Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

João Botelho @joaoftsbotelho.bsky.social · 2d

What an amazing story and tour de force!

Reposted by João Botelho

Adrian Cazares @cazares-adr.bsky.social · 2d

Imagine we could travel back in time ⏪⌛️to explore the world of bacterial pathogens before humans discovered and industrialised antibiotics

We just did that to study the history of #AMR spread @science.org
doi.org/10.1126/scie...

If you like time travel & biology, this 🧵is for you👇

Pre- and postantibiotic epoch: The historical spread of antimicrobial resistance

Plasmids are now the primary vectors of antimicrobial resistance, but our understanding of how human industrialisation of antibiotics influenced their evolution is limited by a paucity of data predati...

doi.org

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Reposted by João Botelho

James McInerney @jomcinerney.bsky.social · 13d

OK, here it is. Come work with me at the University of Liverpool making ALL THE AI models from ALL THE prokaryote pangenome data. Heck, we will make models from ALL the pangenomes, even eukaryotes!!! (link below👇) 1/4

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João Botelho @joaoftsbotelho.bsky.social · 7d

Incredibly proud to be named one of the World’s Top 2% Scientists for 2025 by Stanford/Elsevier, alongside my brilliant colleagues from CBQF at UCP!

cbqf.esb.ucp.pt/news/eight-c...

CBQF | Centre for Biotechnology and Fine Chemistry

Eight researchers from the Centre for Biotechnology and Fine Chemistry (CBQF) at the Faculty of Biotechnology of Universidade Católica Portuguesa are listed among the world’s most cited scientists in ...

cbqf.esb.ucp.pt

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João Botelho @joaoftsbotelho.bsky.social · 10d

Congratulations @cazares-adr.bsky.social @wfigueroac3.bsky.social Daniel Zam and all involved! Amazing work!

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João Botelho @joaoftsbotelho.bsky.social · 13d

Thanks for the kind words Rachel! Your work on CRISPR-Cas and Pa was a big inspiration for those papers!

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João Botelho @joaoftsbotelho.bsky.social · 14d

Good luck Alasdair 👌

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João Botelho @joaoftsbotelho.bsky.social · 14d

Amazing news, congratulations 🎉

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João Botelho @joaoftsbotelho.bsky.social · 19d

Exclusion systems preserve host cell homeostasis and fitness, ensuring successful dissemination of conjugative plasmids and associated resistance genes url: academic.oup.com/nar/article/...

Exclusion systems preserve host cell homeostasis and fitness, ensuring successful dissemination of conjugative plasmids and associated resistance genes

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

academic.oup.com

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João Botelho @joaoftsbotelho.bsky.social · 28d

Super cool Lingchen!

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João Botelho @joaoftsbotelho.bsky.social · Sep 5

Congratulations François!

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João Botelho @joaoftsbotelho.bsky.social · Sep 5

Congratulations Jens!

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Reposted by João Botelho

Ellinor Alseth @ellinoralseth.bsky.social · Aug 8

Feels surreal to say but: I'm hiring! If you are or know anyone interested in looking at the evolution of phage resistance using A. baumannii and natural transformation, then this might be for you
www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...

Research position in Microbial Pharmacology and Population Biology (282139) | UiT The Arctic University of Norway

Job title: Research position in Microbial Pharmacology and Population Biology (282139), Employer: UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Deadline: Wednesday, August 27, 2025

www.jobbnorge.no

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João Botelho @joaoftsbotelho.bsky.social · Aug 6

Congratulations 😀😀

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Reposted by João Botelho

Franklin Nobrega @fnobrega.bsky.social · Jul 28

Thrilled to see our Kiwa story out today! A membrane-associated supercomplex that senses infection and blocks replication and transcription.

www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Huge congratulations to Yi and Zhiying for bringing it home, to Thomas for starting us off, and to all the collaborators.

