Evolution is not as random as previously thought, finds new study

A new study has found that evolution is not as unpredictable as previously thought, which could allow scientists to explore which genes could be useful to tackle real-world issues such as antibiotic resistance, disease, and climate change.

Phages overcome bacterial immunity via diverse anti-defence proteins - Nature

Nature - Phages overcome bacterial immunity via diverse anti-defence proteins

Predicting phage-bacteria interactions at the strain level from genomes

Predicting how phages can selectively infect specific bacterial strains holds promise for developing novel approaches to combat bacterial infections and better understanding microbial ecology.

‘Oceans are hugely complex’: modelling marine microbes is key to climate forecasts

Microorganisms are the engines that drive most marine processes. Ocean modelling must evolve to take their biological complexity into account.

Microbial Cities and New Worlds

Tim Hayward enters the bacterial jungle and discovers a whole new world of possibilities.

Encyclopaedia of DNA polymerases localized in organelles: Evolutionary contribution of diverse bacteria including the proto-mitochondrion

DNA polymerases (DNAPs) synthesize DNA from deoxyribonucleotides in a semi-conservative manner and serve as the core of DNA replication and repair machineries.

Transient eco-evolutionary dynamics early in a phage epidemic have strong and lasting impact on the long-term evolution of bacterial defences

Organisms use a range of defence systems to protect against their parasites. Using a bacteria-phage model system, we investigate what drives the transient evolution of different systems, which has important implications for host ecology and pathogeni…

An evolutionary timescale for Bacteria calibrated using the Great Oxidation Event

Most of life's diversity and history is microbial but it has left a meagre fossil record, greatly hindering understanding of evolution in deep time.

A patchwork pathway of apparently recent origin enables degradation of the synthetic buffer compound TRIS in bacteria

The widely used synthetic chemical 2-amino-2-hydroxymethyl-propane-1,3-diol (TRIS) was long considered to be biologically inert. Herein, we describe a complete degradation pathway for the catabolism of TRIS in bacteria.

Solstice School 2023

Fight not flight: parasites drive the bacterial evolution of resistance, not avoidance

In the face of ubiquitous threats from parasites, hosts often evolve strategies to resist infection or to altogether avoid contact with parasites. At the microbial scale, bacteria frequently encounter viral parasites, bacteriophages.

The Promise and Pitfalls of Prophages

Phages dominate every ecosystem on the planet. While virulent phages sculpt the microbiome by killing their bacterial hosts, temperate phages provide unique growth advantages to their hosts through lysogenic conversion.

Endless microbes most beautiful and most wonderful

Programmed ribosomal frameshifts, and how to find them

One of the stranger phenomena that can occur during gene translation is where, as a ribosome reads along the mRNA, various cellular and molecular properties contribute to stalling the ribosome on a slippery sequence, shifting the ribosome into one of…

Restriction endonuclease cleavage of phage DNA enables resuscitation from Cas13-induced bacterial dormancy - Nature Microbiology

Deployment of some CRISPR-Cas systems stunts host growth by degrading all transcripts, but Listeria seeligeri reverses dormancy using restriction-modification-based phage DNA targeting.

Molecular hydrogen in seawater supports growth of diverse marine bacteria - Nature Microbiology

Genome-resolved metagenomics, biogeochemistry, modelling and culture-based analysis reveal that marine bacteria consume H2 to support growth.

Archaeal DNA-import apparatus is homologous to bacterial conjugation machinery - Nature Communications

Bacteria can exchange DNA through extracellular appendages (‘mating pili’) in a process known as conjugation. Here, Beltran et al.

Viral infection switches the balance between bacterial and eukaryotic recyclers of organic matter during coccolithophore blooms - Nature Communications

Algal blooms are hotspots of marine primary production that play central roles in microbial ecology and global elemental cycling.

Rare opportunity to study short-lived volcanic island reveals sulfur-metabolizing microbes

In 2015, a submarine volcano in the South Pacific erupted, forming the Hunga Tonga Hunga Ha'apai island, destined to a short, seven-year life.

Postdoctoral Scholar of Host-Microbe Interactions

The Shropshire Lab (Lehigh University, Pennsylvania) is seeking a highly motivated Postdoctoral researcher to study host-microbe interactions.

Single innate immune effectors control ecological microbiome bacteria across evolutionary timescales

Antimicrobial peptides are host-encoded antibiotics that combat invading microbes and help shape the microbiome in plants and animals.