Some good new to share: my lab was recently awarded an NIH R35/MIRA award to continue our work on conjugative plasmids and plasmid-dependent phages! 🥳 🫶NIH🫶 www.wadsworth.org/news/nih-gra...

The type and amount of bacterial DNA carried by virus-like particles in the gut microbiome is simply mind-boggling. Amazing work by PhD candidate Jessie Maier in my group and collaborators @duerkoplab.bsky.social and Ben Callahan www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Perturbations shift the composition of bacterial DNA carried by virus-like particles in the murine gut microbiome

Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) is a driving force in microbial evolution that allows community members to rapidly evolve to cope with environmental stressors and competition. Despite the importance of...

biorxiv.org

#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

We're excited to share our work on how prophages influence the evolution of resistance against DNA-damaging antibiotics! This has been a fun project with @sianowen.bsky.social, @baym.lol, @theshreyaspai.bsky.social, @kepatitis-c.bsky.social, & @fernpizza.bsky.social biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 1/

SOS-mediated prophage induction constrains resistance evolution to DNA-damaging antibiotics

Most naturally occurring bacteria are lysogens, encoding one or more temperate phages (prophages) integrated into their genome. As prophages are induced by the bacterial SOS response, DNA-damaging ant...

biorxiv.org

Cool new plasmid work from Joe Wade's lab at the Wadsworth Center! Lots of conjugative plasmids encode Histone-like nucleoid-structuring protein (H-NS) proteins, and there's increasing evidence they somehow specifically bind to the plasmids that encode them #microsky #plasmidsky

Joe Wade@joe-wade.bsky.social · 2mo ago

New preprint from our lab, in collaboration with the Santiago/Ruiz-Perez group at UVA. We found a plasmid-encoded DNA-binding protein that preferentially binds its own plasmid! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Thread:

New preprint from our lab, in collaboration with the Santiago/Ruiz-Perez group at UVA. We found a plasmid-encoded DNA-binding protein that preferentially binds its own plasmid! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Thread:

A plasmid-encoded H-NS protein selectively binds its own plasmid

H-NS is an abundant nucleoid-associated protein found in Enterobacterales species. Some conjugative plasmids encode H-NS homologues, which are thought to facilitate plasmid maintenance and reduce the ...

biorxiv.org

Our Dept of Microbiology & Immunology @Geisel School of Medicine @Dartmouth has an opening for an Assistant Professor. Looking for programs bridging multiple areas in Micro & Immuno. A great place to be! Programs: www.M2P2.org www.dartmouthbiofilm.org Job ad: apply.interfolio.com/187637

Had a great time presenting my work today at the Boston Bacterial meeting! Stop by my poster tomorrow #152 #BBM2026

1/ Out today in Science (@science.org): a result a decade in the making, and one that changed how I think about what cells are doing when they grow. We found a bacterium that grows slower than it could. And we found the molecular switch that lets us reverse it.

Attending #ASMicrobe this year and want to keep the fun going? Or, do you have FOMO from not attending? We’ve got you covered! Save the date for CNY ASM’s inaugural fall meeting! October 16 in Syracuse NY! More details to follow.

🔬 We have an open PhD position at SLU Uppsala! We're looking for a curious & driven PhD student to join the #ECOPHARM project funded by @kawresearch.bsky.social and investigate plasmid-dependent phages in aquatic ecosystems. Pls share with anyone who might be interested! www.slu.se/en/about-slu...

Diversity of Plasmid-Dependent Phages in Aquatic Ecosystems | slu.se

SLU - Science and Education for Sustainable Life

slu.se

Fun fact: you can watch @baym.lol demonstrate how to pour a MEGA plate that is actually just a turbid G. stearothermophilus culture on 60 Minutes 😆

Siân Owen@sianowen.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Hah, we isolated this G. stearothermophilus many times in the @baym.lol lab. The cause of many an abandoned MEGA plate experiment. I'm sure it's endemic in agar factories 👀

Dr. Indra Gonzalez Ojeda gave a great thesis defense this morning, including some wisdom for starting PhD students, or frankly, anyone.

News & views piece just dropped from @indragon.bsky.social and @billhanage.bsky.social discussing some of the coolest work I've read all year! Phages shaping cholera epidemiology AND experimental evolution mirroring the real-world evolution is 🔥 (Kim Seed also gives an amazing talk!) rdcu.be/fihkG

The Biology Department at Syracuse University is hiring! Please share with anyone you think might be interested. www.sujobopps.com/postings/112...

