Samay Pande

Not many positions offer this rare combination: exciting research questions, a highly supportive work atmosphere, and an exceptional mentor
@KostChristian
. If you’re in theoretical biology and want to collaborate closely with experimentalists, this is it!

Congrats Glen. This sounds interesting. Look forward to reading it.

Antagonism as a foraging strategy in microbial communities In natural habitats, nutrient availability limits bacterial growth. We discovered that bacteria can overcome this limitation by acquiring nutrients by lysing neighboring cells through contact-dependen...

Thrilled to share our new paper in @science.org describing our discovery that bacteria can switch from competitors to bonafide predators when resources run dry—arming nanoscale “spears” (T6SS) to stab & consume neighbours.

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

#MicroSKy #Microbiology

Big kudos to @sahelis.bsky.social , Sneha, and @vaibhav-sharma.bsky.social ! Stay tuned for more stories on how microbial predation affects the evolution of resistance in pristine environments.

Thus, microbial interactions in pristine environments can influence the evolvability of pathogens long before clinical antibiotic exposure.

These findings are important because: Resistance traits arising under biotic stress may be less constrained, and potentially more evolutionarily potent, than those shaped in antibiotic-only settings.

Our work demonstrates that coevolutionary history with a predator influences not only present-day survival but also the trajectory, speed, and cost of future adaptations, such as antibiotic resistance.

While abiotic influences on evolvability have been widely studied, the historical contingencies of antagonisms, such as microbial predation, remain underexplored.

Anti-predatory adaptations in E. coli were retained even after propagation in predator-free environments. These historical imprints persist and affect future evolutionary responses.

And yet, if resistance does evolve in predator-adapted prey, it comes at a lower fitness cost than in other backgrounds. This means such resistance may spread faster in microbial populations.

Key finding: Predation history restricts the evolution of high-level antibiotic resistance in prey bacteria, compared to those evolved only under abiotic conditions or wild-type controls.

We show that E. coli strains previously exposed to M. xanthus showed altered survivability when challenged with increasing concentrations of antibiotics.

Coevolutionary history of predation constrains the evolvability of antibiotic resistance in prey bacteria - npj Antimicrobials and Resistance npj Antimicrobials and Resistance - Coevolutionary history of predation constrains the evolvability of antibiotic resistance in prey bacteria

New paper alert!
We show that adaptation to the bacterial predator Myxococcus xanthus shapes how prey bacteria like E. coli evolve antibiotic resistance.
Now online at NPJ Antimicrobials and Resistance !!
www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Antimicrobial resistance in soil bacteria without the use of antibiotics Overuse of antibiotics is currently the primary reason for the rise of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), but researchers have shown that AMR can be found in soil bacterial communities due to microbial i...

Fun to see our recent study featured in The Microbiologist.
A short news article highlights our work on how predatory bacteria can drive antibiotic resistance—even in pristine soils, without antibiotics.
www.the-microbiologist.com/news/antimic...

A rod like cell becomes a fat spherical cell, which becomes a small spherical cell.

1/ 🧬 New Research Alert! Discover how the actin-like protein MreB influences bacterial cell shape and fitness in Pseudomonas fluorescens SBW25. #Microbiology #BacterialShape

You want to learn about microbiology from a fantastic lineup of speakers on a beautiful Greek island? PhD students apply now for the @EMBO | @FEBSnews Lecture Course The New Microbiology!
Registration: 1 Apr 2025
Course: 03 – 11 Sep 2025 | Spetses, Greece
meetings.embo.org/event/25-new...

Post doc in Europe? 🇪🇺🔬💡
It’s open to anyone in the 🌍
Call open 9 April 25
marie-sklodowska-curie-actions.ec.europa.eu/actions/post...

Genome duplication in a long-term multicellularity evolution experiment - Nature In the Multicellularity Long Term Evolution Experiment, diploid yeast evolve to be tetraploid under selection for larger multicellular size, revealing how whole-genome duplication can arise due to its...

1/46 Hey folks, we have a new paper out on the MuLTEE. Strap in and I’ll tell you the story of how this “little paper on polyploidy” turned into the most data rich paper our lab has produced, largely thanks to the leadership and work ethic of @kaitong25.bsky.social.

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

This looks very cool! congratulations! looking forward to reading this.

Strain identity effects contribute more to Pseudomonas community functioning than strain interactions Abstract. Microbial communities can shape key ecological services, but the determinants of their functioning often remain little understood. While traditio

New paper out in ISME Journal. Social interactions between strains shape bacterial communities. However, their impact on community functioning is lower compared to basic strain identity features. @joskramer.bsky.social @alexfig.bsky.social @simonmarech.bsky.social
academic.oup.com/ismej/advanc...

Disentangling the feedback loops driving spatial patterning in microbial communities - npj Biofilms and Microbiomes npj Biofilms and Microbiomes - Disentangling the feedback loops driving spatial patterning in microbial communities

Two (!) perspective pieces published today involving people from our lab! @adelpanta.bsky.social on spatial patterning in microbial communities www.nature.com/articles/s41... and @salazarafra.bsky.social on microbial communities as evolutionary individuals www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Mass lysis of predatory bacteria drives the enrichment of antibiotic resistance in soil microbial communities Saha et al. show that the predatory bacterium M. xanthus enriches the frequency of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in soil communities. This occurs because starvation-induced mass lysis of M. xanthus ce...

Nice to see how this project developed through the years & published in @currentbiology.bsky.social by Saheli Saha et al from @iamsamayp.bsky.social group 👏

Mass lysis of predatory bacteria drives the enrichment of antibiotic resistance in soil microbial communities

www.cell.com/current-biol...

Thanks a lot for your kind words Akos!! Yes, this took a bit more time than we wanted. But I am super happy with the way this paper has shaped—many thanks to the excellent editorial handling at @currentbiology.bsky.social and the super awesome reviewers.

Delighted to share my first PhD paper and also the first paper from the lab !!! 🎉🔬🧬🧫
We show that predatory bacteria, M. xanthus can play an important role in the maintenance of AMR even in the absence of anthropogenic influx of antibiotics in the environment.
Read this awesome thread to know more

Our study highlights how microbial ecology can influence the spread of resistance. Time to rethink how we approach antibiotic resistance! 🚀

The big picture? Antibiotic resistance doesn’t always need antibiotics. Natural microbial interactions—like predator-prey dynamics—can shape resistance in ways we hadn’t considered. Evolution is playing a long game. ⚔️

In both lab and natural soil samples, we found that areas where M. xanthus is present have higher levels of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, even without any human antibiotics. Resistance thrives, just from the predator’s death. 🌍🔬

Those dying cells release diffusible toxic compounds into the environment. Instead of wiping out competitors, these compounds select for bacteria that can survive toxic stress—including antibiotic-resistant microbes. ⚠️

M. xanthus is a bacterial predator, but it has a fatal flaw—it kills others but also self-destructs during its life cycle. When it starves, it forms fruiting bodies, with 90% of its cells dying in the process. That’s when things get interesting… 💀

We usually blame antibiotics for driving resistance. But what if microbial interactions alone could do the job? We found that the mass death of Myxococcus xanthus releases toxic compounds that enrich antibiotic-resistant bacteria in soil. 🌱🦠