Westermann Lab

Non-antibiotics disrupt colonization resistance against enteropathogens Nature - Non-antibiotic drugs from a wide range of therapeutic classes can alter the ability of gut commensals to resist invasion by enteropathogens, a previously underappreciated side effect of...

Finally online!
Our latest research is out @nature.com: We show that non-antibiotic drugs can disrupt colonization resistance, raising the risk of enteric infections.
rdcu.be/ewwrG

Left: Compound-promoter interaction network. Fifty-three significant compound-promoter interactions are shown as edges in a Sankey diagram connecting the compounds (left, source nodes) to the promoters (right, target nodes). Edge thickness represents mean Z-scores (n = 8), while node size represents the total number of interactions. Right: Proposed model for the molecular mechanism of caffeine-ciprofloxacin antagonism. Caffeine triggers expression of MicF small RNA in a Rob-dependent manner, which then binds to the 5′-UTR of ompF mRNA to inhibit and decrease OmpF protein levels. This ultimately prevents ciprofloxacin from entering the cell, resulting in caffeine-ciprofloxacin antagonism

How are bacterial transport machineries regulated by external cues? @brochadolab.bsky.social &co identify environmental chemicals that regulate #transporter transcription, identifying the TF Rob as a key modulator of #EffluxPump expression in #Ecoli #AMR @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/46pUM9Q

New preprint! We characterise the small, regulatory RNA Arp which controls DNA uptake and twitching motilty in A. baumannii. Led by our Dr Fergal Hamrock @hamrockfergal.bsky.social and in collaboration with @westermannlab.bsky.social and Mike Gebhardt's lab!

Congrats to Gianluca Prezza (@gprezza.bsky.social) for reveiving the 2025 PhD Award from the Friends of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI)!👏 The award honours excellent PhD theses from the field of life sciences at HZI partner universities. His thesis focused Bacteroides' RNA biology.

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....

Thank you to all students and to the GSLS for this award! It means a lot to me! (-AW)

𝔟α𝐜𝐓𝕖Ř𝒾ⒶĹ ＳＨⓐ𝓹Ẹ 丂ħ𝓲ƒ𝓉ⒺⓇร 🦠

Ultra-sensitive RNA-seq and FISH show 𝘉𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘰𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘵𝘢𝘪𝘰𝘵𝘢𝘰𝘮𝘪𝘤𝘳𝘰𝘯 cells adopt different shapes reflecting distinct gene expression profiles and metabolic specializations

A deliberate survival strategy for the ever-changing gut environment?

www.cell.com/cell-reports...

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.

A scalable gut epithelial organoid model reveals the genome-wide colonization landscape of a human-adapted pathogen - Nature Genetics A genome-wide screen using human gut epithelial organoids combined with transposon-directed insertion sequencing identifies over 100 Shigella flexneri genes required for epithelial colonization.

Very excited about our latest combining advanced cell culture, transposon-insertion sequencing, and statistical modeling to map Shigella virulence determinants in organoid models. Great collaboration w/ @mldm.bsky.social @sellinlab.bsky.social in @natgenet.nature.com

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Complementary Ribo-seq approaches map the translatome and provide a small protein census in the foodborne pathogen Campylobacter jejuni - Nature Communications Bacterial genomes still contain many hidden and uncharacterized genes. Using complementary Ribo-seq approaches, Froschauer, Svensson et al. here annotate start and stop codons of Campylobacter jejuni, reporting a high-resolution translatome and identifying several novel small ORFs in this foodborne pathogen.

