BejaLab

Highly mutagenic continuous evolution in E. coli using a Φ29-based orthogonal replication system - Nature Biotechnology Mutational rates of bacterial evolution are increased using an error-prone orthogonal system.

#NatMicroPicks

Sending evolution into overdrive 🔧🦠

A Φ29‑based DNA replication system in E. coli enables stable and targeted hypermutation achieving evolution of enzyme activities within days

#MicroSky

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

Parasitic connections: a patescibacterial epibiont, its methylotrophic gammaproteobacterial host, and their phages | mBio Patescibacteriota are ultra-small bacteria with reduced genomes that rely on symbiotic interactions with other prokaryotes; however, their host specificity and associated viral parasites remain poorly characterized due to limited cultured representatives. By combining targeted cultivation with genomic and microscopy analyses, we reveal previously unrecognized host lineages and expand the known viral diversity infecting this major, but still poorly known, bacterial phylum. We describe Strigamonas methylophilicida, a new patescibacterial species of the family Absconditicoccaceae that grows as an epibiont on various methylotrophic Gammaproteobacteria. This expands the host range for this family, previously found to infect only photosynthetic partners. Using enrichment cultures and metagenomics, we retrieved complete genomes of novel phages infecting S. methylophilicida and its methylotrophic hosts, including one phage that uses a modified genetic code matching that of the patescibacterium, which shows a specific viral adaptation to infect Absconditicoccaceae hosts. Our findings reveal a previously unrecognized patescibacteria-methylotrophs-phages tripartite interaction in freshwater environments, highlight the adaptations of patescibacterial phages, and shed light on the complex ecology and evolution of host-parasite-phage dynamics in understudied bacterial lineages.

Parasitic connections: a patescibacterial epibiont, its methylotrophic gammaproteobacterial host, and their phages | mBio https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/mbio.00025-26

AlphaFold 3-powered discovery of phage proteins that inhibit bacterial transcription initiation Yuan et al. develop an AlphaFold 3-guided pipeline to discover phage proteins that inhibit bacterial transcription initiation. Using this approach, they identify three phage inhibitors that target distinct RNA polymerase sites and block open-complex formation through diverse structural mechanisms.

AlphaFold 3-powered discovery of phage proteins that inhibit bacterial transcription initiation: Cell Reports https://www.cell.com/cell-reports/fulltext/S2211-1247(26)00160-9?rss=yes

Recall: ProRider Bicycle Helmets; The helmets can fail to protect the user in the event of a crash, posing a serious risk of injury or death due to head injury. Get refund. www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2026...

@labinoue.bsky.social

Resurrecting Full-length Ancestral Schizorhodopsins and Heliorhodopsins with Structure-guided, Indel-aware Sequence Reconstruction www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Water mass specific genes dominate the Southern Ocean microbiome Nature Communications - Southern Ocean microbial communities are less well studied. Here, the authors generate a circumpolar-scale gene catalog from 218 metagenomics samples revealing broadscale...

Very happy to share the latest paper of our group (et al.)! rdcu.be/e7zyX . This one has a special place… 1/n

I know, people use vanilla LLMs to review, and they are not build for that… then you get hallucinations and such. Another reason why we need dedicated tools!

Interesting kind of genomic compartmentalisation in wheat: transposable elements are enriched around genomic regions that were under selection during domestication 🧬

The dynamic basis of G-protein recognition and activation by a GPCR - Nature Conventional and time-resolved cryo-electron microscopy reveal how NTSR1 dynamically engages and releases different G proteins, capturing over 20 intermediates and uncovering key mechanistic step...

Happy to share our work on conventional and time-resolved cryo-EM studies of NTSR1, now published in Nature!
nature.com/articles/s41...

Wonderful collab. w/ Sumino, Mitsutake, Kobilka, & Inoue labs.

Congrats to Kazuhiro, Kouki, Toshiki, Shun & everyone involved!

