Lingchen He 何灵尘

I finally read the paper overnight and found it is really good and worthy to read. Thank you Thomas.

What does that mean?

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/...

🤟🤟🤟🤟🤟

Come and work with me and @ariannebabina.bsky.social on #Streptomyces evolution and antibiotic production

Origins of a tangled bank: Adaptation and evolution in antibiotic-producing Streptomyces

www.gla.ac.uk/postgraduate...

please repost

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Congrats!!

Phage "satellites" that produce capsids but have no genes to produce tails have puzzled scientists for a long time. These are abundant as prophages in bacteria, but it was unclear how they can infect without tails

Now, Penadés & co show that they hijack tails from other phages. Incredible!

Thank you Joao!

(Ph)ighting Phages: How Bacteria Resist Their Parasites Bacteria are threatened by viral attack in every environment they colonize. For more than 100 years, microbiologists have investigated the mechanisms in place to contain these attacks. Rostøl and Marr...

😃

www.cell.com/cell-host-mi...

😉Thank you Aisling!

😊Thank you Nuria!

Chimeric infective particles expand species boundaries in phage-inducible chromosomal island mobilization Capsid-forming PICIs (cf-PICIs) produce their own capsids and exploit phage tails from unrelated species to transfer their DNA across bacterial hosts. This tail piracy enables broad dissemination and ...

A big thank you for everyone involved Jinlong,
@alfredfisa.bsky.social, Laura and Christopher. For more details, plz read www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Finally, we demonstrated evolutionary homology between cf-PICI and phage HK97 capsids, while showing that cf-PICIs avoid interference during capsid assembly through finely tuned interactions, thereby ensuring efficient and specific packaging of their own DNA. @jonaszpatkowski.bsky.social

In addition, we identified adaptor and connector genes as central to capsid–tail chimeric assembly, with high variability during the evolution of tail-less capsids.

This uncovers unexpected complexity in phage–satellite interactions, challenging the long-held view that satellites rely on a single helper phage to complete their lifecycle.

We revealed a key feature of tail piracy: cf-PICIs can exploit multiple helper phages—one inducing their cycle, another supplying tails. Remarkably, cf-PICIs can even accumulate tail-less particles without helper phage induction, and factors causing cell lysis can release them.

We discovered a new horizontal gene transfer mechanism: tail-less cf-PICIs hijack free phage tails extracellularly, forming infectious chimeric virions that drive both intra- and inter-species transfer among bacteria. @jonaszpatkowski.bsky.social @tcostalab.bsky.social @jrpenades.bsky.social

Did you get the email I sent 😭

Picking blueberries 💙🐦

The prototypic crAssphage is a linear phage-plasmid Schmidtke et al. demonstrate that C. communis, a ubiquitous human gut phage that evades conventional plaque-based isolation, predominately replicates as a low-copy linear phage-plasmid with a broad ho...

#phagesky

www.cell.com/cell-host-mi...

Congratulations Franklin, Yi and all the authors!! Very beautiful work!

Thank you to everyone who attended the 3rd UK MGE workshop. What an incredible few days of science and community building! Next stop: York 2026, hosted by @pcmfogg.bsky.social. See you all next year! #UKMGE

A bacterial CARD-NLR immune system controls the release of gene transfer agents Bacteria have evolved a wide array of immune systems to detect and defend against external threats including mobile genetic elements (MGEs) such as bacteriophages, plasmids, and transposons. MGEs are ...

1/ Excited to share our latest work on gene transfer agents (GTAs) in Caulobacter crescentus, led by Emma Banks in collaboration with Pavol Bardy and Mai Nguyen from York!!! See a brief thread below.
shorturl.at/o6S1w

Genomic surveillance reveals different transmission patterns between third-generation cephalosporin and carbapenem resistance in Klebsiella pneumoniae in the Comunidad Valenciana (Spain), 2018–2020 - ... Background The emergence and spread of third-generation cephalosporins (3GC) and carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae pose a global critical challenge. Understanding the transmission dynamics wi...

Good papers, like good wine, need maturing. I'm proud and thrilled to share our work on genomic epidemiology of K.pneumoniae in Valencia and differential transmission patterns of resistances, part of Neris Garcia's PhD thesis and the NLSAR consortium. go.uv.es/td8iL4c #publichealth #EpiSky 🧬🖥️

Mobile integrons encode phage defense systems Integrons are bacterial genetic elements that capture, stockpile, and modulate the expression of genes encoded in integron cassettes. Mobile integrons (MIs) are borne on plasmids, acting as a vehicle ...

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Finally out after peer review, our work showing that "Mobile #Integrons carry Phage Defense Systems" is now published in Science 🎉

Short 🧵
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Three to one, tales! (✓)

Interested in fighting AMR? Come and join us at St Andrews. applications are open until 15th May to students worldwide!

Telomere bacteriophages are widespread and equip their bacterial hosts with potent interbacterial weapons Klebsiella host strains infected with telomere phages can grow to be the dominant lineage in mixed populations.

"That telomere phages are so prevalent means that they are a selective force, one that we know little about. We now want to understand how the telomere-toxin is secreted and also understand how this ‘telocin’ wheedles its way into unsuspecting bacterial neighbors”

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

Unique investigation of some errors in long read assemblers.

In particular these remarkably chimeric contigs are 😱, if rare....

Improving long read assemblers is definitely the space to be in when it comes to the future of metagenomics, as short reads won't be part of it 😉