Kiwa is a membrane-embedded defense supercomplex activated at phage attachment sites

Zhang, Todeschini, and Wu et al. show that the bacterial defense system Kiwa senses phage attachment at the membrane and assembles a transmembrane complex that halts infection by blocking phage DNA re...

www.cell.com

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Reposted by João Botelho

Flora Gaudilliere @fgaudilliere.bsky.social · Jul 28

The preprint of my first article is available on bioRxiv! We use a transposon ecology framework to analyze the distribution of insertion sequences within prokaryotic genomes. We characterize their ecological niche and show evidence of niche construction 🧪🧬💻

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

Unwelcome guests: characterizing the ecological niche of insertion sequences within prokaryotic genomes

Insertion sequences (ISs) are widespread prokaryotic transposable elements, often regarded as genomic parasites that primarily cause deleterious mutations. However, they can also promote adaptive chan...

www.biorxiv.org

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Reposted by João Botelho

Rob Edwards @linsalrob.bsky.social · Jul 22

Fold first, ask later: structure-informed function annotation of Pseudomonas phage proteins

Structural predictions to improve #phage genome annotation!

@hannelorelongin.bsky.social @gbouras13.bsky.social y.social @susiegriggo.bsky.social @veravannoort.bsky.social

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

Fold first, ask later: structure-informed function annotation of Pseudomonas phage proteins

Phages, the viruses of bacteria, harbor an incredibly diverse repertoire of proteins capable of manipulating their bacterial hosts, inspiring many medical and biotechnological applications. However, t...

www.biorxiv.org

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Reposted by João Botelho

Aude Bernheim @audeber.bsky.social · Jul 24

🦠🧍‍♀️From bacterial to human immunity.

We report in @science.org the discovery of a human homolog of SIR2 antiphage proteins that participates in the TLR pathway of animal innate immunity.
Co-led wt @enzopoirier.bsky.social by D. Bonhomme and @hugovaysset.bsky.social

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

www.science.org

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Reposted by João Botelho

Eduardo Rocha @epcrocha.bsky.social · Jul 23

Here's our new broad review on the extended mobility of plasmids, about all mechanisms driving and limiting their transfer. From conjugation to conduction, phage-plasmids to hitchers, molecular to evolutionary dynamics, ecology to biotech. The state of affairs. 1/9 academic.oup.com/nar/article/...

graphical abstract of the article the extended mobility of plasmids

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Reposted by João Botelho

Daniela Barillà @danielabarilla.bsky.social · Jul 22

And the story is published now!🍾
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Open access link: rdcu.be/exnOc

Many years in the making, great collaboration with @archaellum.bsky.social & @tunglejic.bsky.social

Thanks @ukri.org BBSRC & @leverhulme.ac.uk for funding, reviewers & editor!! 🙏
#microsky #archaeasky

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Reposted by João Botelho

Jerónimo Rodríguez-Beltrán @jerorb.bsky.social · Jul 2

🚨🚨New paper out in @natcomms.nature.com!!

Come for the first large-scale analysis of plasmid copy number across species,
stay for one of the most intriguing results of my lab: universal scaling laws in plasmid biology! 📈🧬

👉 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Universal rules govern plasmid copy number - Nature Communications

Plasmids exhibit a broad range of sizes and copies per cell, and these two parameters appear to be negatively correlated. Here, Ramiro-Martínez et al. analyse the copy number of thousands of diverse b...

www.nature.com

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Reposted by João Botelho

Jamie Hall @jpjhall.bsky.social · Jun 20

🚨 Reminder! You have just over two weeks to submit an abstract, if you want to present at the @microbiologysociety.org meeting "Understanding and predicting microbial evolutionary dynamics" in Liverpool in November! #microsky 🦠🧫🔬

Jamie Hall @jpjhall.bsky.social · May 2

‼️Update! Abstract submission is now open for the 2025 Liverpool UK @microbiologysociety.org meeting on "Understanding and predicting microbial evolutionary dynamics”! Deadline July 7th #microsky 🧪🧫🦠 microbiologysociety.org/event/societ...

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João Botelho @joaoftsbotelho.bsky.social · Jun 20

It was a great conference! Thanks Franklin, Esme, Michelle, Daniela and all involved. Hope to see you next year 😀

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Reposted by João Botelho

Franklin Nobrega @fnobrega.bsky.social · Jun 19

Thank you to everyone who attended the 3rd UK MGE workshop. What an incredible few days of science and community building! Next stop: York 2026, hosted by @pcmfogg.bsky.social. See you all next year! #UKMGE

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João Botelho @joaoftsbotelho.bsky.social · May 26

It was great to see @charlotteechong.bsky.social presenting this work at the Annual conference!

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