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Reposted by Alexander Harms

Alexander Harms @aharms485.bsky.social · 5d

Fantastic lab hike in the Alpstein mountains together with our friends from Martin Loessner's group 🏞☀️😎

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Reposted by Alexander Harms

Nature Reviews Disease Primers @natrevdiseaseprimers.nature.com · 4d

#Listeria monocytogenes causes serious infections by invading cells and crossing intestinal, blood–brain, and placental barriers, leading to #bacteraemia, CNS, and maternal–neonatal complications https://www.nature.c...

Schematics showing the mechanisms of Listeria monocytogenes infection and dissemination.

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Reposted by Alexander Harms

Ellie Jameson @elliejameson.bsky.social · 5d

Day 3, Soft. Soft agar is used to visualise phages - plaque assay: bacteria infected with phages are mixed with soft agar, poured over an agar plate. A bacterial lawn grows & plaques appear - as phages infect bacteria, multiply, kill & repeat to form an expanding hole. #drawtober #SciArt #Phagesky

Black and white ink drawing of an agar filled petri dish with black spots or plaques covering the surface. One of these plaques is surrounded by a circle, connected by dotted lines to a larger magnified circle showing a lawn of bacteria punctured by a circlar hole with 7 smaller bacteriophages inside

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Alexander Harms @aharms485.bsky.social · 5d

Fantastic lab hike in the Alpstein mountains together with our friends from Martin Loessner's group 🏞☀️😎

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Reposted by Alexander Harms

Ben Adler @benadler.bsky.social · 7d

Today in @nature.com , we highlight how a cousin of CRISPR-Cas10, mCpol, establishes an evolutionary trap in anti-phage immune systems.

Check out @erinedoherty.bsky.social and my work from @doudna-lab.bsky.social lab here:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A miniature CRISPR–Cas10 enzyme confers immunity by inhibitory signalling - Nature

Panoptes, an anti-phage defence system against virus-mediated immune suppression, is revealed.

www.nature.com

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Reposted by Alexander Harms

Ákos T Kovács @evolvedbiofilm.bsky.social · 9d

The role of mobile genetic elements in adaptation of the microbiota to the dynamic human gut ecosystem

#CurrOpinMicrobiol from @lgbacteria.bsky.social

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

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Alexander Harms @aharms485.bsky.social · 8d

Guten Tag Freiburg - great city trip with the family to present at the German Pharmaceutic Society! 🧬🍺

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Reposted by Alexander Harms

Feldman Lab@WashU @feldmanlab.bsky.social · 9d

I said I will never work on phages, but having @micheleleroux.bsky.social next door made me change my mind. Here is Alexis's new paper showing how different phages deal with the capsular barrier to infect Acinetobacter! A great collaboration between our labs!
journals.plos.org/plospathogen...

Acinetobacter phages use distinct strategies to breach the capsule barrier

Author summary Acinetobacter baumannii causes life-threatening and often antibiotic-resistant infections thereby posing a global threat. Accordingly, there is an urgent need for alternative treatments...

journals.plos.org

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Reposted by Alexander Harms

Andy Edwards @bugsinblood.bsky.social · 9d

Now published! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Very nice collaboration with Hoogenboom ( @ucl.ac.uk ) and Bonev ( @uniofnottingham.bsky.social ) labs.

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Reposted by Alexander Harms

Cascales Lab @cascaleslab.bsky.social · 11d

Happy to share our work on a T6SS effector with ADP ribose cyclase activity, published in JBC @asbmbjournals.bsky.social
Great work of Julius Martinkus @jmartinkus.bsky.social and (always) great collaboration with @dukasju.bsky.social and @laurentterradot.bsky.social
www.jbc.org/article/S002...

Widespread deployment of the human CD38 ADP-ribosyl cyclase fold in antibacterial and anti-eukaryotic polymorphic toxins

Bacterial polymorphic toxins are modular weapons that mediate inter-microbial competition and host interactions by delivering diverse cytotoxic domains through specialized secretion systems. Here, we ...

www.jbc.org

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Reposted by Alexander Harms

ETH Zurich @ethz.ch · 13d

It is not only antibiotics but also certain viruses – known as bacteriophages – that can kill off pathogenic bacteria. However, Switzerland lacks the legal framework for the use of these viruses in therapy. What would need to change? Researcher Alexander Harms explains.

ethz.ch/en/news-and-...

