'The thing that you probably learn most, are from the mistakes that you make'
We caught up with the Prize Medal 2026 winner, Paul Williams and asked him how it feels to win the prize and have the chance to present and reflect on his career. Congratulations Paul!
Archaea the hornets of the microbial world. Discuss.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
TLDR: Archaeon kills bacterium with secreted phospholipase. Pretty nifty way to kill bacteria if you are a microbe with a very different lipid make-up, I reckon. No need to worry about accidentally killing yourself.
@felixrl.bsky.social presenting his work at #ASMicrobe today. His preprint follows up on his recent work on orthogonal cell division in S. aureus and reports that PcdA, the division septum placement factor, is required for forming staphylococcal abscess colonies.
Our new study reveals how bacterial toxins are physically captured through a sequential, concentration-dependent assembly mechanism before secretion via the T6SS.
Fantastic collaboration with @fillouxlab.bsky.social. Congrats Patricia & Ambre for leading this work.
Paper here: shorturl.at/O31Vn
A new study from the @rocklabtb.bsky.social in @natmicrobiol.nature.com finds that one of the most common drug resistance mutations in #tuberculosis creates subtle metabolic weaknesses that could be exploited with future combination therapies.
🔗: https://bit.ly/3RG6wj2
How do dangerous bacteria arm themselves before attack? Scientists from NTU-SCELSE and Imperial College London uncovered a previously unknown mechanism showing how bacteria load toxins into a microscopic weapon system before firing. Nature Microbiology-> rdcu.be/fk0Bq @fillouxlab.bsky.social
Video
@vanipande.bsky.social presenting her work at #ASMicrobe today....
Check out her recent preprint about a spontaneously inserting integral membrane protein that localized by recognizing a lipid cue
EMBO Symposium alert:
Save the date: 9–12 March 2027
Join us in scenic Heidelberg for this unique meeting, covering everything about drug resistance and tolerance.
Mechanisms of drug resistance and tolerance in bacteria, fungi, and cancer www.embl.org/about/info/c...
New pre-print from the lab! Murepavedin is a Pseudomonas-specific antibiotic, but it disrupts the outer membranes of a wide range of different Gram-negatives. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Bacterial transmembrane proteins usually localize inside the cell by "finding" a pre-localized protein, but how did the 1st protein get there? @vanipande.bsky.social found a protein in #B.subtilis that localizes by recognizing a *lipid* localization cue. #Microsky
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Archaea kill bacteria, at least on occasion. The molecular underpinnings of these lethal interactions are barely understood. Here, we describe cinquedea, an α/β hydrolase secreted by the halophilic ar...
Structural analysis reveals that the type VI secretion system effector cargo is enclosed within hexameric Hcp3 rings that form sequentially to enable effector loading and delivery by the Pseudomonas aeruginosa H3-type VI secretion system.
Murepavadin is a Pseudomonas-specific antibiotic that targets LPS transport protein LptD. However, whilst the mode of action of murepavadin is well defined, the mechanism by which the drug gains acces...
SCELSE - a biofilm & microbiome research centre in NTU & NUS
Tobias Warnecke
Kumaran Ramamurthi
Kumaran Ramamurthi
Kumaran Ramamurthi
Luiz Pedro Carvalho, PhD
Andy Edwards
Bacterial transmembrane proteins usually localize inside the cell by "finding" a pre-localized protein, but how did the 1st protein get there? @vanipande.bsky.social found a protein in #B.subtilis that localizes by recognizing a *lipid* localization cue. #Microsky
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
@felixrl.bsky.social reported that PcdA mediates orthogonal cell division in #Staphylococcus aureus: www.nature.com/articles/s41....
But what’s the point? Well, forming staphylococcal abscess communities to evade host immune responses requires this mode of division:
www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...
www.biorxiv.org
PcdA interacts with DivIVA and FtsZ, promoting Z-ring formation and division plane selection in Staphylococcus aureus, which increases virulence in mice and reduces sensitivity to cell-wall-targeting ...
