Eduardo Rocha

Bacterial strain Taxonomy for Genomic Surveillance - GenEpi-BioTrain Webinar - Research This workshop aims to provide participants with a comprehensive understanding of bacterial classification and nomenclature approaches used in genomic surveillance. Participants will gain insight into ...

Almost there! Starting tomorrow morning (Paris time), the webinar on Bacterial strain Taxonomy for Genomic Surveillance organized within the ECDC sponsored GenEpi-BioTrain programme; registration is free; see more here: research.pasteur.fr/en/event/bac...

Horizontal gene transfer, segregation loss, and the speed of microbial adaptation Abstract. Microbial adaptation is driven by the circulation of mobile genetic elements (MGEs) among bacteria. On the one hand, MGEs can be viewed as selfis

Horizontal gene transfer, segregation loss, and the speed of microbial adaptation
doi.org/10.1093/evle...

Now in @evolletters.bsky.social by David V McLeod and Sylvain Gandon

🧬 Now published in Bioinformatics Advances: “Advances and challenges in understanding evolution through genome comparison.”

Read the full paper here: https://doi.org/10.1093/bioadv/vbaf223

Genome maintenance by telomerase is a fundamental process in nearly all eukaryotes. But where does it come from?

Today, we report the discovery of telomerase homologs in a family of antiviral reverse transcriptases, revealing an unexpected evolutionary origin in bacteria.

doi.org/10.1101/2025...

The multifaceted roles of NAD+ in bacterial immunity In this review, Vaysset and Bernheim examine how nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) is a key player in diverse and widespread bacterial antiphage defense systems and phage counterdefense. The au...

Many antiphage systems use NAD+, in many ways.
@hugovaysset.bsky.social reviewed them all!

Read to know more about all their molecular mechanisms, how phages counteract them, their distribution in bacteria and their conservation in eukaryotic immunity!
www.cell.com/molecular-ce...

Check out our paper on intricate nested interactions between viruses and virus satellites of haloarchaea and their nanosized DPANN symbionts. Excellent collaboration with @deemteam.bsky.social, @anagtz.bsky.social and Michail Yakimov
Free access link: rdcu.be/eLtCH
🧵 by @yifanzhou.bsky.social 👇

Phages communicate across species to shape microbial ecosystems Arbitrium is a communication system that helps bacteriophages decide between lysis and lysogeny via secreted peptides. In arbitrium, the AimP peptide binds its cognate AimR receptor to repress aimX ex...

Our latest work reveals that arbitrium phages cross-communicate across species! These tiny viruses “listen” to signals from others, coordinating lysis-lysogeny decisions across species.
Original idea from @albertomarina.bsky.social and, as usual, he was right.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Well, I guess I just learned that svg don't work great here. Check the figures in the preprint!

Two intensive sampling periods of oyster-associated vibrio and their phage, 4 years apart, and many surprises. Despite being washed by the Atlantic, wide tides, and vibrio (almost?) disappearing most of the year, we can find the exact same virulent phages 4 years later (down to 0 SNP)! preprint👇

Many thanks to all those involved, including Jeffrey Liang, who stayed in our lab for several months, our own Charles Bernard and, of course, @fredoleroux.bsky.social and the usual suspects @agencerecherche.bsky.social @erc.europa.eu @cnrsbiologie.bsky.social @pasteur.fr @umontreal.ca etc

Gene content and phylogenetic placement of novel satellite–plasmid elements

We also observe a vibrant zoo of mobile genetic elements, specialised in what diversity they generate. Plasmids drive transfer of pathogenicity, temperate phages of antiphage junctions. Unexpected & intriguing agents include novel phage-plasmids (linear and circular) and plasmid-phage-satellites.

Predator–prey dynamics during the 2021 sampling season

Our results show the importance of spatial segregation of the agents (bacteria, temperate and virulent phages) in different compartments (water column, locations within oysters) in the stability of this dynamical system. No obvious predator-prey cycles here.

Two intensive sampling periods of oyster-associated vibrio and their phage, 4 years apart, and many surprises. Despite being washed by the Atlantic, wide tides, and vibrio (almost?) disappearing most of the year, we can find the exact same virulent phages 4 years later (down to 0 SNP)! preprint👇

Capsular specificity in temperate phages of Klebsiella pneumoniae is driven by diverse receptor-binding enzymes Understanding host-range determinants in temperate bacteriophages is critical for elucidating phage-host co-evolution and advancing phage therapies.We analysed 3,900 Klebsiella genomes from diverse ec...

