Alf Soler-Bistué 🦠🔬🧫

academic.oup.comEvolutionary constraints on RNA polymerase gene positioning in the genome of fast-growing bacteriaAbstract. How gene order along chromosomes affects cellular homeostasis and genome evolution remains poorly understood. Bacterial chromosomes are organized

Just published! at @narjournal.bsky.social . A new example of how gene order in bacterial genomes impacts cell physiology. Inthis episode we messed up with RNA polymerase genes! academic.oup.com/nar/article/...

Alf Soler-Bistué 🦠🔬🧫 reposted

Jose M. Estevez

@estevezjosem.bsky.social

14 Aug

Finally out!! Beatifull work leaded by Arezo Rahimi and Salma Balazadeh group at University of Göttingen and colaborators showing the power of root hairs induced by Flavo98 to enhance drought tolerence in plants!! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

nature.comEndophytic Flavobacterium promotes root hair development and enhances drought tolerance via an ERF–CEP5 hormonal regulatory module - Nature PlantsFlavobacterium sp. 98 promotes root hair development and enhances plant drought tolerance via a novel signalling pathway, highlighting the role of plant–microorganism interactions for improving crop r...

Alf Soler-Bistué 🦠🔬🧫 reposted

Aaron Sojourner

@aaronsojourner.org

25 July

Admirable clarity @science.org

David Roberts@volts.wtf

Whew, the editors of @science.org are getting real.

science.orgThe Assault On Science Funding Continues

Alf Soler-Bistué 🦠🔬🧫 reposted

Cees Dekker

@ceesdekker.bsky.social

22 July

We built a a self-dividing synthetic cell ! Check out this #CDlab preprint on BioRxiv: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Great work by 1st author Charu Sharma who encoded dynaminA in a genome and expressed that in liposomes that then divide into daughter cells! Collaboration with Koenderink lab!

Alf Soler-Bistué 🦠🔬🧫 reposted

Noah Fierer

@noahfierer.bsky.social

19 June

New preprint up: the power of protein language models - using a single gene (adenylate kinase) to predict the temperature optima of bacteria and bacterial communities from genomes or metagenomes www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

biorxiv.orgPredicting optimal growth temperatures of bacteria using learned structural information from a single proteinTemperature is a fundamental determinant of bacterial physiology and ecology. Optimal growth temperature (OGT) is highly variable across species, contributing to differences in where and when species ...

19 June

The lab is crazy about the @fifaworldclub.bsky.social ! My collaborators improved the lab for the ocasion! @unsamoficial #microbiology #FifaWorldCup

1 June

Huge Effort of @justinecollier.bsky.social Lab for understanding GcrA methylase role on cell cycle of a relevant alpha model: Agrobacterium. Papers such as this one guide us in our Bradyrhizobium research! Congrats to the team for a sound paper! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

biorxiv.orgbiorxiv.org

27 May

"Function-specific epistasis shapes evolutionary trajectories towards antibiotic resistance". Huge parallel experimental evolution effort in E. coli under antimicrobial pressure by @gabypetrungaro.bsky.social at Bollenbach Lab at University of Cologne. doi.org/10.1101/2025...

doi.orgdoi.org

Alf Soler-Bistué 🦠🔬🧫 reposted

Tatiana Fajardo

@tatiana1979.bsky.social

10 Apr

'Botanica No.23' by Gail Potocki

nature.comComplex temporal dynamics of phage-bacteria populations in an animal-associated marine system - Nature CommunicationsIt remains unclear how viral genomes remain relatively stable over time, given the rapid co-evolution seen within hosts. Here, authors explore complex marine phage-bacteria dynamics using over 1000 ph...

7 Apr

Huge work! Joint effort over four years of EPC Rocha & Fred Le Roux Labs sampling in the wild for 4 years! www.nature.com/articles/s41... @epcrocha.bsky.social @fredoleroux.bsky.social

7 Apr

Vibrio crassostreae and its phages interaction show complex evolutionary landscapes. Some pahge lineages show rapid turnover while others persist over years (lysogeny&slow decay)! Oysters are HGT hotspots! What about other Vibrio-host interactions? What about other bacteria-animal systems. Nice!

Alf Soler-Bistué 🦠🔬🧫 reposted

nature.comThe world just lived through the 11 hottest years on record — what now?Earth is increasingly ‘out of balance’, as more heat is trapped in the atmosphere, driving global warming.

