Rubén de Dios

Want to name a real virus? I have recently discovered 9 new phages which now need names! To enter, you simply need to donate to the Cystic Fibrosis Trust on my JustGiving page (£2 = 1 entry) and share your email with me on donation (see link info). Please share 💚 www.justgiving.com/page/meaghan-c-1

Super excited to share our paper online 🚨today🚨 in Cell Host & Microbe‬! Xiaomei Ren @xiaomeiren.bsky.social and Mason Clark @rmasonclark.bsky.social‬ co-led discovery of ecological factors for Acinetobacter baumannii carriage in the gut, a reservoir for pathogen spread. 🎉

tinyurl.com/443kfefk

The combination of active partitioning and toxin-antitoxin systems is most advantageous for low-copy plasmid fitness - Nature Communications Effe et al. evaluate how specific plasmid traits influence plasmid fitness; they provide mechanistic insight into the persistence of large conjugative plasmids, including those that disseminate antibi...

Happy to finally share this! Read here about the best strategy the the persistence of low-copy plasmids. @mariosanter.bsky.social @iwangtoknow.bsky.social doi.org/10.1038/s414...

On our way to Niagara Falls for the Acinetobacter Conference 2025 after a fantastic stay-over in lovely Toronto with @lharkova.bsky.social. We will miss the pancakes with maple syrup 🥞

Universal rules govern plasmid copy number - Nature Communications Plasmids exhibit a broad range of sizes and copies per cell, and these two parameters appear to be negatively correlated. Here, Ramiro-Martínez et al. analyse the copy number of thousands of diverse b...

🚨🚨New paper out in @natcomms.nature.com!!

Come for the first large-scale analysis of plasmid copy number across species,
stay for one of the most intriguing results of my lab: universal scaling laws in plasmid biology! 📈🧬

👉 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Bacteriophages in Pseudomonas aeruginosa evade the CRISPR-Cas I-F system by depletion of PAM sequences Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) and CRISPR-associated (Cas) proteins systems provide bacteria with an adaptive immune system against exogenous sequences, such as pla...

New paper published in our computational biology group for the study of phages, of which we are especially proud: "Bacteriophages in Pseudomonas aeruginosa evade the CRISPR-Cas I-F system by depletion of PAM sequences".

It’s been fantastic to talk about my adventures with Acinetobacter plasmids at the @mgeworkshop.bsky.social. Such a lovely meeting with lots of great science and cool people. See you next year!

Congrats Marta!

Host range and ARG dissemination are shaped by distinct survival strategies of conjugative plasmids Horizontal gene transfer is a major driver of bacterial evolution and the global dissemination of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs). Conjugative plasmids play a crucial role in ARG spread across host...

🎉 So proud of our PhD student, Ryuichi ONO, who submitted his first first-author paper from his undergrad research @utokyoofficial.bsky.social about plasmid survival tactics influencing ARG spread! Now just wait to see what he’s been cooking up in our lab 🤩

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Glad to contribute to @uk.theconversation.com explaining our latest paper on plastic-eating pathogens 🦠
In case you missed it: www.cell.com/cell-reports...

Plasmid–bacteria associations in the clinical context Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is one of the most pressing global health problems, with plasmids playing a central role in its evolution and dissemination. Over the past decades, many studies have inv...

New opinion paper from the lab!

www.cell.com/trends/micro...

🔎 From antibiotic resistance to boredom research, the #YERUNResearchMobilityAward helped two early-career researchers take big steps forward. Meet Ruben de Dios Barranco & Muireann O'Dea in the latest YRMA Voices👇
yerun.eu/2025/05/yrma...

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 ...

🧪
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/...

My first adventure with P. aeruginosa finally saw the light! It was really fun to work on this exciting project and definitely worth the effort!

MGE Workshop

We are pleased to announce that registration for 3rd MGE Workshop is now live!

If you are interested in giving a talk please register online through our website by Friday 16th May.

We look forward to seeing you all in Southampton in June!

www.ukmgeworkshop.org

A palette of bright and photostable monomeric fluorescent proteins for bacterial time-lapse imaging Bright and photostable monomeric fluorescent proteins enable long-term time-lapse imaging in E. coli.

Our set of new prokaryote-optimized fluorescent proteins is now published ! #microbiology #microsky #microscopy 🧫🦠🔬
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Genomic epidemiology and phylodynamics of Acinetobacter baumannii bloodstream isolates in China - Nature Communications The genomic epidemiology of Acinetobacter baumannii, which is rising in virulence and multidrug resistance, was explored. This study examined bloodstream infection isolates from Chinese patients in 20...

