Anthony Vecchiarelli

🧪

Schneider and Walker deserve flowers for how they managed that game. Wow

Hey Americans! How’s that baseball series going?

I have been trying to get this published as an op-ed, but I am going to post it here since I think it is timely in light of the "consent" extortion events.

Deafening Quiet from the Scientific Establishment

jeremymberg.github.io/jeremyberg.g...

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Interested in a tenure track position teaching and doing research with undergrads at a PUI? We are looking for a broadly-defined microbiologist who can teach Med Micro and Immunology. Apply at universityofscrantonjobs.com/postings/8308. Pls share widely to feeds (& on twitter if you still tweet)! 🦠

Engineering Spatial Control of Bacterial Organelles Bacteria were once thought to lack organelles, but it is now clear they confine cellular reactions using an array of membrane- and protein-based compartments. A central question, however, is how bacte...

New PrePrint from the Vecchiarelli and Mosalaganti (@shyamalm.bsky.social) labs! 🧵

Collaboration with the Giessen and Pi labs

Congratulations to co-first authors Y Hoang (@hoanghamyy.bsky.social) and Pankaj Jadhav!

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Independent research fellowships leading to tenured positions at the John Innes Centre.

Repost = nice. Thank you very much!!!

This is why we fund scientists to study things like oyster slobber even if you don’t think it sounds important

Invited to give a talk by graduate students-who DRIVE research nationwide-is easily one of the greatest honors for a PI. It’s even better when one of your former mentees is the host! Thank you Tanner and @harvard.edu Micro for being a bright light in these dark times. 🙏 Science will prevail 💪

We kicked off the new school year with the launch of the BioFoundry for Extreme and Exceptional Fungi, Archaea and Bacteria (ExFAB). The new facility will allow researchers to make novel discoveries using previously unstudied microbes that could generate advances in biotechnology & biomanufacturing.

THE Erwin Frey, talking about self-organization in biological systems. Title of the seminar serie suggests it might be intended for physicists.

thank you to all the NIH staff who stand by their duty and put in heroic efforts to get it done. I'll never forget it and will be eternally grateful.

We've already got hundreds of students and mentors here, sharing how the sudden policy change has derailed plans. We're looking at formally "delivering" results to NSF leadership tomorrow, please do keep sharing and spreading the word: laurenkuehne.github.io/grfpChanges/

Congratulations Manuel! My lab and I already read the preprint several times, and I'm happy to see it published. It really inspired some of our upcoming work. Thank you!

Unannotated translation products are widespread in model E. coli https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.25.678689v1

❤️✊️

Molecular basis of ParA ATPase activation by the CTPase ParB during bacterial chromosome segregation - Nature Communications ParABS systems partition chromosomal DNA and low-copy plasmids in bacteria. Here, the authors elucidate the mode of interaction between ParA and ParB and clarify how ParB stimulates the ATPase activity of ParA to drive the segregation process.

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

#microsky

Dynamics and interplay of gene expression and chromosome organization across a predatory lifecycle The obligate predatory bacterium Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus alternates between a motile attack phase and a growth phase inside another bacterium, during which it undergoes multiple rounds of DNA repli...

📝New preprint! #MicroSky

🕰️We chart the full, synchronized lifecycle of a predatory bacterium using Hi-C, RNA-seq, ChIP-seq & microscopy.

🧬We uncover dramatic shifts in nucleoid architecture & transcription, tightly coordinated with predation.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

MCDB Opens Search for Faculty | U-M LSA Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology (MCDB) MCDB welcomes applications at the Assistant Professor level from outstanding biological scientists in all areas of physiology and neuroscience, spanning molecular, cellular, systems, and organismal le...

My MCDB dept is accepting applications for a faculty position at the Assistant Professor level!

Applications Due by October 15, 2025

We welcome applications from all areas of physiology and neuroscience, spanning molecular, cellular, systems, and organismal levels.

lsa.umich.edu/mcdb/news-ev...

Expanding the genetic toolbox of the obligate predatory bacterium Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus with inducible gene expression and CRISPR interference Inducible gene expression and CRISPR interference-mediated depletion in the predatory bacterium Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus.

🚨New paper out! #MicroSky
Studying obligate predators like Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus is tricky—essential genes for predation are also essential for survival.
We expanded its genetic toolbox:
🧬promoters to fine-tune expression
🧬IPTG-inducible system
🧬CRISPRi for rapid knockdown
bit.ly/46GUn2c
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Ever wondered how to position organelles in bacteria? Wonder no more!
Happy to have contributed to this fantastic story from @cellforganized.bsky.social' lab.

The avenues this opens in the synthetic biology space are enormous!

Movie: Carboxysomes positioned in E. coli!

Preprint: shorturl.at/D6xVg

The capacity to engineer both the composition of compartments and their positioning advances synthetic biology into a new era, where the spatial context of cellular function (“where”) can be programmed as readily as its content (“what”).

This was a massive team effort. Congrats to all authors!

By fusing this MapTag to heterologous organelles and co-expressing McdA, we reprogramed the distribution of condensates, encapsulins, and even membrane-bound organelles in E. coli!

We then repurposed McdAB as a generalized spatial regulator for other bacterial organelles. An N-terminal peptide of McdB is necessary and sufficient for McdA interaction. We developed this McdB peptide into a minimal autonomous positioning tag or “MapTag”.

We also observed carboxysome “partitioning,” where the shell appears to invaginate at the midpoint of a larger carboxysome, suggesting that McdAB may play a role in carboxysome size regulation by subdividing oversized structures.

Without McdAB, CryoET shows large and disorganized aggregates of carboxysome components at the cell poles. By contrast, McdAB-expressing cells displayed fully assembled, properly sized, and unclustered carboxysomes distributed across the nucleoid region of the cell!

First, we showed that McdAB can distribute carboxysomes in E. coli!

a man in a suit and tie has the word question written on his chest ALT: a man in a suit and tie has the word question written on his chest

McdAB is currently the only known minimal and self-organizing positioning system for any protein-based organelle in bacteria. Could McdAB be repurposed to provide synthetic spatial control in (1) other bacteria and (2) other organelle types?

Carboxysome organization is mediated by the Maintenance of Carboxysome Distribution (Mcd) system. McdB binds carboxysomes and induces McdA, a ParA-type ATPase, to oscillate along the nucleoid and distribute carboxysomes in the cell.

The most extensively studied bacterial organelle is the carboxysome, a protein-based organelle found in autotrophic bacteria that is responsible for significant global CO₂-fixation and holds promise for biotech applications.