23 Mar

¡Buen lunes! Hoy ⛈️ 23° de máx. La Tierra está crecientemente "fuera de equilibrio", según un reporte de la Organización Meteorológica Mundial, q preside la argentina Celeste Saulo @CelesteSau4049 👇Acabamos de vivir los 11 años más cálidos desde que se llevan registros www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Alf Soler-Bistué 🦠🔬🧫 reposted

Pedro Dorado-Morales

@doradomoralesp.bsky.social

26 Feb

New preprint out on bioRxiv! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Can conjugative plasmids be used to control plasmid and pathogen spread? Follow me down the rabbit hole that led to this story 🧵

biorxiv.orgbiorxiv.org

bsky.app/profile/alfm... And its out at Nucleic Acids Research!! Cheers!

Alf Soler-Bistué 🦠🔬🧫@alfmicrobe.bsky.social

Celebrating Next paper by Larotonda et al. ! Really proud of our next work on positional Genetics of RNA polymerase. More news soon on this!!

And my wonderful collaborators @amazeld.bsky.social @val-meve.bsky.social @celineloot.bsky.social Briado Llorente @djcomerci.bsky.social

It was a particular challenge to get this published from the far South! in the hard times for science we are living around the world but particularly in Argentina! I strongly believe that doing science is particularly valuable in this times , particularly from a peripherical country!

A new example on genes depending on their location to optimize cell functionning as shown by @martinlercher.bsky.social recently! We were able to rationally reduce the growth of vibrio in an isogenic context. Maybe a potential strategy to attenuate strains?!

Thanks @icgebofficial.bsky.social , @conicet , @unsamoficial.bsky.social and @pasteur.fr for support! @epcrocha.bsky.social @veeninglab.com @olegigoshin.bsky.social @vslioy.bsky.social @martinlercher.bsky.social for their great science inspiration!!

But apparently there are no major alterations in RNAP celular location upon rpoBC relocation! (a story to follow up using supreresolution!)

We "cirurgically" dissected the locus to demostrante that most of the effect was specifically due to the rpoB and rpoC genes within the operon! We uncoupled the dosage of rpoB and rpoC from the rest of the locus!!

Relocation was accompanied by a reduction in gene dosage due to multi-fork replication!

that was accompanied by a reduction in mRNA and protein levels (and rifampocin sensitivity!)

In fast growing bacteria, transcription and translation genes are in close proximity of oriC. The core of the sole RNA polymerase is encoded by rpoB and rpoC genes. They form a locus well conserved in the tree of life along with ribosomal proteins and tRNAS! What happens if we alter this?

We relocated the whole locus to the chrosome termini in V. cholerae! (This bug has two chromosomes). We noticed a nutrient dependent reduction in fitness and growth rate upon rpoBC locus relocation!

25 Feb

Celebrating Next paper by Larotonda et al. ! Really proud of our next work on positional Genetics of RNA polymerase. More news soon on this!!

biorxiv.orgCreating bacterial genomic diversity through large-scale reconfigurations reveals phenotype robustness to organizational genome changeThe ability to generate genomic diversity expands opportunities for understanding and engineering biology. Here, we demonstrate on-demand generation of diversity in bacterial genome configurations and...

After 4 years of joint effort of my Lab and Dr. Llorente Team we took for first time SCRaMbLE to a bacterial system! This allowed us to massively reordered the main chromosome of Vibrio natriegens! biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Here's a 🧵

Our work establishes SCRaMbLE as a powerful bacterial genome engineering platform, opening new paths to study genome organization, evolution, and strain optimization.

We thank this our institutions for supporting this 🇦🇷🇦🇺 collaboration! Thanks @unsamoficial.bsky.social @muche-macquarie.bsky.social And the many PhD Students and Posdocs implicated!

After inducing rearrangements and selecting for fast growth, we found dramatically reconfigured genomes with stable physiology despite altered gene order. This technique enabled on‑demand, large‑scale genome rearrangements—inversions, duplications, and translocations across megabases.

Unexpectedly, some rearranged strains grew faster than the parental strain! These results reveal a striking phenotypic robustness to genome organization changes and support the idea that genome rearrangements can drive phenogenetic drift in bacteria.

We placed 14 loxPsym sites to enable inversions, duplications, and translocations while preserving near‑wild‑type fitness before rearrangement. Including essential genes allowed avoiding deletions.

sciencedirect.comMaterials-Based spatiotemporal analysis of microbial responses to glyphosate in Winogradsky columnsGlyphosate, the active ingredient in many broad-spectrum herbicides, is extensively used in agriculture but has come under increasing scrutiny due to …

1 Nov 2025

Old tools for new problems: how to get glyphosate resistant/degrading bacteria using Winogradsky columns... www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Alf Soler-Bistué 🦠🔬🧫 reposted