Assistant Teaching Professor - Biology and Biochemistry

The Department of Biology at Syracuse University invites applications for a non-tenure-track Assistant Teaching Professor to teach Biology and Biochemistry undergraduate level classes, starting in fal...

sujobopps.com

Bacteriophages are in a constant arms race with bacteria 🦠 The Phage ORFeome pooled library from the Aaron Whiteley lab contains phage proteins that activate antiphage defense systems — a tool to dissect the mechanisms of bacterial immunity. Aaron Whiteley

My lab at Pitt is looking for a Research Scientist to help us make phage therapy for patients with antibiotic-resistant infections. Please share and apply! cfopitt.taleo.net/careersectio...

📣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.

A true labor of love for @calebmallery.bsky.social is out now in PLOS Pathogens: a review article where we highlight current and emerging examples of key protein-protein interactions with LuxR-type receptors that control community behaviors and pathogenesis. journals.plos.org/plospathogen...

Expanding the LuxR-type receptor functional repertoire: Protein-protein interactions in quorum sensing regulation

Quorum sensing (QS) enables bacteria to coordinate gene expression in response to population density, with LuxR-type transcription factors playing a central role in this process for many Gram-negative...

journals.plos.org

Excited to share the first preprint from the lab! We show that ApeA defends against RNA phage infection by cleaving the phage genome: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

We found a viral Trojan Horse: a virus can hide inside another virus.This one surprised us: deltaviruses don’t just borrow a helper virus. They can travel inside it. A literal Trojan Horse “virus-in-a-virus” route into cells. 🤯 Kudos to 1st author @viroscope.bsky.social and co-authors !

Deltaviruses spread through a viral Trojan Horse

Hepatitis D-like satellite viruses, known as deltaviruses, have been recently discovered in a wide range of animals. These viruses are thought to expr…

sciencedirect.com

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

Published version of our work on diversity-generating retroelements! We reconstituted a phage DGR in E. coli and deployed high-throughput methods to identify factors influencing the activity of this system. #microsky journals.plos.org/plosgenetics...

High-throughput analyses of a reconstituted diversity-generating retroelement identify intrinsic and extrinsic determinants of diversification

Author summary Our study focuses on Diversity-Generating Retroelements (DGRs), a biological “evolution engine” that microbes and viruses use to rapidly develop new functions within specific genes. DGR...

journals.plos.org

We’re hiring a Microscopy Core Director at the Wadsworth Center! It's a state position (job stability & PENSION!) in a uniquely academic, research-driven environment 😎 Please share 🙏 statejobs.ny.gov/public/vacan...

We’re hiring a Microscopy Core Director at the Wadsworth Center! It's a state position (job stability & PENSION!) in a uniquely academic, research-driven environment 😎 Please share 🙏 statejobs.ny.gov/public/vacan...

Excited to share a preprint of work from my postdoc with @paulturnerlab.bsky.social exploring how prophages can impact host thermal ecology and evolution. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Most microbes don't live in shaking flasks; spatial structure shapes how microbes interact and evolve at every scale, as we discuss in our recent review @jeroenmeijer.bsky.social @simonvanvliet.bsky.social @bedutilh.bsky.social @bramvandijk.bsky.social and others academic.oup.com/femsre/artic... 🧵👇

Spatial structure: shaping the ecology and evolution of microbial communities

Spatial structure naturally emerges in microbial communities, shaping growth, interactions, and evolution, and revealing how microscale processes scale up

academic.oup.com

Happy 125th birthday to the Wadsworth Center, and New York State Department of Health! Established on this day in 1901, just 17 years after the publication of Koch's postulates

🧵 After years out of the field, I and my lab are again working on bacterial type IV pili. We have just posted our first preprints, and I'm excited to share what we have discovered. This shows Neisseria gonorrheae bacteria infecting a human epithelical cell. Here, you can see the pili in red. 1/

The best immunologists on Earth don't have PhDs. They're parasites. Today's spotlight 🧵(and big inspo for @ dittobio): ticks! And if you like this, stay tuned because we will be sharing cool parasite facts each week #TickTalk