Bacterial genomes still contain many hidden genes.
This article reports a high-resolution map of translated proteins, incl. small ones, in the pathogen Campylobacter jejuni

@uniwuerzburg.bsky.social @campy-bara.bsky.social @sharmalab.bsky.social

Freude über den Doppelerfolg: Zwei Würzburger Forschungsvorhaben haben sich im Exzellenzwettbewerb durchgesetzt und erhalten Mittel aus der begehrten Millionenförderung. Von links: Caroline Kisker (Würzburger Koordinatorin von NUCLEATE und Vizepräsidentin), Cynthia Sharma (Würzburger Speakerin von NUCLEATE), Ralph Claessen (Würzburger Speaker von ctd.qmat) und Universitätspräsident Paul Pauli (Bild: Jonas Blank / JMU)

Erfolg auf ganzer Linie: zwei Exzellenzcluster für Würzburg! 🥂🚀
Im Rahmen der #ExStra wird nicht nur der Quantenphysik-Cluster ctd.qmat weiterhin gefördert. Mit NUCLEATE, einem Forschungsprojekt zu Nukleinsäuren, kommt noch ein zweiter Cluster hinzu!
➡️ go.uniwue.de/xstra25

And this only the beginning! I’m glad we did that collaboration with the Maric lab. ASOs for the people!

Enabling next-generation anaerobic cultivation through biotechnology to advance functional microbiome research Nature Biotechnology - Overcoming key hurdles for the development of next-generation anaerobic cultivation methods could have major impacts on microbial community research and applications.

Here we share thoughts on next-gen cultivation: rdcu.be/ejPSb. Hope it helps 😄 Was fun to write with great colleagues @lisamaierlab.bsky.social @jselkrig.bsky.social @baerboletta.bsky.social @typaslab.bsky.social @mmmicrobiomelab.bsky.social @leibniz-dsmz.bsky.social @westermannlab.bsky.social

Advancing RNA phage biology through meta-omics Abstract. Bacteriophages with RNA genomes are among the simplest biological entities on Earth. Since their discovery in the 1960s, they have been used as i

I'm happy to share the first publication from my lab @hoerlab.bsky.social, now out in @narjournal.bsky.social! I take a look at the biology of RNA phages, focusing on how meta-omics methods are discovering new RNA phage families and bacterial defense strategies.

#PhageSky

doi.org/10.1093/nar/...

Transcriptomic profiling of individual bacteria by MATQ-seq - Nature Protocols Bacterial single-cell sequencing via MATQ-seq combines index sorting, random priming and rRNA depletion, and offers high cell retention and transcript capture rates, making it ideal for experiments wi...

If you want to do single-cell RNA-seq on your favourite bacterium, here‘s our detailed Nature Protocol for microbial MATQ-seq. It profiles up to 600 genes in a single bacterial cell!

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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...

RNA function follows form – why is it so hard to predict? AlphaFold’s highly accurate structural models transformed protein biology,but RNA lags behind.

AlphaFold’s highly accurate structural models transformed protein biology, but RNA lags behind

https://go.nature.com/41UEulj

📣Fully funded PhD position available in our lab at @uniwuerzburg.bsky.social, in collaboration with Dr. Connolly at Newcastle University (@ruamicro.bsky.social). "Dissecting the RNA-centric landscape of microbiota-pathogen interactions in the gut”. 🦠

Apply here: www.uni-wuerzburg.de/karriere/sin...

Micromix: web infrastructure for visualizing and remixing microbial ‘omics data Abstract. Micromix is a flexible web platform for sharing and integrating microbial omics data, including RNA sequencing and transposon-insertion sequencin

Interested in collecting, sharing, and interacting with large collections of bacterial functional genomics data (RNA-seq, Tn-seq/TraDIS, etc.)? Check out our new web platform, Micromix, with case studies for Salmonella and Bacteroides! 🧫🧬🖥️🧪 Thread 1/n

academic.oup.com/gigascience/...

Tiny Protein, Big Impact! @elisa-venturini.bsky.social & colleagues reveal YjiS shapes #pathogen dissemination! Yjis a highly induced intracellular #Salmonella protein delays macrophage escape, rewires host responses & controls motility!🔬🦠 @uniwuerzburg.bsky.social
https://buff.ly/4gjYvGY

Is it anything Hfq-like (RNA chaperone)? Or similar to CsrA (global translation modulator)? We don't know yet. But as it stands, Bacteroidota RRM proteins appear as excellent candidates to map post-transcriptional networks in a substantial fraction of the microbiota. www.nature.com/articles/s41...