Interesting paper

Genomic epidemiology and phylodynamics of Acinetobacter baumannii bloodstream isolates in China

'A. baumannii is evolving from a low-virulence, multidrug-resistant pathogen to a more virulent one'

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

George Church, el genio rebelde que sueña con crear un parque temático de especies ‘resucitadas’ El padre de la biología sintética aspira a revivir un mamut con las herramientas de edición genética, un proyecto con claroscuros, como el resto de su brillante carrera

Este artículo de @aberron.bsky.social en @eldiario.es con un perfil del investigador irrepetible que es George Church, dinamizador de la genética moderna, iconoclasta, responsable de experimentos que otros tildan de imposibles y visionario, merece una lectura atenta.
www.eldiario.es/sociedad/geo...

The evolution of antibiotic resistance in Europe, 1998–2019 Author summary Antibiotic resistance is an important public health threat: resistant infections are currently associated with 5 million deaths per year globally. This burden may increase further in th...

New paper: long-term trends in antibiotic resistance show signs of stabilisation (thread). journals.plos.org/plospathogen...

Pseudomonas syringae subpopulations cooperate by coordinating flagellar and type III secretion spatiotemporal dynamics to facilitate plant infection Nature Microbiology - Single-cell gene expression analysis reveals phenotypic heterogeneity to enable bacterial specialization over the course of plant colonization.

How Bacteria Outsmart Plants—Then Flee the Scene!

#MicroSky #PlantScience #Pseudomonas

Our new research in Nature Microbiology uncovers the sophisticated teamwork of Pseudomonas syringae, a notorious plant pathogen.

🔗 rdcu.be/egczU

3rd UK MGE Workshop – June 16-17, Southampton

Low-cost, science-focused, and full of fresh faces! Tea, biscuits, dinner, and… karaoke!

Call for talks– No abstract needed! Just send your title by the end of April.

Spread the word!

#MGE #UKscience

Bye bye Liverpool! It’s been a lovely #Microbio25 Conference! So much awesome research presented and so many awesome people gathered!

#Saccharin disrupts bacterial cell envelope stability and interferes with #DNAreplication dynamics

By R. de Dios, R. McCarthy & colleagues at Brunel University
doi.org/10.1038/s443...

see also: www.brunel.ac.uk/news-and-eve...

Special thanks to @yerunnetwork.bsky.social for awarding me a Young Researcher Mobility Award to visit @christianslentz.bsky.social in lovely Tromso and do some fantastic flow cytometry with fluorescent antibiotics!

As promised, a follow-up. Our story telling how saccharin alters the cell envelop permeability and DNA replication dynamics has just seen the light! Its mechanism of action re-sensitises CRAB to carbapenems, and we show its effectiveness in a hydrogel vehicle. Thanks to all co-authors!

Saccharin disrupts bacterial cell envelope stability and interferes with DNA replication dynamics | EMBO Molecular Medicine imageimageThe effect of saccharin on the microbiome has received much attention, but its impact on pathogenic bacterial species is less clear. This study reports the potential of saccharin to be devel...

I will be presenting a poster today at #Microbio25 on the antibacterial effects of the artificial sweetener saccharin… which happens to have been published this very morning in @embopress.org Molecular Medicine! Further details to follow!

www.embopress.org/doi/full/10....

Prize Medal 2025 winner, Professor Richard Lenski, presents their lecture on "Dynamics and Repeatability in a Long-Term Experiment with Bacteria" at #Microbio25. It begins at 18:30 BST. Read more about their work: microb.io/PrizeWinner2...

I'm very happy to share the last paper from my previous postdoc with the amazing @epcrocha.bsky.social! Thanks to the reviewers for their feedback, which improved our work!
#Plasmids #AMR #HorizontalGeneTransfer #Evolution

On my way to Liverpool for #Microbio25. Superexcited to present our latest results on the cyclic di-GMP regulation of Acinetobacter baumannii this afternoon!

AI mirrors experimental science to uncover a novel mechanism of gene transfer crucial to bacterial evolution AI models have been proposed for hypothesis generation, but testing their ability to drive high-impact research is challenging, since an AI-generated hypothesis can take decades to validate. Here, we ...

With @jrpenades.bsky.social, we challenged Google AI co-scientist to generate hypotheses. In just 2 days, it recapitulated our unpublished, experimentally confirmed mechanism for how cf-PICIs spread between bacterial species! @imperialcollegeldn.bsky.social
tinyurl.com/3byyaeh2