“Treatment with bacteriophages can combat antibiotic-resistant infections, but Swiss patients lack access”

It is not only antibiotics but also certain viruses – known as bacteriophages – that can kill off pathogenic bacteria. However, Switzerland lacks the legal framework for the use of these viruses in th...

ethz.ch

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Reposted by Alexander Harms

Zeynep Baharoglu @zeynepbaharoglu.bsky.social · 13d

Synthetic lethal TN-seq! #microsky 🦠

Sarah Svensson @campy-bara.bsky.social · 13d

Dual transposon sequencing profiles the genetic interaction landscape in bacteria | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Dual transposon sequencing profiles the genetic interaction landscape in bacteria

Gene redundancy complicates systematic characterization of gene function as single-gene deletions may not produce discernible phenotypes. We report dual transposon sequencing (dual Tn-seq), a platform...

www.science.org

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Reposted by Alexander Harms

Kranzusch Lab @kranzuschlab.bsky.social · 13d

You’ve heard of ubiquitination, meet deazaguanylation: Doug Wassarman in our lab discovered phage defense pathways have co-opted Q nucleobase biosynthetic enzymes to catalyze a new form of protein conjugation chemistry @science.org

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

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Matt Rockman @wormsrock.bsky.social · 14d

C. elegans is a real animal and we set out to understand how it comes to have its distinctive biogeography. Its ancestral center of diversity is in the higher elevation forests of Hawaii. Its closest relatives are spread across east Asia. Did they travel from Asia? [Preprint 🧵]

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Reposted by Alexander Harms

Rebecca R Helm @rebeccarhelm.bsky.social · 14d

I get that the news cycle is packed right now, but I just heard from a colleague at the Smithsonian that this is fully a GIANT SQUID BEING EATEN BY A SPERM WHALE and it’s possibly the first ever confirmed video according to a friend at NOAA

10 YEAR OLD ME IS LOSING HER MIND (a thread 🧵)

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Alexander Harms @aharms485.bsky.social · 15d

Many thanks to Sylvain Moineau @smoineau.bsky.social for hosting me and to Universite Laval for serving poutine + beer for lunch!

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Alexander Harms @aharms485.bsky.social · 15d

Bonjour, Quebec! 🍛🌤🧬 #sciencetravels

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Alexander Harms @aharms485.bsky.social · 16d

Was fantastic to have you around - thank you for your visit and for a great talk!

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Reposted by Alexander Harms

Emmanuele Severi @emmseveri.bsky.social · 18d

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

#microsky

A Protein Antibiotic Inhibits the BAM Complex to Kill Without Cell Entry

Many antibiotics are ineffective against Gram-negative pathogens such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa because they cannot penetrate the bacterial outer membrane. Here, we show that protein antibiotics calle...

www.biorxiv.org

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Reposted by Alexander Harms

Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D. @sarahmackattack.bsky.social · 19d

I wanted to get a video of this ghost crab but every time I got close to their hole they scuttled back in, so I tried getting clever with it. I made a little sandcastle and shoved my phone into it, hit record, and walked away. Crab was VERY suspicious of this addition to their environment.

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Martial Marbouty @mmarbout.bsky.social · 20d

You like phages ? In this publication, we use metaHiC and our new version of the MetaTOR pipeline to challenge the traditional view of phages with a narrow host range.
@rkoszul.bsky.social @natmicrobiol.nature.com @cnrs.fr @institutpasteur.bsky.social

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

Phages with a broad host range are common across ecosystems - Nature Microbiology

Proximity-ligation-based sequencing from 111 samples and 5 environments reveals that a substantial proportion of phages infect multiple species.

www.nature.com

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Alexander Harms @aharms485.bsky.social · 20d

My favorite is the paper on Cacio e Pepe sauce - good science is needed to not mess with excellent pasta!

I am sure our local pasta nerd Enea @phagemuffin.bsky.social would agree 😁🍝

Nature @nature.com · 20d

Highlights of this year’s Ig Nobel recipients include a nutrition prize for studying the preferred pizza toppings of rainbow lizards at a seaside resort in Togo

go.nature.com/4n5HQv7

Tipsy bats and perfect pasta: Ig Nobels celebrate ‘improbable’ research

The annual awards are a celebration of weird but thought-provoking science.

go.nature.com

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Reposted by Alexander Harms

Alex Naka @gottapatchemall.bsky.social · 20d

My group at Science has been running a big campaign to engineer new channelrhodopsins.

Excited to share the first results from it today: a suite of highly sensitive new opsins.

We call them "WAChRs".

Everyday indoor office lighting is enough to activate them pretty strongly.

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Alexander Harms @aharms485.bsky.social · 20d

Many thanks to Fabienne Estermann @fabi-est.bsky.social for the fabulous organization (and the photo)! 🙏🏼

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Alexander Harms @aharms485.bsky.social · 20d

Fantastic day for my annual visit at Pestalozzi Schulcamps to discuss phages with primary school classes ☀️🚆🧬

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