David Sünderhauf (@davvi36) — Bluesky Profile

9 hours ago

Glad to see our latest work out in Nature Microbiology!!

Extremely grateful to everyone involved in the project.

Check it out!! 👇🏻👇🏻

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4 hours ago

It's a fantastic & exciting paper, congrats! 😁

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9 hours ago

Plasmids promote antimicrobial resistance through insertion sequence-mediated gene inactivation - Nature Microbiology Inactivation of chromosomal genes through plasmid-encoded IS elements is an extended mechanism of antimicrobial resistance evolution in bacteria.

Final version of our last paper is out!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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1 week ago

Dear Shabana,
I notice today that you referred to me in your speech on immigration at the IPPR think tank.
You said: “A party leader should not be on the beaches of France encouraging people to
make a perilous crossing on small boats.”
I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised especially after the hateful Labour campaign in Gorton
and Denton, but this is just the latest in a string of lies peddled by a discredited Government
who intentionally fan the flames of racism and division.
When I went to Calais, I was not there to encourage people to travel to the UK. I was there
to see at first hand the suffering your Government and successive Governments have done
in demonising migrants in a pathetic bid to pander to the base instincts of Reform and the
flawed strategy of Morgan McSweeney.
As you will know, if you even bothered to research my visit instead of taking Reform talking
points, I was there to witness the brutality of families living in tents in freezing temperatures. I
filled water tanks and picked up litter.
What that visit did do is confirm my belief that if we are to smash the boat gangs and stop
the boats, we need to offer safer and managed routes for migrants to come to this country.
Showing compassion as a politician is not a crime. In fact, we need to see much more of it.
It reminded me of a young MP who in October 2015 spent three days in Lesbos helping
migrants fleeing war-torn Syria. She posted videos on X, talked about handing out water and
croissants to refugees and food parcels.
When she returned to the UK, she wrote a very moving piece in the New Statesman. She
said “we have to work with our European partners and create new, safe, and legal routes for
refugees to get to Europe. We cannot abandon them to their fate, left as prey for smugglers
whilst risking death on the seas.”
She said “maybe we can make ourselves feel better by saying no-one is making them get on
the boats. And again, the Home Secretary is not entirely wrong when …

Dear Shabana,

Let's clear some things up around migration and remember we're talking about people's lives.

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1 week ago

➡️ preprint from the lab! Bacteria have loads of antiviral defences in their mobile genetic elements (MGEs). So when MGEs move between bacteria, the defences move with them, generating a fast turnover of defences in bacteria. But what about the antiviral defence turnover in the MGEs themselves? 🤔

🧵👇

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1 week ago

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More members, more councillors, more MPs.

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Join us ⤵️

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2 weeks ago

2026 PhD – bourse d’excellence IVID – Graduate Plus

📢 Opportunity to apply for a PhD fellowship to join our group and work on MGE-MGE interactions and phage defence systems!
@mmsb-lyon.bsky.social

See informations about eligibility and research project on this web page: graduate-plus.fr/immunology-v...

Contact me if you are interested !

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2 weeks ago

Not interested anymore now i know RP4 is apparently your favourite. #pKJK5ForLife
(I'm away for a week but i'll email you when I'm back 😊 )

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2 weeks ago

This election was a choice between hope and hate, and the people of Gorton and Denton chose hope 💚

🎉 Huge congratulations to the Honourable Member for Gorton and Denton! And to everyone who helped make this happen 👏

I can't wait to see you on Monday, Hannah, and give you the biggest, proudest hug

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2 weeks ago

This looks awesome Pedro! I got some really weird RP4 data recently that I have no idea what to make of and would love to chat about with you at some point

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2 weeks ago

New preprint out on bioRxiv!

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Can conjugative plasmids be used to control plasmid and pathogen spread?

Follow me down the rabbit hole that led to this story 🧵

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2 weeks ago

Looks great Bram!

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2 weeks ago

In case you missed it: our review titled "Spatial structure: shaping the ecology and evolution of microbial communities" is out! 🚨

Let me hit you with some highlights on why spatial structure matters. (and why you should care!)

Sharing is appreciated 🙏 🧵👇

doi.org/10.1093/fems...

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2 weeks ago

and that's when bacterial endosymbionts ruin everyone's definition of organism :) i heard an absolutely wild conference talk about beetle endosymbionts that are three distinct species (all are auxotroph), which all fuse their cells but chromosomes still localise to their own "area"

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2 weeks ago

There's some cool work as well on how the polyploid/multicopy nature of plasmids allows genes plasmids to be subject to different evo pressures than genes on chromosomes. To me, this also shows how plasmids evolve different from bacteria, therefore v. useful to consider them as organisms in eco-evo

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2 weeks ago

That's an interesting organism definition that I've not come across, and further I'm not sure why plasmids should have less replication errors - they use their host's machinery, and further can also recombine to e.g. form hybrid plasmids.

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2 weeks ago

I also decided to give it a go to write this up in a way that's accessible without a strict scientific background: davvi36.wordpress.com/2026/02/20/p...