Thank you so much, Michael! Prophages are a treasure trove! We were excited to see the recent preprint from @rafalmostowy.bsky.social lab using GWAS, such a great complementary approach!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Unlocking data in Klebsiella lysogens to predict capsular type-specificity of phage depolymerases - Nature Communications Here, the authors exploit the genetic information encoded in Klebsiella prophages to model the interplay between bacteria, prophages, and their depolymerases, using a directed acyclic graph-model and a sequence clustering-based model.

Can we exploit past phage infection events (prophages) to decipher the specificity of phage receptor-binding proteins such as depolymerases?🔎 Happy to share our recent work at @natcomms.nature.com 🔽 #microsky #phagesky

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

Pre- and postantibiotic epoch: The historical spread of antimicrobial resistance Plasmids are now the primary vectors of antimicrobial resistance, but our understanding of how human industrialisation of antibiotics influenced their evolution is limited by a paucity of data predati...

Imagine we could travel back in time ⏪⌛️to explore the world of bacterial pathogens before humans discovered and industrialised antibiotics

We just did that to study the history of #AMR spread @science.org
doi.org/10.1126/scie...

If you like time travel & biology, this 🧵is for you👇

Two full-time positions | Bioinformatician (m/f/d) + Applications Specialist (m/f/d) - Molecular Biology The Genome Facility at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön is seeking to fill two positions (full time) to support and expand our core facility services.

Two new positions are available at the MPI for Evolutionary Biology to support development of our genomics facility. Both stand to become permanent. Both offer a ton of opportunity to engage in a wide range of creative science.

Pls repost 🙏

www.evolbio.mpg.de/3838377/job_...

OK, here it is. Come work with me at the University of Liverpool making ALL THE AI models from ALL THE prokaryote pangenome data. Heck, we will make models from ALL the pangenomes, even eukaryotes!!! (link below👇) 1/4

Chromosome architecture affects virulence and competitiveness in Agrobacterium tumefaciens C58 Chromosome architecture influences Agrobacterium fitness, competitiveness, and virulence, shaping its adaptation and evolution.

Chromosome architecture affects virulence and competitiveness in Agrobacterium tumefaciens C58 | Science Advances www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Evolutionary selection of trimethoprim-resistant dfrA genes in lytic phages affects phage and host fitness during infection Lytic phages for phage therapy carry abundant ARGs that rarely spread to bacteria but enhance phage and host fitness.

Interesting paper

'Evolutionary selection of trimethoprim-resistant dfrA genes in lytic phages affects phage and host fitness during infection'

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

Dual transposon sequencing profiles the genetic interaction landscape in bacteria Gene redundancy complicates systematic characterization of gene function as single-gene deletions may not produce discernible phenotypes. We report dual transposon sequencing (dual Tn-seq), a platform...

This week @science.org Dual #transposon sequencing profiles the #genetic interaction landscape in #bacteria | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... 🦠🔬🧫🧬

Pre- and postantibiotic epoch: The historical spread of antimicrobial resistance Plasmids are now the primary vectors of antimicrobial resistance, but our understanding of how human industrialisation of antibiotics influenced their evolution is limited by a paucity of data predati...

Apologies, forgot to add the actual paper link!!!!!

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

Delighted to see our paper studying the evolution of plasmids over the last 100 years, now out! Years of work by Adrian Cazares, also Nick Thomson @sangerinstitute.bsky.social - this version much improved over the preprint. Final version should be open access, apols.
Thread 1/n

New ERC funded computational postdoc position in my lab! We are looking for someone who will study the genomics of bacterial evolution using samples from experimental evolution and clinical trials. Lots of opportunities for interesting and fun collaboration!
my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru...

Google reminds me that it's been 2 years since this picture and the Workshop on plasmids as vehicles of AMR spread.

We did our best to reorganize it this year but we couldn't get any funding .

We haven't given up on the workshop and at some point we will organize another edition!

GPU-accelerated homology search with MMseqs2 - Nature Methods Graphics processing unit-accelerated MMseqs2 offers tremendous speedups for homology retrieval from metagenomic databases, query-centered multiple sequence alignment generation for structure predictio...

MMseqs2-GPU sets new standards in single query search speed, allows near instant search of big databases, scales to multiple GPUs and is fast beyond VRAM. It enables ColabFold MSA generation in seconds and sub-second Foldseek search against AFDB50. 1/n
📄 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
💿 mmseqs.com

My first Bluesky post - it's been a time coming, but I have decided to only review for journals that are associated with academic societies. I will also focus my publication efforts in those journals as well. Our APCs should go back into the subject.

Congratulations !!

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...

Really glad to announce a new preprint from our lab: Global distribution of quinones in Bacteria! We here combine comparative genomics and text mining to leverage information on quinones distribution from thousands of articles describing new species and from dozens of thousands of genomes! 1/5