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

As a leading research institution for microbial biotechnology the Institute of Bio- and Geosciences - Biotechnology (IBG-1, https://www.fz-juelich.de/de/ibg/ibg-1 ) at the Forschungszentrum Jülich foc...

Only a fraction of bacterial genomes encode CRISPR-Cas systems but the selective causes of this variation are unexplained. How naturally virulent bacteriophages (phages) select for CRISPR immunity has...

Background Staphylococcal infections, caused by a large variety of species within the Staphylococcus genus, are a threat to human health. Although antibiotics are the current choice of treatment for these infections, bacteriophage (phage) therapy has been used with success against Staphylococcus since the dawn of phage therapy. In 2020 a new coagulase-negative species named Staphylococcus borealis was described in Norway. In this study, we focused on understanding phage infections in S. borealis. Methods: First, we predict the presence of prophages and phage-defence mechanisms in the genomes of a collection of twelve S. borealis strains by bioinformatics. We also attempted to isolate S. borealis-infecting phages from Norwegian samples and tested the host-range of three known staphylococcal phages against a panel of fifty Norwegian staphylococcal strains. Results: The presence of prophages and phage defence systems was verified in all tested S. borealis strains. No local Norwegian phages could be obtained in a phage isolation attempt targeted towards S. borealis. The host range analysis shows that phage ISP, originally isolated in the 1920s and still used for phage therapy to date, can infect S. capitis and the S. borealis Hus23 strain. Phage ISP was shown to limit S. borealis Hus23 growth in liquid cultures and lower the formation of biofilm by the bacterium. The efficiency of plating of phage ISP can be improved by repeated passages in the new S. borealis Hus23 host. Conclusions: here we expand the known host range of the traditional phage ISP by showing that it also infects S. borealis and can be adapted to the new host by serial passages, showcasing the flexibility of phages as an antimicrobial strategy.

The Entelli-02 phage product containing five phages has frontline potential to address infections caused by the multidrug-resistant Enterobacter cloacae complex.

We are recruiting Faculty microbiologists in three (3) different, complementary, and collaborative areas at the University of Pittsburgh associated with the School of Medicine. 1) Fundamental researc...

Despite Cutibacterium acnes being the most abundant and prevalent bacteria on human skin, only a single type of phage has been identified that infects this host. Here, we leverage this one-to-one syst...

Large language models (LLMs) are playing an increasingly integral, though largely informal, role in scholarly peer review. Yet it remains unclear whether LLMs reproduce the biases observed in human de...

Florfenicol treatment substantially increased the abundance and mobility of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) in the common carp gut microbiome. The resistome and mobilome profiles failed to return t...

Abstract. Plasmid conjugation is a major driver of antibiotic resistance dissemination in bacteria. In addition to genes required for transfer and maintena

Bacterial phage infection and subsequent lysis are traditionally considered mechanisms of bacterial mortality and viral propagation; additionally, emerging evidence indicates that they may also contri...