Lena Amend

Congrats to Ann-Sophie Rüttiger who successfully defended her PhD this week! 🎓
She focused on global RNA-binding proteins in Bacteroides—bacteria lacking Hfq, ProQ, CsrA, Khp—culminating in the discovery of a post-transcriptional network governed by RbpB (www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-55383-8).

Ablation of polysaccharide breakdown in Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron prevents cross-feeding and growth of Salmonella Typhimurium in the mouse gut Pathogens invading the intestine compete for nutrients with the resident microbiota. However, there is evidence that commensal members of the gut also provide nutritional resources to enteropathogens ...

Latest preprint from the lab: doi.org/10.1101/2025...
In this study lead by @lenaamend.bsky.social from the group, we explore carbon cross-feeding between a gut commensal and an enteropathogen. Can we counter infection by cutting sugar supply to pathogens?

Ablation of polysaccharide breakdown in Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron prevents cross-feeding and growth of Salmonella Typhimurium in the mouse gut https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.08.08.669261v1

Low biomass bacterial transcriptomics takes shape Bornet et al. apply a low-input bacterial RNA-seq pipeline to transcriptionally profile small, medium, and large cell populations of the human gut symbiont Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron separated by fl...

Very honored that our recent study on Bacteroides morphotypes was spotlighted 🔦 in Trends in Microbiology by Eric Martens & Qinnan Yang: www.cell.com/trends/micro....

Low-input RNA-seq suggests metabolic specialization underlying morphological heterogeneity in a gut commensal bacterium Bornet et al. investigate the morphological heterogeneity of Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron cells observed both in laboratory culture and inside the mammalian GI tract. The authors show that cell size i...

Our latest: www.cell.com/cell-reports/fulltext/S2211-1247(25)00615-1. Links Bacteroides cell size w/ gene expression. Protocol works even for single cells. 🦠
Shoutout to @elisebor.bsky.social, @emmanuel-saliba.bsky.social, @lbarquist.bsky.social, @jorg-vogel-lab.bsky.social, Till Strowig & KC Huang.

Intramacrophage RIL-seq uncovers an RNA antagonist of the Salmonella virulence-associated small RNA PinT Salmonella virulence chiefly relies upon two major pathogenicity islands, SPI-1 and SPI-2, which enable host cell invasion and intracellular survival, respectively. There has been increasing evidence ...

Some say, important sRNAs can be recognized by having their own “sponge” 🧽. Well, here comes InvS: a sponge of PinT (and vice versa). Congrats to @kooshapour.bsky.social and @ginlaca.bsky.social on their great work! doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Intramacrophage RIL-seq uncovers an RNA antagonist of the Salmonella virulence-associated small RNA PinT https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.04.07.647523v1

Honored to have been one of the selected scholarship awardees at the Keystone Symposium on the Human Microbiome in February 2025 in Banff, Canada.
I had an amazing time!
#KSHumanMicro25 #KSHostMicrobe25 #keystonesymposia

Exciting developments from Banff, Canada, as we celebrate our award recipients at the joint meeting on Human Microbiome and Host-Microbe Co-Evolution in Human Health. Join us in applauding these exceptional scholarship winners!

#KSHumanMicro25 #KSHostMicrobe25 #keystonesymposia