Louis Ates

A phylogenetic tree of insects is shown annotating the presence or absence of a an antimicrobial peptide gene across winged insects

Various phylogenetic secondary loss events are mapped to a tree of insects to explain the parsimony calculations necessary to explain the diversity of insect Drosomycin antimicrobial peptide genes

Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are key defence molecules of the innate immune system of plants and animals. Understanding the evolutionary origins of AMPs can help to explain how immune systems acquire novelty and vary in their defensive capabilities. However, AMPs evolve rapidly, and so the origins of similar AMPs across organisms is often unclear. Furthermore, false negatives due to low search sensitivity are common and can hinder confident annotations about true absences. Due to these difficulties, understanding whether similar AMP genes found in diverse organisms represent ancestral molecules or evolutionary novelties has been challenging. In this report, we present evidence of horizontal gene transfer (HGT) of the antifungal peptide gene Drosomycin across insects. We show that in Diptera, the presence of Drosomycin is restricted to the Melanogaster group and additionally the distant relative Drosophila busckii. We go on to recover Drosomycin genes in cockroaches (Blattodea), mantises (Mantodea), one katydid (Orthoptera), various beetles (Coleoptera), and a recently acquired pseudogenized Drosomycin locus in Liposcelis booklice (Psocodea), but no other insects. Explaining this diversity through shared ancestry requires at least 50 independent loss events, or just seven HGT events. Previous studies have suggested that similar AMPs found across divergent species reflect conservation from a common ancestor, or due to their small size, that they arose via convergent evolution resulting from pathogen-imposed selection. Our findings suggest horizontal gene transfer can be responsible for the presence of some AMP genes found scattered across the tree of life. By presenting a mechanism through which immune systems can acquire novelty, our study also suggests a possible explanation for certain lineage-specific competencies for defence against infectious disease. While loss of AMP genes is common in certain lineages, here we suggest gain of AMPs can occur just as suddenly.

Pleased to finally share this fun collab that began at #Ento23

@cedricaumont.bsky.social presented & I had seen NCBI annotated some cockroach genomes as "contaminated." Turns out NCBI & I were wrong (much more fun).

Horizontal transfer of an #AntimicrobialPeptide across insects
bit.ly/DrsHGT

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Gefeliciteerd Jeroen!

Stuff of nightmares 😅

Meer dan mooie woorden: de universiteit heeft een strategie nodig met radicaal vertrouwen en een biologisch fundament - Vox magazine OPINIE - De nieuwe strategie van de Radboud Universiteit ontvouwt zich als een gedurfde visie die de traditionele bescheidenheid van zich afschudt, schrijft hoogleraar microbiologie Mike Jetten. Maar ...

OPINIE - De nieuwe strategie van RU is een gedurfde visie die de bescheidenheid van zich afschudt, schrijft Mike Jetten : 'we kunnen het ons niet veroorloven een generatie briljante talenten te verliezen omdat ze te uitgeput zijn door bureaucratie & gebrek aan budgetten www.voxweb.nl/opinie/meer-...

Just checked your company. You clearly are familiar. Best of luck!

An illustration of the Lone Star tick, Amblyomma americanum

The best immunologists on Earth don't have PhDs. They're parasites.

Today's spotlight 🧵(and big inspo for @ dittobio): ticks!

And if you like this, stay tuned because we will be sharing cool parasite facts each week #TickTalk

I would agree, with the first part. But to compete with ticks. Are you acquainted with Schistosoma sp.? Living undetected in our bloodstream for decades. Just romantically spooning and producing offspring.

Leuke en informatieve column. Als bewoner van Mainz ook maar even de column over de naamgeving gelezen. Ik was even in de war, waarom een Nederlandse column op een Duitse site zou staan...

Living with antimicrobial-resistant TB In this blog post Samara shares her story of fighting antimicrobial -resistant tuberculosis, the hidden long-term consequences and the importance of getting that persistent cough checked out.

"AMR doesn't just mean different drugs; it means longer treatment, more side effects, and a much harder journey back to health." A patient's experience of living with antimicrobial-resistant TB: ukhsa.blog.gov.uk/2025/12/04/l...