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2 weeks ago

To CRISPR or not to CRISPR?🥀
That’s a question plasmids face during competition 🧬⚔️

@davvi36.bsky.social et al. shows it depends on whether targeted plasmids have TAs! ⚖️

Fun to be part of this story w/ @leightonpayne.bsky.social Thanks for pulling us in!

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3 weeks ago

🚨 New preprint 🚨

How promiscuous really are conjugative plasmids, and what does that mean for plasmid co-occurrence?

A pleasure to collaborate with @craigmaclean.bsky.social on the first paper of my fellowship!

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

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2 weeks ago

Thinking about plasmids like that certainly helps me to conceptualise plasmid ecology! Plasmids have life history traits which can influence their survival strategies, plasmids have their preferred ecological niche, compete with other plasmids for resources, ....

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3 weeks ago

Thanks Germán! 🙂

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3 weeks ago

Screenshot of acknowledgments: The authors would like to thank Mario Mestre (KU Copenhagen, Denmark) and Edze Westra (University of Exeter, UK) for stimulating and inspiring discussions and enthusiasm. The authors further thank Iolanda Domingues (Exeter Centre for Cytomics, University of Exeter, UK) for project scoping using flow cytometry.

Thanks so much to all other co-authors including @willhgaze.bsky.social and especially Stineke van Houte, our reviewers who helped elevate this since the preprint, and everyone else who was involved 😊 It's been a long way to get here (first version of Fig S3 expts was during my PhD ~ 2021!) 6/6

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3 weeks ago

We already knew TA’s importance throughout plasmid lifecycle, here we show how great it also is for plasmid competition. Additionally, we clearly show how CRISPR-Cas has new selective pressures when it’s mobile –therefore we’re starting to unravel roles of defence systems in MGE warfare. 5/6

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3 weeks ago

Finally, @leightonpayne.bsky.social and @rafomics.bsky.social follow up & analyse naturally-occurring plasmids. Plasmids carrying nucleolytic CRISPR-Cas systems AVOID targeting other plasmids with TA. Those that do target TA plasmids tend to carry matching antitoxins! 4/6

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3 weeks ago

In the lab, we see the same: Jahn Ringger & I mated E. coli strains carrying IncP plasmids to confirm a universal CRISPR-Cas benefit in defence, but show a limitation in offense: CRISPR-Cas is detrimental when its competitor carries active TA! 3/6

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3 weeks ago

That’s where @brownlab.bsky.social stepped in to conceptualise mathematically: when stationary (and DEFENDING its cell from competitor plasmid), CRISPR-Cas is very beneficial – in OFFENSE (moving to new cell), this can break down when competitor plasmid has toxin-antitoxin 3/6

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3 weeks ago

Plasmids are not only really cool (aka my favourite group of organisms), but also important to microbial evolution & AMR. Like bacterial chromosomes, plasmids can carry their own defence systems – but we don’t know much about what selective pressure DS on plasmids face. 2/6

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3 weeks ago

Two cartoon images of children with plasmids for faces about to fight. Commentators are saying "Plasmid-borne CRISPR-Cas systems provide significant defensive benefits" and "Yes, but toxin-antitoxin systems on competitor plasmids constrain the offensive CRISPR-Cas benefit"

Out now in @plosbiology.org : our big joint effort on the role of #CRISPR in plasmid competition. Read on for a really fun (I’m biased ok) analysis of how a defence system has new selective pressures when it’s mobile
journals.plos.org/plosbiology/... 1/6

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3 weeks ago

Mathematical modeling predicts that CRISPR-Cas has a greater potential to benefit its plasmid in defence than in offense. Structure of the mathematical model when a CRISPR-Cas plasmid is the resident (left) or the invader plasmid (right). The authors consider seven distinct cell types: C (CRISPR-Cas bearing) and T (TA-bearing) plasmids reside in host cells; CT denotes a C cell that has been invaded by a T plasmid and vice versa; Cr* and Ci* cells have undergone segregational loss of a T plasmid, and the fate of PSK is not yet resolved; PSK cells are dead cells after post-segregational killing. When the plasmids co-reside, they are subject to basic biological parameter s (segregational loss). CRISPR-Cas and TA alter parameter s by their own modes of action x and y, respectively. Parameter f describes the positive effect PSK cells have on growth of nearby cells, where fr describes the benefit to cells containing the previously resident plasmid. All parameters adopt distinct values when their respective plasmids are resident (r) or invasive (i).

Plasmids use immune systems like #CRISPR-Cas to compete with other #plasmids, but do these systems confer an advantage? @davvi36.bsky.social &co show that CRISPR-Cas benefits resident plasmids but is constrained by toxin-antitoxin systems after horizontal transfer @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4qNbdDt

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1 month ago

Title: "Can phage defence maintain colicin plasmids in Escherichia coli?"

highlighted section "Since phage defence mechanisms have been found in a wide range of plasmids, it is conceivable that many plasmids, including 'cryptic' ones (those that lack a readily identifiable function), encode phage defence mechanisms. Here, we examine the effects of 16 characterized Col plasmids on phage infection."

Love it when you stumble across a random 1995 paper that could just as well be a 2026 preprint.
www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour...

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