Aude Bernheim

@audeber.bsky.social

4 Sept 2025

Thanks to the authors of this piece. I love reading about the work of inspiring pioneers in bacterial genetics. Crazy amount of discoveries! Pioneer of bacterial genetics: the legacy of Esther Miriam Lederberg academic.oup.com/genetics/adv...

academic.oup.comPioneer of bacterial genetics: the legacy of Esther Miriam LederbergAbstract. Esther Miriam Lederberg's brilliant scientific lifework, from the discovery of phage lambda, bacterial conjugation, and replica plating, provided

sciencedirect.comTaming wild replicons: evolution and domestication of large extrachromosomal repliconsBacterial genomes often contain extrachromosomal replicons (ERs), ranging from small, mobile plasmids to large, stably inherited elements, such as meg…

21 Aug 2025

Super honored to have contributed to this excellent Reviews article by @val-meve.bsky.social and @amazeld.bsky.social on how extrachromosomal replicons (secondary chromosomes, chromids, megaplasmids) emerge in bacteria! 🦠 🧫 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Alf Soler-Bistué 🦠🔬🧫 reposted

bbc.comMicrobiome: First bacteria we meet can keep us out of hospitalFor the first time, scientists show how our microbiome forms affects the risk of infection.

5 June 2025

Nuestros encuentros tempranos con bacterias son cruciales para el desarrollo de nuestro sistema inmunológico, muestra un estudio británico 👇 www.bbc.com/news/article...

frontiersin.orgFrontiers | An additional replication origin causes cell cycle specific DNA replication fork speed

6 June 2025

Great paper on replication dynamics in E. coli with more than one oriC. What would happen if we further add more oriCs?? frontiersin.org/journals/mic... Congrats Ole Skovgaad for this sound paper!!

Alf Soler-Bistué 🦠🔬🧫 reposted

youtube.comVALERIA LEVY - COMISIÓN DE CIENCIA Y TECNOLOGÍA 04-06-25YouTube video by Senado Argentina

5 June 2025

La intervención de @VLeviLab ayer, en el Senado. También im-per-di-ble 👇 www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgTU...

Alf Soler-Bistué 🦠🔬🧫 reposted

Jose M. Estevez

@estevezjosem.bsky.social

5 June 2025

Here is our newest paper recently published in Plant Communications on "Root hair growth under the control of auxin under low temperature low nutrient environment". Comments and suggestions are more than welcome! Here the pdf www.cell.com/plant-commun... Leaded by Victoria Berdion Gabarain et al.

Alf Soler-Bistué 🦠🔬🧫 reposted

STCmicrobeblog

@stcmicrobeblog.bsky.social

29 May 2025

schaechter.asmblog.org/schaechter/2... (sorry for being late with today's 𝘕𝘰𝘵𝘦𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘩𝘺. we are not "up, up and away" because of ascension day, we simply overslept 🤦‍♂️) #MicroSky

schaechter.asmblog.orgGene Location MattersNoteworthy — Bacterial genomes are not a laundry list of genes, but dynamic structures intimately connected with cellular function. As a result, natural selection has a heavy hand in shaping chromosom...

Alf Soler-Bistué 🦠🔬🧫 reposted

28 May 2025

😍Un equipo de la UBA se ubicó entre los 5 mejores (de más de 100) en el mundial de “satélites enlatados”👇en la final del proyecto CanSat, organizado por la Universidad Nacional de México, con un satélite del tamaño de una lata que ellos mismos diseñaron y fabricaron 👇

29 May 2025

Budget cuts do not curb our enthusiasm! Ian lab meeting today on Bradyrhizobium cell physiology! #LabMeetinDay

26 May 2025

Estas en 3-4° año de biotecnología o carreras afines? Estamos buscando un/a estudiante de @unsamoficial.bsky.social para incorporar al laboratorio y presentar a una beca de entrenamiento de la CIC PBA! Te interesa? Vení a trabajar con nosotros!! #UNSAM #Biotecnologia !!

26 May 2025

Escribime por DM. Si querés ver lo que hacemos visítanos en: asoler1.wixsite.com/iib-geb

science.orgMobile integrons encode phage defense systemsIntegrons 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 ...

10 May 2025

What a huge story!!! Integrons are page resistance genes carriers!!! Not just silent " long term memory" geneyic structures!! Congrats two all the team!!

Jose A Escudero@jaescudero.bsky.social

🧪 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/...

10 May 2025

Certainly a great place for a posdoctoral experience! Highly recommended!!!

Eduardo Rocha@epcrocha.bsky.social

WARNING: We have a postdoc position to work on the follow-up of this work. If you're interested, the deadline is tomorrow !!! (but I'll wait a few more days for interested candidates). research.pasteur.fr/fr/job/postd...