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Tatiana Dimitriu

@tatianadimitriu.bsky.social

1.7K followers 560 following 97 posts

@royalsociety University Research Fellow in St Andrews. Bacterial evolution, mobile genetic elements & defence systems, antibiotic resistance, social interactions. 🇫🇷 with some 🇷🇴 and 🇺🇦 roots. She/her

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Tatiana Dimitriu @tatianadimitriu.bsky.social · Mar 31

Preprint below has been a long time coming, here just in time for #microbio25 ! (if the train wifi lets me)
With @andrewmatthews.bsky.social
#MicroSky
🧵

bioRxiv Microbiology @biorxiv-microbiol.bsky.social · Mar 31

Stealth plasmids: rapid evolution of deleted plasmids can displace antibiotic resistance plasmids under selection for horizontal transmission. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.03.30.646151v1

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Reposted by Tatiana Dimitriu

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 Tatiana Dimitriu

Marghost 👻 @mitildide.bsky.social · 2d

So a small update on French politics for my English speaking followers the guy who had been charged with forming a government and came up with the same government than the previous government has quit this morning following the announcement of his government and is now in charge of forming a new one

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Reposted by Tatiana Dimitriu

Nanami Kubota @nanamikubota.bsky.social · 6d

Published in Current Biology! P. aeruginosa can use its filamentous phage to inhibit competitors but high phage production is susceptible to cheater miniphage invasion. Subsequent phage tragedy of the commons can lower bacteria and phage fitness. Link: authors.elsevier.com/c/1lt5I3QW8S...

Nanami Kubota @nanamikubota.bsky.social · Apr 2

Preprint out! Bacteria w/ hyper-replicative filamentous phage lead to overnight emergence of cheater phages. Bacteria w/ both phages can outcompete wildtype, then rapidly lose phage via a phage Tragedy of the Commons
@shellyscrib.bsky.social @vscooper.micropopbio.org www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Filamentous cheater phages drive bacterial and phage populations to lower fitness

Many bacteria carry phage genome(s) in their chromosome (i.e., prophage), and this intertwines the fitness of the bacterium and the phage. Most Pseudomonas aeruginosa strains carry filamentous phages ...

www.biorxiv.org

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Reposted by Tatiana Dimitriu

Dre Grr @drgrr.bsky.social · 9d

🚂 😴 A peine lancés et déjà supprimés ? Sauvons les trains de nuit Paris-Berlin et Paris-Vienne, un voyage bas-carbone largement plébiscité par ses utilisateurs et utilisatrices.

Pétition à signer ici ⤵️
agir.greenvoice.fr/petitions/sa...

🚂 Sauvons les trains de nuit Paris-Berlin et Paris-Vienne

Signez la pétition maintenant !

agir.greenvoice.fr

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Reposted by Tatiana Dimitriu

Michael Brockhurst @brockhurstlab.bsky.social · 12d

Now peer-reviewed, improved and published in @microbiologysociety.org Microbiology - thanks to editor and reviewers!

www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour...

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Reposted by Tatiana Dimitriu

Craig MacLean @craigmaclean.bsky.social · 13d

New ERC funded computational postdoc position in my lab! We are looking for someone who will study the genomics of bacterial evolution using samples from experimental evolution and clinical trials. Lots of opportunities for interesting and fun collaboration!
my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru...

Job Details

my.corehr.com

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Reposted by Tatiana Dimitriu

Zamin Iqbal @zaminiqbal.bsky.social · 13d

Delighted to see our paper studying the evolution of plasmids over the last 100 years, now out! Years of work by Adrian Cazares, also Nick Thomson @sangerinstitute.bsky.social - this version much improved over the preprint. Final version should be open access, apols.
Thread 1/n

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Reposted by Tatiana Dimitriu

Agathe couturier @agathe-couturier.bsky.social · 21d

Exclusion systems, far from slowing down plasmid spread, are in fact essential to preserve host cell viability and thereby ensure the successful dissemination of conjugative plasmids and antibiotic resistance genes.

@nfrk92.bsky.social
@narjournal.bsky.social

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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Reposted by Tatiana Dimitriu

Zamin Iqbal @zaminiqbal.bsky.social · 21d

Super paper from the mighty Mia Winkler, @genomarit.bsky.social and Iren Lohr.
"We have previously shown that there were relatively few strain-sharing events across ecological niches...plasmid-sharing is considerably more common across niches than strain-sharing. "
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

A One Health study of Klebsiella pneumoniae species complex plasmids shows a highly diverse and ecologically adaptable plasmidome

Plasmids play a pivotal role in the horizontal gene transfer of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and virulence determinants among bacteria. Members of the Klebsiella pneumoniae species complex (KpSC) ca...

www.biorxiv.org

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Reposted by Tatiana Dimitriu

Julie Le Bris @julielebris.bsky.social · Sep 5

Delighted to share our recently published work!
Ever wondered how Klebsiella (and others) deals with capsule production’s costs ?
The paper: journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...
Thread👇

Phenotypic heterogeneity of capsule production across opportunistic pathogens | mBio

The polysaccharidic capsule is present in ~50% of species across the bacterial phylogeny, including all ESKAPE microorganisms, the six most significant multidrug-resistant (MDR) nosocomial pathogens. It is also an important virulence factor and a major ...

journals.asm.org

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Tatiana Dimitriu @tatianadimitriu.bsky.social · Sep 2

only a microbiologist can be happy she left home in a rush three weeks ago and did not empty her tea mug @contamclub.bsky.social

Photo of the bottom of a mug covered in fungal contamination, in blue-gray tones with some blue and white more distinct outgrowths

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Reposted by Tatiana Dimitriu

Will Smith @willpjsmith.bsky.social · Aug 31

Does your lab perform killing assays?
TL;DR: we’ve identified a problem that can bias the outcome of killing assays, making antagonism look stronger than it really is.
Adding a simple extra step can mitigate this bias!

