Identification of genetic interactions in Bacillus subtilis cell division. Congratulations, Byoung-Mo Koo, Carol Gross, and all involved!
@cp-cellsystems.bsky.social #subtiwiki

www.cell.com/cell-systems...

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

#microsky
We challenge the long-standing view that peptidoglycan alone protects cells from bursting.

Our study shows that the periplasm — enclosed by OM–PG connections — acts as a pressure buffer essential for osmoprotection in Gram-negative bacteria.

📄 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The #SubtiWiki Paper of the month for June 2025 has been selected.
Congratulations, @apbrogan.bsky.social @ @harvardmed.bsky.social
@natmicrobiol.nature.com

subtiwiki.uni-goettingen.de/wiki/index.p...

Thank you so much!

🚨Out now!

Cyclic-di-AMP modulates cellular turgor in response to defects in bacterial cell wall synthesis @harvardmicro.bsky.social

#MicroSky 🦠

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

Thanks Adrienne!

Thank you! and will do.

Thank you Jörg! I was so inspired by your work over the years.

Brogan et al uncover a signaling pathway in which levels of the nucleotide second messenger c-di-AMP increase in response to defects in cell wall synthesis. This regulatory pathway decreases the cytoplasmic turgor pressure and protects the cell from lysis: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

This was a great collaboration with Dr. Paola Bardetti and Dr. Rico Rojas at NYU. With their help, we provide evidence that c-di-AMP functions to control the cytoplasmic turgor pressure. The c-di-AMP mediated reduction in turgor protects cells from lysis.

In short, there is: the c-di-AMP cyclase/regulator complex CdaAR upregulates cyclic-di-AMP in response to defects in cell wall synthesis. Similar to other envelope stress response systems in B. subtills, the cyclase regulator CdaR uses an intrinsically disordered region to sense cell wall defects.

c-di-AMP has long been implicated in resistance to cell wall targeting antibiotics. We hypothesized that there could be a regulatory connection between the cell envelope and c-di-AMP levels.

Very happy to share that a large part of my thesis work is out today: B. subtilis uses the second messenger c-di-AMP to modulate its turgor pressure in response to the state of its cell envelope. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I’m excited that the work by Diego Ramirez and Lei Yin is out, where they gained several key insights into what provides the force underlying bacterial cell division doi.org/10.1101/2025....

To divide, cells must first bend the membrane inward, a process that’s energetically expensive

🚨👉 Please check our recent work on bacterial cell division. In situ Cryo-ET reveals the cellular function of the penicillin binding protein 1b supported by AFM, live-cell imaging, in silico AlphaFold proteome screen and TIRFM. Hope you enjoy the read! #teamtomo #cryo-ET ❄️🔬🐎 big thanks to the team!

Very excited to share that my thesis work is out in Molecular Cell! We trained a Structure and Omics informed Classifier (SPOC) to score binary AlphaFold multimer (AF-M) predictions by structural quality and consistency with experimental omics datasets. www.cell.com/molecular-ce...

SAVE THE DATE ‼️ 📆 📢
BBM 2025 will be held on June 9-10th at the Harvard Science Center feat. the one and only Dr. Petra Levin as keynote! We can't wait to see you there.

Registration and scholarship applications open next week.

Angelika Gründling’s work from her sabbatical in the Bernhardt-Rudner labs is out. She came with the goal of finding the missing G+ phosphatidylglycerol phosphate phosphatase and found it with time to spare. I can also highly recommend her as a bay mate! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

HARIBO bacter for happy holidays