Dino Sbardellati

Evolution of gut microbiota across honeybee species revealed by comparative metagenomics Nature Communications - Here, the authors perform metagenomic analysis of honeybee gut microbes, uncovering many previously unidentified species and host specific differences in composition and...

Happy to announce that our comparative metagenomic analysis of the gut microbiota of five honeybee species - spearheaded by @aiswarya.bsky.social - is finally published in a peer-reviewed journal! rdcu.be/eKMCs @fbm-unil.bsky.social @dmf-unil.bsky.social 🧵👇

Bee Microbiomes Harbor Diverse Antimicrobial Resistance Genes on Plasmids Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is an emerging public health threat. In North America, tetracycline and macrolide antibiotics are often used to prevent or treat bacterial infections in honey bees. Prev...

New Preprint out!

In this short and sweet article, we showcase how management practices (antibiotic treatment) has impacted the AMR profiles associated with bee microbiomes.

The take home? More management = more plasmid-borne resistance!

doi.org/10.1101/2025...

#microbiome
🧪 🐝

A call for caution in the biological interpretation of viral auxiliary metabolic genes - Nature Microbiology This Perspective discusses virus-encoded auxiliary metabolic genes and provides a framework for the biological interpretation of these genes.

New paper alert! We suggest caution in the analyses of viral auxiliary metabolic genes and propose a new overarching term - 'auxiliary viral genes' (AVGs) to describe different types of such genes. @simrouxvirus.bsky.social #phagesky #Microsky www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A Phylogenetic Host‐Range Index Reveals Ecological Constraints in Phage Specialisation and Virulence Phages are typically known for having a limited host range, targeting particular strains within a bacterial species, but accurately measuring their specificity remains challenging. Factors like the g...

After many years in the making, here is our host range #phage paper with #ecology, #evolution and #biocontrol perspectives published in Molecular Ecology! @phimresearch.bsky.social‬ @inrae-pv.bsky.social‬ #PVBMT #JulianGarneau onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
These are our key findings:

#phage #phagesky a great review on Viromics by @simrouxvirus.bsky.social

The picture shows a conference room with a speaker on a podium on the left, a large screen with a scientific diagram in the middle and the audience on the right.

Kicking off Sunday morning #ASMicrobe with an entire phage ecology session \o/ thanks to @cathyhernandez.bsky.social and @phagebeelicious.bsky.social . And first, @cynthiasilveira.bsky.social on phages and geochemistry 🤩

Sunday Sketch: Bumble Bee Some bumble bee species are able to inhabit extremely cold environments, with their distribution stretching far north into the Arctic Circle. Vector art and fact by Danielle Rutkowski, Bluesky @dan…

Here’s an out-of-this-world-themed bumble bee! 🐝 Vector art and a fun fact about bees by @daniellerutkowski.bsky.social , screen-printed as a sticker by @phagebeelicious.bsky.social.
#SciComm #BeeArt #VectorArt #ScreenPrinting #Pollinators #SciArt #Bumblebee #InsectArt

Excited to be on the way to #ASMicrobe once more ! And if you want to know more about our work on CRISPRs, metagenomes, and phages, please come and chat and/or come see me tomorrow morning (9:15am in the EEB-IDS-202 session, which looks amazing overall !)

Day: June 22, 2025
Time: 8:15-10:15AM
Location: 403A

Session page (with speaker schedule): www.abstractsonline.com/pp8/#!/20974...

Going to ASM Microbe 2025?

Check out the in-depth symposium "Phage Ecology: From Prophage Decision Making to Ecosystem Modulation" hosted by Dr. Hernandez (@cathyhernandez.bsky.social) and I!

We have some really cool talks lined up.
Hope to see you there!

🧪🦠🔬
#Phagesky
#Microsky

CRISPRi-ART enables functional genomics of diverse bacteriophages using RNA-binding dCas13d - Nature Microbiology Leveraging RNA-targeting dCas13d enables selective interference with phage protein translation and facilitates measurement of phage gene fitness at a transcriptome-wide scale.

