Didier Mazel

So happy to be here, and see all my friends, Rocio, Joaquin @lopezigual.bsky.social @joaquinbernal.bsky.social

Artificial intelligence tools expand scientists’ impact but contract science’s focus - Nature Artificial intelligence boosts individual scientists’ output, citations and career progression, but collectively narrows research diversity and reduces collaboration, concentrating work in data-rich a...

Caution: Artificial intelligence tools contract science’s focus....
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

a quick reminder!

Creation of new junior research groups at the Institut Pasteur - Call for applications 2026 - Research The Institut Pasteur is launching an international call to recruit new junior research group leaders leveraging cutting-edge transdisciplinary approaches to exploring infectious diseases, host-microbe...

🔬 Call to create junior research groups at the Institut Pasteur

Focus: Infectious diseases, host-microbe interactions, vaccines
Special interest: AI methodologies

📅 Deadline: Feb 9, 2026
👥 2-12 years post-PhD

Apply now 📝 research.pasteur.fr/en/call/crea...

#JobOpportunity #Research

The role of these additional PDFs is not always clear, many copies confer resistance to natural and synthetic anti-deformylases, and what's more, they are already found in integron cassettes! Congratulations to @morgan-lamberioux.bsky.social my student who led this "Back to the Future" project.

Unraveling the Prevalence and Multifaceted Roles of Accessory Peptide Deformylases in Bacterial Adaptation and Resistance Abstract. Peptide deformylases (PDFs) are enzymes that are essential for bacterial viability and attractive targets for antibiotic development. Yet, despit

We've come full circle! I began my postdoctoral career by identifying the peptidyl deformylase gene. Today, we show that half of bacterial species harbor multiple PDF genes (up to 7, for always a single Met-tRNA transformylase), and while the role of these PDFs ... academic.oup.com/mbe/article/...

Semantic design of functional de novo genes from a genomic language model - Nature By learning a semantics of gene function based on genomic context, the genomic language model Evo autocompletes DNA prompts to generate novel genes encoding protein and RNA molecules with defined acti...

Phenomenal! WOOOOOOOW .... speechless
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Cryo-EM reveals open and closed Asgard chromatin assemblies Ranawat et al. show the cryo-EM structures of Asgard archaeal chromatin assemblies, revealing that the histone HHoB assembles into both compact closed and extended open hypernucleosomes. The closed co...

Let’s wrap things up: my commentary on the Asgard hypernucleosomes.

Congratulations to all the authors of the paper 🍾!

kwnsfk27.r.eu-west-1.awstrack.me/L0/https:%2F...

Cryo-EM reveals open and closed Asgard chromatin assemblies: Molecular Cell www.cell.com/molecular-ce...

A key observation, explaining the easiness of cassette exchange among vibrios! Another brick from our lab. Kudos @kdebatisse.bsky.social and @celineloot.bsky.social as well as @eloilittner.bsky.social and @epcrocha.bsky.social !

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

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

Phages with a broad host range are common across ecosystems - Nature Microbiology Proximity-ligation-based sequencing from 111 samples and 5 environments reveals that a substantial proportion of phages infect multiple species.

A fresh view on phage specificity, which challenges the traditional view of a narrow host spectrum of phages by unveiling that multihost associations are common across ecosystems kudos at @mmarbout.bsky.social &
@rkoszul.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Mutations in the circadian cycle drive adaptive plasticity in cyanobacteria | PNAS Circadian clocks allow organisms to anticipate daily fluctuations in light and temperature, but how this anticipatory role promotes adaptation to d...

I am so proud to be part of this work, that we initiated Fernando de la Cruz and I, when he was on sabbatical in my lab in 2009... it took so much time for this achievement, 1000 thanks to Raúl Fernández-López! this brought me back to my PhD on cyanobacteria genetics. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Genomic diversity of the African malaria vector Anopheles funestus Anopheles funestus s.s. is a major human malaria vector across Africa. To study its evolution, especially under vector control pressure, we sequenced 656 modern specimens (collected 2014 to 2018) and ...

