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Pulmonary infections caused by Mycobacterium abscessus have been increasing. This study by Mylene Gorzynski and colleagues deepens our understanding of phage–mycobacteria interaction mechanisms and identifies therapeutic phages that can low

This article by Mart Krupovic and colleagues discusses the origin of the eukaryotic cell and the last eukaryotic common ancestor (LECA). They reconstructed the LECA virus repertoire and found that the origin of the LECA virome can be traced

Matthew C Johnson and colleagues have shown that Pseudomonas aeruginosa exhibits the greatest diversity of anti-phage systems among 30 species. They identified two core defense hotspot loci (cDHS1 and cDHS2) where many anti-phage immune sys

Jody McKerral and colleagues analyzed >2.5 million prophages from >500,000 bacterial genome assemblies, revealing that 94% are lysogens containing at least one identifiable prophage. The findings provide a new framework for identifying phag

Federico Prokopczuk et al. engineered a superinfective phage (eSI-Pf) based on the Pf4 phage, which is able to infect Pseudomonas aeruginosa. They tested it as a phage therapy tool for the treatment of life-threatening burn wound infections

Talia Backman and colleagues published a new preprint on how a weaponized phage suppresses competitors in historical and modern metapopulations of pathogenic bacteria. The authors discovered a viral cluster shared amongst pathogenic Pseudom

Capsules and their traits affect phage susceptibility and plasmid conjugation efficiency, as per a preprint by Matthieu Haudiquet et al. They show that capsule swaps invert phage susceptibility and affect conjugation efficiency, with implic

Michael Schelling et al. published a new paper in PLOS Biology on how CRISPR-Cas effector specificity and cleavage site determine phage escape outcomes. They find that most pre-existing crRNA mismatches lead to phage escape, regardless of w

Yunha Hwang and colleagues found that virus-host interactions in dense hydrothermal mats involve crossing microbial domains and nested metabolisms. They saw that unrelated microbes encode CRISPR immunity against the same viruses, suggesting

Nikhil George & Laura Hug examined a landfill via virus-host CRISPR spacer mapping, and found multiple examples of atypical virus-host dynamics, such as hyper-targeted viral populations, interviral conflicts, and non-specific viruses.

Tram Le and colleagues show the therapeutic potential of IV phage for recurrent urinary tract infections, describing a kidney transplant recipient with ESBL Klebsiella pneumoniae who was successfully treated with 4 weeks of IV phage therapy

Olaya Rendueles and colleagues have described how fitness costs drive competition between lysogenic and sensitive bacteria by co-cultivating a phage-sensitive strain and a polylysogenic Klebsiella pneumoniae strain under different phage pre

In a new paper in Nature, Joseph Kreitz (Howard Hughes Medical Institute) and colleagues show that Photorhabdus virulence cassette (PVCs), part of a class of syringe-like nanomachines resembling phage tails, can be reprogrammed for protein

By analyzing metagenomic samples from IBD patients, Shaqed Carasso (Technion-Israel Institute of Technology) and colleagues identified invertible regions that correlate with disease, including Bacteroides fragilis polysaccharide-A, which is

Akos Nyerges (Harvard Medical School) and colleagues published a new paper on developing a genetic firewall to prevent viral infections and gene transfer in organisms, which could be used to make any organism resistant to all natural viruse

In a new paper in Scientific Reports, Nader Abdelhamied (Zewail City of Science and Technology, Egypt) and colleagues describe a new phage-based biosensor for the detection of Escherichia coli O157:H7.

In a new paper in PHAGE, Janet Nale (University of Leicester) and colleagues examine the activity of phages to control the growth of chicken and swine Salmonella strains in avian, porcine, and human cell cultures. They found that a six-phag

Paul Hyman (Ashland University, Ashland, Ohio, USA) and colleagues have published a paper indicating that using multiple hosts during phage isolation does not select for phages with broader host ranges.

In this paper, Charles Dulberger and colleagues use live-cell fluorescence microscopy to visualize the spatiotemporal dynamics of mycobacteriophage infection in single cells and populations, showing that infection is dependent on the host n

Justin M. Jenson et al. published a new paper in Nature entitled Ubiquitin-like Conjugation by Bacterial cGAS Enhances Anti-phage Defence. In the paper, the authors show that Cap2 forms a thioester bond with the C-terminal glycine of cGAS a