Dive into our lab’s first peer-reviewed publication—co-led with our friends @benadler.bsky.social and Muntathar Al-Shimary from the @doudna lab! If you’ve already read the preprint, don’t miss the new updates: doi.org/10.1038/s415... @naturemicrobiol.bsky.social

Diverse phage communities are maintained stably on a clonal bacterial host Bacteriophages are the most abundant and phylogenetically diverse biological entities on Earth, yet the ecological mechanisms that sustain this extraordinary diversity remain unclear. In this study, w...

Is it “winner-takes all” when the simplest living things compete? Check out my fresh publication on phage coexistence in Science and a thread below🧵 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Get ready to dance, our paper – Phage DisCo: targeted discovery of bacteriophages by co-culture – has been pre-printed! 🪩 This has been a really fun project to work on with @sianowen.bsky.social, @baym.lol, @nquinoneso.bsky.social, and our two talented undergrads Kesther and Carmen!

Targeted viromes and total metagenomes capture distinct components of bee gut phage communities - Microbiome Background Despite being among the most abundant biological entities on earth, bacteriophage (phage) remain an understudied component of host-associated systems. One limitation to studying host-associ...

I've been seeing lots of new faces on here so I am reposting one of my recent publications.

Turns out commercially produced bumble bees have simplified phage communities compared to free foraging honey bees, and phage sampling method matters!

doi.org/10.1186/s401...

🧪🦠🐝
#Phagesky
#Microsky

This is great! Can you please add me too?

Session details: www.abstractsonline.com/pp8/#!/20974...

Abstract submission guidelines: asm.org/Events/ASM-M...

Key Dates: Early Submission Deadline: Dec 3, 2024 at 12 p.m. ET.
Regular Submission Deadline: Jan 22, 2025 at 12 p.m. ET.

Working on phage research?

Dr. Catherine Hernandez and I are co-convening the "Phage Ecology: From Prophage Decision Making to Ecosystem Modulation" in-depth symposium at ASM Microbe 2025 and we want YOU to be part of it!

Abstract submission is now open!
More info below

🧪🦠🔬
#Phagesky
#Microsky

Interesting! This was lysate from a webbed plate. So maybe it’s a bacterial vesicle

A cryo-EM image of two tailed phage and a third circular object. Phage heads are ~50nm in diameter. Phage tails are ~150nm long.

Finally got around to processing my first cryo-EM image! This tailed phage was isolated from the gut of a honey bee and targets Bifidobacterium. Not 100% sure what the other circular structure is. If you have any ideas, let me know! 🐝🦠🧪 #phagesky

The gut microbiome of honey-producing wasps has converged on that of social bees bioRxiv - the preprint server for biology, operated by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a research and educational institution

Check out this new preprint about the microbiome of honey wasps! Featuring lab mate Lexie Martin! doi.org/10.1101/2024...

Thank you Titus =)!

Targeted viromes and total metagenomes capture distinct components of bee gut phage communities - Microbiome Background Despite being among the most abundant biological entities on earth, bacteriophage (phage) remain an understudied component of host-associated systems. One limitation to studying host-associ...

Do you like bees? How about phage?
Check out our new paper published in Microbiome!

In this research we compare how phage communities differ between bumble bees and honey bees and how sampling method influences recovered viral communities. 🧪

doi.org/10.1186/s401...

This is a cryo-EM image taken of a bacteriophage (phage) isolated from the gut of a bee. In the image, you can see two phage particles of similar size. Both phage particles have heads, portals, and are tailed. The phage are approximately 200nm long (from head to tail)

cryo-EM image of phage isolated from bee gut material! More images (and experiments!) coming soon 🐝🦠🧪

Phage on a plate! 🐝🦠🧪

Targeted Viromes and Total Metagenomes Capture Distinct Components of Bee Gut Phage Communities bioRxiv - the preprint server for biology, operated by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a research and educational institution

Hey science friends! Ever wonder what the phage community of bumble bees look like? Or how to best sample host-associated phage communities? Check out our new preprint!

Turns out that the bumble bees we sampled hosted extraordinarily low diversity phage communities, relative to honey bees. 🐝🦠🧪