When Referee 3 is too lazy to review the paper and their AI-generated response cites hallucinated papers to “prove” non-originality! This is mind-boggling. #AcademicSky

@odedrechavi.bsky.social

A Red-Light Gate for a Cation Channel: The Conducting State of Channelrhodopsin-1 from Chlamydomonas augustae Channelrhodopsins (ChRs) are light-controlled ion channels that have become indispensable tools in the field of optogenetics. Channelrhodopsin-1 from …

Transient absorption spectroscopy on Channelrhodopsin-1 by Prof. Heberle's group. A red-shifted intermediate was revealed to correspond to the channel-open state. Congratulations!!🎉✨
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Day 3 at 2900 m depth is mainly for analyzing gas and isotope geochemistry. @davidbekaert.bsky.social brought a mass spec and colleagues from @whoi.edu and @ethz.ch are collecting ancient brines in pressure vessels. #darkoxygen @mblscience.bsky.social @hfspo.bsky.social #OxyMoRon #NASA #deeplife 🧪⚒️

An Ocean of Opsins [type-2 rhodopsins] academic.oup.com/gbe/article/...

The Tara Polaris scientific vision: Advancing our understanding of the central Arctic Ocean to better address life in the Earth System arxiv.org/abs/2601.05838

Structural, Mechanistic and Phylogenetic Insights Into a Freshwater Actinorhodopsin www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Characterization of Phytoene Desaturase Knockout Carotenoid-Deficient Microalgal Mutants Generated by Cas9-Ribonucleoprotein Complexes onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

The Polymer‐Plastisphere‐Function Nexus Links to Divergent Biodegradation of Microplastics During Composting Biodegradable microplastics undergo rapid degradation through deterministic enrichment of diverse degrading microbial consortia and multi-enzyme synergy on their surfaces. In contrast, the degradatio...

The Polymer-Plastisphere-Function Nexus Links to Divergent Biodegradation of Microplastics During Composting enviromicro-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Repeated convergent evolution of bradykinin mimics as defensive toxins Natural selection can drive the evolution of similar traits through convergent evolution. Short peptides identical to the vertebrate hormone bradykinin (BK) have been reported from the venoms and skin...

Repeated convergent evolution of bradykinin mimics as defensive toxins www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

תקין

Phage–host interactions are a key driver of microbial ecology, but observing them in nature is hard!
With metaHi-C, we detect freshwater phage–host pairs and link their infection dynamics to evolution.

Together with @nadal-molero.bsky.social & Ana Martin-Cuadrado

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

Conformational signatures of native ligand and pharmacochaperone binding in rhodopsin www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Marine virologist, astrophysicist earn UBC’s top research prizes UBC recognizes six Science faculty members for research excellence, with two of the university's top prizes awarded to Dr. Curtis Suttle and Dr. Jess McIver.

Two of UBC’s premier research prizes were awarded to UBC Science faculty members today, with Dr. Curtis Suttle (@virosphere.bsky.social) receiving the Jacob Biely award, and Dr. Jess McIver earning UBC’s Charles A. McDowell award.
@killamtrusts.bsky.social

science.ubc.ca/news/2026-03...

Devastating news for the marine viral community - Markus was an excellent scientist and friend. #phagesky

Simultaneous Overexpression of Three Enzymes of Chloroplast Metabolism Fails to Improve CO2 Assimilation or Biomass Abstract. Ensuring an adequate food supply amidst a growing global population and climate change challenges, necessitates innovative strategies to enhance

Simultaneous Overexpression of Three Enzymes of Chloroplast Metabolism Fails to Improve CO2 Assimilation or Biomass academic.oup.com/jxb/article/... @jxbotany.bsky.social

Structural and mechanistic insights into the dual-nuclease defense protein Upx as an anti-phage system | Nature Communications https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-70435-x

This talk is happening tomorrow—as part of the Protein Structure Evolution seminar!

Click here to register if you like cool science: tinyurl.com/prose-seminar2

Organized by @lacholt.bsky.social, @caro-rocha.bsky.social, @claudiaalcar.bsky.social, @zachary-ardern.bsky.social and myself.

The sea pangolin! Now you tell us...😳