Alexander Harms

Jumbo phage–mediated transduction of genomic islands | PNAS Bacteria acquire new genes by horizontal gene transfer, typically mediated by mobile genetic elements (MGEs). While plasmids, bacteriophages, and c...

#phagesky jumbo #phage -mediated HGT

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Ancient origin of an urban underground mosquito Understanding how life is adapting to urban environments represents an important challenge in evolutionary biology. In this work, we investigate a widely cited example of urban adaptation, Culex pipie...

How does life evolve to adapt to modern cities?

Out now in Science, my PhD work with @lindymcbr.bsky.social uncovers the ancient origin of the “London Underground mosquito” – one of the most iconic examples of urban adaptation.

🧵(1/n)
@science.org
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ady4515

Day 22, GOAT. The most iconic (if not the greatest phage of all time) in terms of looks are myovirus like phages. They look like a lunar lander and are instantly recognisable as a virus. #Drawtober #SciArt #PhageSky

Emergence of antiphage functions from random sequence libraries reveals mechanisms of gene birth | PNAS De novo gene birth—the emergence of genes from nongenic sequences—drives biological innovation, yet its adaptive potential remains poorly understoo...

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

#phagesky #phage defence #synbio #microsky

Thank you and thanks for coming + discussing!

Fantastic day to present our work to the ETH Zürich microbiology colleagues on Hönggerberg campus - for once a local #sciencetravels! 🚌🧬🍂

Setting the stage for today's food microbiology lecture - if you like your kidneys, wash those raw veggies and be careful with undercooked meat! 🦠☠️

BIG ANNOUNCEMENT📣: I haven’t been this excited to be part of something new in 15 years… Thrilled to reveal the passion project I’ve been working on for the past year and a half!🙀🥳 (thread 👇)

Easy vacation days in Ticino before some predictably dense months are coming up... 🏝🏔🧳

Fantastic lab hike in the Alpstein mountains together with our friends from Martin Loessner's group 🏞☀️😎

Schematics showing the mechanisms of Listeria monocytogenes infection and dissemination.

#Listeria monocytogenes causes serious infections by invading cells and crossing intestinal, blood–brain, and placental barriers, leading to #bacteraemia, CNS, and maternal–neonatal complications https://www.nature.c...

Black and white ink drawing of an agar filled petri dish with black spots or plaques covering the surface. One of these plaques is surrounded by a circle, connected by dotted lines to a larger magnified circle showing a lawn of bacteria punctured by a circlar hole with 7 smaller bacteriophages inside

Day 3, Soft. Soft agar is used to visualise phages - plaque assay: bacteria infected with phages are mixed with soft agar, poured over an agar plate. A bacterial lawn grows & plaques appear - as phages infect bacteria, multiply, kill & repeat to form an expanding hole. #drawtober #SciArt #Phagesky

Fantastic lab hike in the Alpstein mountains together with our friends from Martin Loessner's group 🏞☀️😎

A miniature CRISPR–Cas10 enzyme confers immunity by inhibitory signalling - Nature Panoptes, an anti-phage defence system against virus-mediated immune suppression, is revealed.

Today in @nature.com , we highlight how a cousin of CRISPR-Cas10, mCpol, establishes an evolutionary trap in anti-phage immune systems.

Check out @erinedoherty.bsky.social and my work from @doudna-lab.bsky.social lab here:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The role of mobile genetic elements in adaptation of the microbiota to the dynamic human gut ecosystem

#CurrOpinMicrobiol from @lgbacteria.bsky.social

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Guten Tag Freiburg - great city trip with the family to present at the German Pharmaceutic Society! 🧬🍺

Acinetobacter phages use distinct strategies to breach the capsule barrier Author summary Acinetobacter baumannii causes life-threatening and often antibiotic-resistant infections thereby posing a global threat. Accordingly, there is an urgent need for alternative treatments...

I said I will never work on phages, but having @micheleleroux.bsky.social next door made me change my mind. Here is Alexis's new paper showing how different phages deal with the capsular barrier to infect Acinetobacter! A great collaboration between our labs!
journals.plos.org/plospathogen...

Now published! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Very nice collaboration with Hoogenboom ( @ucl.ac.uk ) and Bonev ( @uniofnottingham.bsky.social ) labs.

Widespread deployment of the human CD38 ADP-ribosyl cyclase fold in antibacterial and anti-eukaryotic polymorphic toxins Bacterial polymorphic toxins are modular weapons that mediate inter-microbial competition and host interactions by delivering diverse cytotoxic domains through specialized secretion systems. Here, we ...

Happy to share our work on a T6SS effector with ADP ribose cyclase activity, published in JBC @asbmbjournals.bsky.social
Great work of Julius Martinkus @jmartinkus.bsky.social and (always) great collaboration with @dukasju.bsky.social and @laurentterradot.bsky.social
www.jbc.org/article/S002...

“Treatment with bacteriophages can combat antibiotic-resistant infections, but Swiss patients lack access” It is not only antibiotics but also certain viruses – known as bacteriophages – that can kill off pathogenic bacteria. However, Switzerland lacks the legal framework for the use of these viruses in th...

It is not only antibiotics but also certain viruses – known as bacteriophages – that can kill off pathogenic bacteria. However, Switzerland lacks the legal framework for the use of these viruses in therapy. What would need to change? Researcher Alexander Harms explains.

ethz.ch/en/news-and-...

Synthetic lethal TN-seq! #microsky 🦠

You’ve heard of ubiquitination, meet deazaguanylation: Doug Wassarman in our lab discovered phage defense pathways have co-opted Q nucleobase biosynthetic enzymes to catalyze a new form of protein conjugation chemistry @science.org

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

C. elegans is a real animal and we set out to understand how it comes to have its distinctive biogeography. Its ancestral center of diversity is in the higher elevation forests of Hawaii. Its closest relatives are spread across east Asia. Did they travel from Asia? [Preprint 🧵]

I get that the news cycle is packed right now, but I just heard from a colleague at the Smithsonian that this is fully a GIANT SQUID BEING EATEN BY A SPERM WHALE and it’s possibly the first ever confirmed video according to a friend at NOAA

10 YEAR OLD ME IS LOSING HER MIND (a thread 🧵)

Many thanks to Sylvain Moineau @smoineau.bsky.social for hosting me and to Universite Laval for serving poutine + beer for lunch!

Bonjour, Quebec! 🍛🌤🧬 #sciencetravels

Was fantastic to have you around - thank you for your visit and for a great talk!

A Protein Antibiotic Inhibits the BAM Complex to Kill Without Cell Entry Many antibiotics are ineffective against Gram-negative pathogens such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa because they cannot penetrate the bacterial outer membrane. Here, we show that protein antibiotics calle...

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

#microsky

I wanted to get a video of this ghost crab but every time I got close to their hole they scuttled back in, so I tried getting clever with it. I made a little sandcastle and shoved my phone into it, hit record, and walked away. Crab was VERY suspicious of this addition to their environment.

Phages with a broad host range are common across ecosystems - Nature Microbiology Proximity-ligation-based sequencing from 111 samples and 5 environments reveals that a substantial proportion of phages infect multiple species.

You like phages ? In this publication, we use metaHiC and our new version of the MetaTOR pipeline to challenge the traditional view of phages with a narrow host range.
@rkoszul.bsky.social @natmicrobiol.nature.com @cnrs.fr @institutpasteur.bsky.social

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