Out now at #MicrobioJ www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour...

1/n

Type VI secretion system activity at lethal antibiotic concentrations leads to overestimation of weapon potency

Competition assays are a mainstay of modern microbiology, offering a simple and cost-effective means to quantify microbe–microbe interactions in vitro. Here, we demonstrate a key weakness of this meth...

www.microbiologyresearch.org

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Reposted by Tatiana Dimitriu

Michael Baym @baym.lol · Sep 1

What was antibiotic resistance like before we ever used antibiotics? How did we change what antibiotic resistance genes looked like over 100 years?

Our paper looking at resistance genes from a century of NCTC historical isolates now out in mGen:
www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour...

Genomic resistance in historical clinical isolates increased in frequency and mobility after the age of antibiotics

Antibiotic resistance is frequently observed shortly after the clinical introduction of an antibiotic. Whether and how frequently that resistance occurred before the introduction is harder to determin...

www.microbiologyresearch.org

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Tatiana Dimitriu @tatianadimitriu.bsky.social · Aug 29

This is my happy place and I'm not sure I want to leave ever

Various views of Provence countryside with dark green and yellow-green vegetation, blue sky and white clouds

Reposted by Tatiana Dimitriu

Jorge Sastre Domínguez @jorgesastred.bsky.social · Aug 13

New paper out! 🔈🔈📣📣

Plasmids promote antimicrobial resistance through Insertion Sequence-mediated gene inactivation.

Combining experimental and computational approaches, we unveil how two of the most prevalent bacterial MGE accelerate the evolution of AMR. 🧵👇🏻

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

Plasmids promote antimicrobial resistance through Insertion Sequence-mediated gene inactivation

Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) is a major threat to public health. Plasmids are mobile genetic elements that can rapidly spread across bacterial populations, promoting the dissemination of AMR genes i...

www.biorxiv.org

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Reposted by Tatiana Dimitriu

Allison Lopatkin, PhD @ajlopatkin.bsky.social · Aug 12

If you ever find yourself needing evidence for ‘Plasmids are just as common in microbes without resistance genes,’ we’ve got you covered! Check our new paper, out today:

www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour...

Plasmid prevalence is independent of antibiotic resistance in environmental Enterobacteriaceae

The rapid rise of antibiotic-resistant pathogens poses a critical threat to the treatment of infectious diseases. While the spread of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) via plasmid conjugation has bee...

www.microbiologyresearch.org

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Reposted by Tatiana Dimitriu

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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Tatiana Dimitriu @tatianadimitriu.bsky.social · Aug 10

(the soup thing sounds very English to me as I grew up with the Astérix joke of English food being boiled water seasoned with some more water)

Tatiana Dimitriu @tatianadimitriu.bsky.social · Aug 10

I love this book, it is for a large part about an AI which becomes conscious because it was asked to narrate a story and is struggling with it. But the “building made of soups” bit made me laugh out loud and I’m not sure if it’s about language in general or a specific go at English?

Tatiana Dimitriu @tatianadimitriu.bsky.social · Aug 10

A most fuzzy mathematics. Possibly utterly useless. […] Their languages lie to them, systemically, and in their very designs. A liar species. What a thing, really. What an evolutionary dead end. “
Kim Stanley Robinson, Aurora. 2/2

Tatiana Dimitriu @tatianadimitriu.bsky.social · Aug 10

“We sense this, we aggregate that, we compress information to some new output, in the form of a sentence in a human language, a language called English. A language both very structured and very amorphous, as if it were a building made of soups. 1/2

Reposted by Tatiana Dimitriu

Meaghan Castledine @mcastd.bsky.social · Aug 5

Want to name a real virus? I have recently discovered 9 new phages which now need names! To enter, you simply need to donate to the Cystic Fibrosis Trust on my JustGiving page (£2 = 1 entry) and share your email with me on donation (see link info). Please share 💚 www.justgiving.com/page/meaghan-c-1

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Tatiana Dimitriu @tatianadimitriu.bsky.social · Aug 5

… and on the other extreme, papers describing in great detail a chemical or experimental condition that reduces transfer by like 20%, and concluding that we just have to use this and we will solve AMR.

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Tatiana Dimitriu @tatianadimitriu.bsky.social · Aug 5

It is funny reading papers from labs with different interests and approaches, which consider variation in conjugation rates in opposite ways: on one side (more molecular genetics), dismissing anything less than 10-fold or 100-fold as ‘not really involved in transfer’

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Tatiana Dimitriu @tatianadimitriu.bsky.social · Jul 30

😍il faut qu'on s'organise 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

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