Inlay

Interested in microbial ecology & evolution. Views are only my own. (he/him) 🎓: https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=OBPpZq4AAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate 👨‍💻: https://github.com/raufs

Structure-based prokaryotic transcription shapes adaptation and host–invader interplay: Trends in Microbiology https://www.cell.com/trends/microbiology/fulltext/S0966-842X(26)00151-4?rss=yes

Our newest out in ISME J showing that microbial copiotrophic traits decline across temperature gradients even as growth rates increase. TLDR; genomic patterns of translation optimization like CUB sometimes better predict ecological strategy than do growth rates themselves.

Another recent one from the group out in Elementa: "Assembly-free short-read metagenomic maximum growth rate prediction". You can now use gRodon's metagenomic maximum growth rate prediction directly on short reads (no assembly required) doi.org/10.1525/elem...

Interested in natural products? We just published an article on hybrid peptide-polyketide-specialized lipids and describe the chitinimines, a new family of amphiphilic metabolites. Read it open access in JACS Au: doi.org/10.1021/jacs...

~1 billion times the distance from Earth to the Sun. That is approx the total length of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal hyphae in topsoils. These microscopic fungal networks form one of Earth’s circulatory systems moving carbon and nutrients. Out now in @science.org : lnkd.in/eKAsVN_Z

Made it onto bluesky at long last! And with a new review to boot with Solomon Garland, @vickiorr.bsky.social and @jpjhall.bsky.social. Invasive plasmids as ecosystem engineers—from mechanism to application portlandpress.com/essaysbioche... #plasmids

Very happy to share this preview article written by my postdoc Danny on exciting recent work from @ostermanilya.bsky.social and @soreklab.bsky.social. New bacterial immunity, phage countermeasures, and a double pun combo in the title.

Our paper on the YprA family of helicases and their roles in bacterial defence is now out! We describe ARMADA, a defence system synergise with Druantia and show that both systems spread horizontally on a novel type of mobile genetic element that we call SPIDERs www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) synthase enzymes are best known for their role in membrane lipid biosynthesis in marine psychrophilic bacteria but have also evolved to assemble specialized lipid-con...

Prokaryotic gene regulation is governed by the dynamic conformation of the transcription machinery and the nucleoid. To navigate environmental fluctuations, prokaryotes reprogram RNA polymerase (RNAP) via σ factors and transcription factors (TFs) that remodel DNA conformation. Bacteriophages, in turn, exploit these mechanisms to hijack host gene expression. This review dissects recent structural insights into transitions governing transcriptional regulation, highlighting that both TFs and nucleoid-associated proteins act as ‘architects’ to remodel DNA structure, thereby blurring the traditional distinction between site-specific regulators and global genome organizers. By linking RNAP and DNA remodeling to broader prokaryotic conflicts, from stress adaptation to arms races between hosts and mobile genetic elements, the authors underscore the profound biological impact of perturbing prokaryotic transcriptional architecture.

The Candidate Phyla Radiation (CPR) represents a bacterial superphylum estimated to include between 15–50% of all bacterial species, yet CPR bacteria remain challenging to culture and have been primar...

The activation of an antiphage defence system relies on host factors targeted by phages, a mechanism analogous to the way that eukaryotic innate immune systems detect pathogen-induced perturbations of...

Microbial maximum growth rates are key parameters in microbially explicit soil biogeochemical models that can also be estimated directly from genomes and metagenomes, therefore enabling model-data syn...

NAD to the bone: How bacteria put phages under aRES-t … and how phages fight back Preview of work IDing aRES, bacterial proteins that deplete cellular NAD+, generating products that cannot be utilized by phage NAD+ regeneration pathways www.cell.com/cell-host-mi...

In this issue of Cell Host & Microbe, Osterman et al. discover aRES, a new family of bacterial immune proteins that deplete cellular NAD+, generating cleavage products that cannot be utilized by canon...