Programme Discover the programme of the Triple I Conference.

Very excited and TBH some old-fashioned (good) nerves to speak on #mRNA #tuberculosis vaccines at the Utrecht 3I conference today!
If you're there, do say hi.
www.uu.nl/en/research/...

Lovely weekend of seeing friends and family compete at the indoor Euro ultimate Frisbee championships.

Alex Pretti was a colleague at the VA. We hired him to recruit for our trial. He became an ICU nurse- I lover working with him. He was a good kind person who lived to help and these fuckers executed him.

White. Hot. Rage.

'They saw them on their dishes when eating': The mushroom making people hallucinate dozens of tiny humans Only recently described by science, the mysterious mushrooms are found in different parts of the world, but they give people the same exact visions.

It's always the same hallucination across time and space and in whatever country the mushroom grows in. Extremely weird.

www.bbc.com/future/artic...

Many of you in the mycobacterial community attended the awesome inaugural 2025 Biology of Mycobacteria GRC, organized by @heran.bsky.social and myself: www.grc.org/biology-of-m....

I am writing with an update about this conference as the new chair.

This is your reminder that Hungarian-Jewish scientist George de Hevesy dissolved two Nobel Prizes in aqua regia to keep them out of the hands of the Nazis.

He then left the dissolved solution on his shelf and fled to Sweden.

(After the war he un-dissolved the gold and the prizes were re-cast.)

The Barber lab is looking to hire post-docs to work on #tuberculosis #immunology using murine and NHP models. BSL3 experience not required. Check out our lab in the NIH intramural program in Bethesda MD!

Aren't we all just doing whatever it is where doing Marcel? 😉
#IamSponge

Marine sponge microbe provides insights into evolution and virulence of the tubercle bacillus Author summary Tuberculosis, caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, is still one of the world’s deadliest infectious diseases. However, the origins and rise of M. tuberculosis as a successful pathogen ...

It might be the sponges! Or might not be. Plenty to search for still regarding ancestors. @tstinear.bsky.social
journals.plos.org/plospathogen...

OK, the master got me! Agree to agree.

Hope it helps! Glad my TB nerdism was active enough to spot it during diner ;). Preprints are the best.

BTW Roland was my PostDoc supervisor so I'm certainly biased. But this paper is incredible. It showed beyond doubt that M. bovis and "africanum" (L5/L6) descent from Mtb and that in turn from M. canettii. So much history in one figure!

Anyway congrats on the good work and keep the amazing papers coming please.

These results don't invalidate, but maybe rather encourage the method being robust and relevant. But the MTBC specific findings should be discussed in the right context. Including work by Brosch, @mbehr-mcgill.bsky.social @sergemostowylab.bsky.social, Tsolaki and others.

Supplemental Table 1 from Brosch et al 2002 PNAS

If I'm seeing correctly at mycobrowser your other deletion might be RD13.

Supplemental figure S1, from Brosch et al 2002 PNAS.

To avoid potentially awkward situations upon final publication, check out some of the oldschool literature. Especially Brosch et al. 2002 PNAS. I think you might have detected RD7, yet the unconventional annotation of the figure makes it hard to be sure on the phone. See table S1.

Congratulations @baym.lol, @brinda.eu and colleagues on the nice work, looks like a great way to identify deletions and deletion-induced fusion genes.
In MTBC, genomic deletions called "regions of difference" have long been used for phylogenetic investigation. Yet I found no citations thereof.

Thanks to this work, dog owners can finally take the dog out of the equation and replace their pet with a PETri dish ;).

Two scientist walk through a lab. One is saying: "I am a scientist, Martin. My observations must be meticulously documented, rigorously analysed and objectively verified. Haste is the enemy of wisdom!" The other asks: "But could you share a preliminary appraisal of your general thinking?" The first replies: "Well, if you insist on a crudely reductive answer, then, yes, I had a nice christmas."

A back-to-work cartoon for @newscientist.com

Exciting postdoc in the Boston area!

Not for me, that's for sure. Maybe a cat? ;)