Striking and frightening 😒 "They found multiple instances of insecticide-resistance variants in this malaria vector, although most of these weren’t shared with museum specimens collected as recently as 1967, suggesting rapid emergence"
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Congratulations to PhD students Jasmin Ostermayer and Noa Guzzi (co–first authors 🎉), together with Jakub Czarnecki and Alfonso Soler-Bistué, for compressing the diverse, lineage-wide literature on large extrachromosomal replicons into <5000 words and 80 references 😅

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…

For those who love bacterial replicons, The ultimate review, from our lab, signed by the master of their evolution.
‪@val-meve.bsky.social‬ www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Message received…

A two year post-doctoral position at the BacterialGenome Plasticity Unit starting October 1st - Research

A 2-year postdoc position in my lab, under the supervision of P-Alex Kaminski, on Z-DNA phages and the benefit given by ZTGC DNA and the replication machinery, with attempt to create a Z based minireplicon
research.pasteur.fr/en/job/a-two...

A 2 yr postdoc position at the Bacterial
Genome Plasticity Unit of the Institut Pasteur (Paris) led by @amazeld.bsky.social in collaboration with Pierre-Alexandre Kaminski, funded by the French National Research Agency 👇

Coupling chromosome organization to genome segregation in Archaea - Nature Communications Proteins SegA and SegB are important for chromosome segregation and organization in archaea of the order Sulfolobales, but mechanisms are unclear. Here, Kabli et al. uncover patterns and mechanisms th...

A great step for archaea : connection between chromosome organization to genome segregation in Archaea
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

congrats to @danielabarilla.bsky.social

Avez-vous une minute pour aider cette campagne? Sauvons BIOASTER : Un Appel Urgent pour la Recherche en Microbiologie !

chng.it/jNJSnj2hjQ

Unraveling the prevalence and multifaceted roles of accessory peptide deformylases in bacterial adaptation and resistance Peptide deformylases (PDFs) are enzymes that are essential for bacterial viability and attractive targets for antibiotic development. Yet, despite their conserved function, many bacteria encode multip...

Thrilled to share my first PhD paper, out of the Mazel lab! @amazeld.bsky.social
We discovered that accessory peptide deformylases (PDFs) are widespread in bacteria and may provide resistance to natural inhibitors, posing a challenge to future antibiotic strategies

doi.org/10.1101/2025...

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...

Our paper is published back2back with one from @amazeld.bsky.social and @epcrocha.bsky.social labs where @baptistedarracq.bsky.social, @eloilittner.bsky.social and co. show that Sedentary Chromosomal Integrons are biobanks of phage defense systems. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

« Aux Etats-Unis, la science est attaquée, entravée, et même interdite » TRIBUNE. Immunologistes ayant travaillé aux Etats-Unis, Yasmine Belkaid et Bana Jabri dénoncent, dans une tribune au « Monde », la censure que l’administration Trump fait peser sur les scientifiques a...

www.lemonde.fr/idees/articl...

The molecular basis for DNA-binding by competence T4P is distinct in Gram-positive and Gram-negative species Competence type IV pili (T4P) are bacterial surface appendages that facilitate DNA uptake during horizontal gene transfer by natural transformation. These dynamic structures actively extend from the c...

very interesting! congrats Ankur! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

🤣

Next Tuesday Clement Gilbert and myself will discuss impact and extent of HGT in both prokaryotes and eukaryotes! It will be broadcasted on France Culture (in French)

Sequence-dependent activity and compartmentalization of foreign DNA in a eukaryotic nucleus In eukaryotes, DNA-associated protein complexes coevolve with genomic sequences to orchestrate chromatin folding. We investigate the relationship between DNA sequence and the spontaneous loading and a...

A spectacular discovery! Sequence-dependent activity and compartmentalization of foreign DNA in a eukaryotic nucleus | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

« Désespérant » : face au « chaos écologique », la patronne de l’Institut Pasteur tire la sonnette d’alarme - Le Parisien EXCLUSIF. Maladies infectieuses, vaccinations, origine des pathologies, sous-investissement dans la recherche… La directrice de l’Institut P

La directrice de l'Institut Pasteur prévient que "les maladies infectieuses ont toujours représenté un risque, mais elles sont aussi l’une des principales menaces de santé publique à l’avenir."

Longue interview, morceaux choisis ⤵️ @leparisien.fr

1/12 www.leparisien.fr/so...

7/ The actors (II)
This was truly a memorable collaborative experience, involving multiple labs: Eric Le Cam (Gustave Roussy), Ole Skovgaard @oskov.bsky.social (Roskilde University), Abel Garcia-Pino (Université libre de Bruxelles), and the Mazel team @amazeld.bsky.social at Institut Pasteur !

8/ 🌍 Broader implications
This study not only highlights the elegant coordination of replication between Chr1 and Chr2 in Vibrio but the mechanism described here may reflect a broader strategy used by bacteria to integrate and stabilize secondary replicons derived from ancestral plasmids.