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In an analysis published in Nature Reviews Microbiology, Guilhem Faure (National Center for Biotechnology Information, NIH) and colleagues delve into the intricate relationship between CRISPR–Cas systems and mobile genetic elements.

Michele Mutti and colleagues at BioNTech discovered that the activity of anti-staphylococcal phages is severely impaired in plasma or synovial fluid, hindering their potential as an alternative treatment for S. aureus infections inside the

Rafael Gonzalez-Serrano (Universidad Miguel Hernández, Spain) and colleagues have discovered that distantly related Alteromonas mediterranea phages shares its host recognition module with phages from distantly related families, shedding lig

Giada Finocchio (University of Zurich) and colleagues have discovered the target DNA-dependent activation mechanism of the prokaryotic immune system SPARTA, shedding light on the structural architecture and catalytic activation of the syste

Tomoyoshi Kaneko (Waseda University, Tokyo) and colleagues isolated 28 phages infecting E. coli and evaluated factors like lysis activity, adsorption rate and burst size. They found that variation in lysis onset time and duration was higher

Lydia Chambers and colleagues discovered that bacterial antiviral defense pathways encode eukaryotic-like ubiquitination systems, revealing strong parallels between bacterial and eukaryotic ubiquitination pathways.

Rani Brooks, Lisa Morici, and Nicholas Sandoval found that cell free phage synthesis from engineered strains improves yield.

Mike Tisza published a new pre-print (& great Twitter thread) on how bacterial and phage communities interact in the gut during the first years of life, as found by exploring the TEDDY dataset (12k samples from 800+ children in 4 countries)

Barbara Maciejewska (University of Wrocław, Poland) and colleagues elucidated the structure and function of the capsular depolymerase KP34gp57 from Klebsiella phage KP34, describing for the first time monomeric phage depolymerases (’mini-de

Sicelo Dlamini (University of Mpumalanga, South Africa) and colleagues studied how different encapsulation techniques affect phage viability and stability under simulated gastric conditions, and found that alginate–carrageenan-CaCO3 encapsu

Institut Pasteur, Paris, France is hiring a postdoc to study the population structure and evolution of epidemic, emergent, and/or antimicrobial-resistant enteric bacterial pathogens.

Jingxian Yang and colleagues have discovered that agr (quorum sensing) induction reduces expression of tarM (which encodes a glycosyltransferase responsible for modification of the major S. aureus phage receptor). This allows lytic phage St

Erin Attrill (University of Exeter) and colleagues found that slow-growing E. coli cells survive phage T4 in isolation, but fast-growing cells survive when surrounded by their clonal kin cells.

Eray Enustun (UCSD) and colleagues have used proximity labeling and localization mapping to systematically map out the protein interaction network of the ‘phage nucleus’ made by jumbo phages.

Phage researcher Pranav Johri discusses phage therapy and antimicrobial resistance in India in a recent article in The Microbiologist

Katherine Wetzel and colleagues found that trehalose polyphleates (large surface-exposed glycolipids) are required for infection of Mycobacterium abscessus and Mycobacterium smegmatis by clinically useful phages BPs and Muddy.

Hans Carlson (Lawrence Berkeley National Lab) and colleagues found that phages most influence terrestrial microbial functional ecology in hot spots and 'hot moments' such as metazoan guts, drought influenced soils, or biofilms where ion con

Melissa Su Juan Chee (National University of Singapore) and colleagues have uncovered a new process of gene transfer in Staphylococcus aureus mediated by staphylococcal pathogenicity islands (SaPIs) that can mobilize and transfer two pathog

Susanne Meile, Jiemin Du (ETH Zurich) and colleagues have published a new paper on engineered reporter phages for detection of Escherichia coli, Enterococcus, and Klebsiella in urine.

Jiemin Du, Susanne Meile (ETH Zurich) and colleagues have engineered phages to produce and release antimicrobial effectors, creating a promising alternative to conventional antibiotics for UTIs.