If only temperate bacteriophages should be able to lie dormant in bacterial cells, why have two independent groups found thousands of virulent phages hiding in bacterial sequencing data?

Authors analyse paired viral and bacterial shotgun metagenomics data from individual honeybee guts, revealing modular, nested phage–bacteria networks, with viral diversity mirroring bacterial strain c...

Capsid-forming PICIs (cf-PICIs) produce their own capsids and exploit phage tails from unrelated species to transfer their DNA across bacterial hosts. This tail piracy enables broad dissemination and ...

Accurate genome annotation is fundamental to decoding viral diversity and understanding bacteriophage biology; yet, the majority of bacteriophage genes remain functionally uncharacterised. Bacteriopha...

Abstract. Transfer RNA (tRNA) modifications have emerged as critical post-transcriptional regulators of gene expression affecting diverse biological and di

Transcriptome-scale maps of RNA secondary structure ensembles in living cells detect candidate RNA structural switches.

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...

A method developed by Yale scientists helps reveal how antibacterial agents interact with their host cells — a process that could boost a host of applications that benefit society.

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 ...

Genomic and functional analyses of healthcare-associated vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium reveal that bacteriocin T8 is enriched in emergent lineages and provides a competitive advantage in v...

Numerous genetic codes developed during the evolution of Eukaryotes and three are known in Bacteria, yet no alternative genetic code has been established for Archaea. Some bacterial and archaeal prote...

Phages, viruses of bacteria, play a pivotal role in Earth's biosphere and hold great promise as therapeutic and diagnostic tools in combating infectious diseases. Attachment of phages to bacterial cells is a crucial initial step of the interaction. The classic assay to quantify the dynamics of phage …

Genetically distinct strains of a species can vary widely in phenotype, reducing the utility of species-resolved microbiome measurements for detecting associations with health or disease. While metage...

A cross-sectional study from four African countries shows the importance of investigating the gut microbiome in previously under-represented populations and provides a framework for equitable microbio...

Bacteriophages are the most abundant and phylogenetically diverse biological entities on Earth, yet the ecological mechanisms that sustain this extraordinary diversity remain unclear. In this study, w...

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The authors analyse 8,790 prokaryotic pangenomes to identify the ecological variables associated with recent versus old horizontal gene transfer events, finding that gene transfers are more common amo...

In this work, authors use an arrayed genome-wide CRISPR interference assay to map gene essentiality landscape in the canonical coliphages λ and P1.

This study uses high-throughput chromosome conformation capture (Hi-C) to identify phage–host relationships in soil. By coupling Hi-C with DNA and RNA sequencing, the authors demonstrate the impact ...

Screening 100 million random genes, which lack homology to natural sequences, for their ability to rescue growth arrest of Escherichia coli cells caused by the toxin MazF, the authors find ~2,000 hi...

Proteins are composed of distinct functional domains, each serving a specific role. Here, Smug et al. show that phages are able to shuffle fragments of their proteins and this predominantly occurs in ...