Excited to share our new work! We found that bacteria can turn antagonism into a foraging strategy - by killing their neighbours, and eating their remains 🧫🔬💥
Check out our new perspective on spatial patterns in microbial communities, the product of an exciting collaboration led by Alyssa Henderson and @adelpanta.bsky.social ! 🧫
We are incredibly grateful to have spent three inspiring days in beautiful Blonay at our annual group retreat, discussing science and continuing our group tradition of forming human pyramids! 🤸
We are so thrilled that Martin and Olga have won the Art of Leadership (ALEA) award - for being incredible group leaders who give us independence, support, trust, and ultimately prioritise our wellbeing above all else. We are so grateful to be co-led by them!
How does metabolic dependency evolve at the single cell level? 🔄
In our new preprint, Divvya Ramesh combines microfluidics, microscopy and modelling to show that the benefits of gene loss are highly context dependent.
Check it out here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Check out this new preprint on antagonism as a foraging strategy, led by the brilliant Astrid Stubbusch and @nonresidentdesi.bsky.social!
Microbial Systems Ecology Lab
Thrilled to announce that Matthias Hülsmann's new perspective is now out in @naturemicrobiol.bsky.social! This exciting work is shaping how our group thinks about collective microbiome metabolism. Check it out! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Excited to share our new paper led by Divvya Ramesh: Limits to the evolution of metabolic dependency in spatially structured microbial communities 🧫
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Very excited to share our new preprint, led by Alyssa Henderson! We ask why auxotrophy is so widespread in bacteria, and find that phylogeny is the dominant predictor of autotrophy, as opposed to environmental context. Check it out! 👇
Olga Schubert from @eawag.bsky.social / @ethzurich.bsky.social on Causes and consequences of collective metabolism in microbial communities
#KNVM2025
Microbial Systems Ecology Lab
Microbial Systems Ecology Lab
Microbial Systems Ecology Lab
www.biorxiv.org
Microbial Systems Ecology Lab
Microbial Systems Ecology Lab
In microbial communities, evolutionary processes can lead to loss of biosynthetic pathways, creating metabolic dependencies. The Black Queen Hypothesi…
Amino acid auxotrophy, the loss of biosynthetic potential for an amino acid, is a highly prevalent feature of microbial life, yet the evolutionary processes driving its distribution in nature remain u...
This Perspective explores why microbiome members perform partial metabolism of substrates and suggests that proteome efficiency is a driver of collective microbiome metabolism.
What determines the spatial structure of microbial communities? In our new review we discuss the factors and feedbacks that affect spatial patterning and methods to study them. Great collaboration w. @saramitri.bsky.social @adelpanta.bsky.social & @micsysecolab.bsky.social doi.org/10.1038/s415... 🦠
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
New preprint! A bit of new direction for my research program: How can bacteria get nutrients when autonomous growth is not possible or passive leakage is not enough to support high growth? Shoot spearguns with toxins into other cells and leak out nutrients!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Simon van Vliet
Glen Dsouza
Glen Dsouza
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...
In natural habitats, nutrient availability limits bacterial growth. We discovered that bacteria can overcome this limitation by acquiring nutrients through lysing neighboring cells via contact-depende...
