhs and CDI toxins and linked to a novel genetic element (XPC cassette) confer protection against competitors. @currentbiology.bsky.social Kudos !! www.cell.com/current-biol...

Poly-immunity arrays associated with Rhs toxins confer wide protection against competitors

Martinkus et al. show that Photorhabdus and Xenorhabdus species encode arrays of immunity genes whose protein products neutralize toxins secreted by competitors. These arrays, often linked to Xer pass...

cell.com

Taming wild replicons: evolution and domestication of large extrachromosomal replicons #MicroSky www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Taming wild replicons: evolution and domestication of large extrachromosomal replicons

Bacterial genomes often contain extrachromosomal replicons (ERs), ranging from small, mobile plasmids to large, stably inherited elements, such as meg…

sciencedirect.com

Our new paper is out in @narjournal.bsky.social We show that natural transformation enables bacteria to shuffle integron cassettes, boosting their phenotypic diversity. academic.oup.com/nar/article/... 1/5

Bacterial natural transformation drives cassette shuffling and simplifies recombination in chromosomal integrons

Abstract. Integrons act as biobanks of gene cassettes conferring functions crucial for bacterial defense, including protection against phages and antibioti

academic.oup.com

Curious about the top methane-maker in your gut? Meet this month's featured microbe and find out! 🦠💨🔥 in @cp-trendsmicrobiol.bsky.social #archaeasky @sgribaldo.bsky.social @pasteur.fr 🔗 Full article linked in reply👇 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Methanobrevibacter smithii

sciencedirect.com

@prczhaoyansong.bsky.social’s deep dive into the dark matter of compost communities is now out 🎉 Genomic islands hijack jumbo phages—whose capsids enable transfer of large tracts of DNA—shedding new light on the scale & scope of phage-mediated gene flow 😎 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Jumbo phage–mediated transduction of genomic islands | PNAS

Bacteria acquire new genes by horizontal gene transfer, typically mediated by mobile genetic elements (MGEs). While plasmids, bacteriophages, and c...

pnas.org

1/10 Genome maintenance by telomerase is a fundamental process in nearly all eukaryotes. But where does it come from? Today, we report the discovery of telomerase homologs in a family of antiviral RTs, revealing an unexpected evolutionary origin in bacteria. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Antiviral reverse transcriptases reveal the evolutionary origin of telomerase

Defense-associated reverse transcriptases (DRTs) employ diverse and distinctive mechanisms of cDNA synthesis to protect bacteria against viral infection. However, much of DRT family diversity remains ...

biorxiv.org

Phages evolve fast, or do they? In oysters, some stay identical for years. With >1,200 phages & 600 Vibrio genomes, we reveal long-term stability and new mobile elements. Proud of this collaborative work across our teams (Roscoff-UdeM and @epcrocha.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...

Ecological constraints foster both extreme viral-host lineage stability and mobile element diversity in a marine community

Phages are typically viewed as very rapidly evolving biological entities. Little is known, however, about whether and how phages can establish long-term genetic stability. We addressed this eco-evolut...

biorxiv.org

So excited our antibiotic potentiation story is out 🤩 Led by the extraordinary @manonlang.bsky.social with @fox-science.bsky.social & @amazeld.bsky.social +amazing collaborators @immunobladder.bsky.social @imaneelmeouche.bsky.social 🦠 We believe it can make a difference in #AMR infections!

Uridine as a potentiator of aminoglycosides through activation of carbohydrate transporters

Uridine boosts aminoglycoside treatment efficiency against antibiotic-susceptible as well as antibiotic-resistant E. coli strains.

science.org

🧬 Bacteria fight both antibiotics and viruses with the same genetic tool: integrons! New study (Institut Pasteur, CNRS, Université Paris Cité & Montréal): ~10% of gene cassettes may defend against phages. 🛠️ One step closer to smarter therapies. 🔗 www.pasteur.fr/en/research-...

At least 10% of the V. cholerae integron cassettes have novel antiphage activities (see below). Considering that there are 25,000 distinct cassettes of unknown function, integrons constitute an extraordinary and almost inexhaustible reservoir of antiphage functions!

Sedentary chromosomal integrons as biobanks of bacterial antiphage defense systems

Integrons are genetic systems that drive bacterial adaptation by acquiring, expressing, and shuffling gene cassettes. While mobile integrons are well known for spreading antibiotic resistance genes, t...

science.org

Our paper on how integrons are biobanks of novel minimal defense systems is now out www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... Two main conclusions on this excellent work led by @eloilittner.bsky.social @baptistedarracq.bsky.social 1/n

Sedentary chromosomal integrons as biobanks of bacterial antiphage defense systems

Integrons are genetic systems that drive bacterial adaptation by acquiring, expressing, and shuffling gene cassettes. While mobile integrons are well known for spreading antibiotic resistance genes, t...

science.org

Eloi Littner@eloilittner.bsky.social · last yr.

Habemus paper! Our story on integron-encoded anti-phage defenses is now out in @science.org! 16 new systems, small versions of known ones, and a lot more in this highly-collaborative study. Many thanks to everyone involved, especially my supervisor @epcrocha.bsky.social bsky.app/profile/bapt...