Nature Microbiology, Published online: 25 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41564-026-02486-1Phage Tn-seq uses Tn5 transposon mutagenesis with anti-CRISPR-based selection and deep sequencing as a method to generate unbiased, genome-wide mutations across diverse phages

In this Perspective, Levin and Wang give a brief history of bacterial growth rate and discuss how it is connected to nutrient availability and macromolecule synthesis, with a focus on (p)ppGpp as a ce...

Viruses are ubiquitous mobile genetic elements that are obligate symbionts of cellular life forms and replicate exclusively within host cells. The ...

The T7 bacteriophage deactivates bacterial defence systems through T7K phosphorylation of nearly all host and phage proteins during infection.

Phylogenetic mining and protein language models uncover improved PiggyBac transposase sequences.

Few people know how much medicine has progressed in their lifetimes. Fewer know how much faster it could be progressing.

CRISPR–Cas systems transcriptionally tune diverse innate defences using CRISPR RNA-like guides to balance antiviral protection with fitness, and hyperactivate these defences when compromised, establis...

The pangenome is the total genetic repertoire of a group of organisms. It is a property of populations, maintained by evolutionary processes.

A single bacteriophage can dominate microbial communities yet only evolves when migration changes its ecological context.

All kingdoms of life have developed strategies to limit viral infection. In humans, interferons induce a suite of antiviral factors that collectively provide immunity. Some human immune genes are homo...

Recently, Heng Li released MiniBWA (GitHub) alongside a paper by Heng Li and Nils Homer describing the method (paper). MiniBWA builds on the approaches in Minimap2 (also by Heng Li), but falls back on...

Nature Reviews Microbiology, Published online: 20 May 2026; doi:10.1038/s41579-026-01318-7The life cycle of temperate bacteriophages involves lytic or lysogenic cycles and has historically served as a model for studying genetic regulation. This Review provides an updated overview of these cycles and highlights their complexities, supporting a greater appreciation of the ecological roles of temperate phages.

Phages are important drivers of bacterial evolution with therapeutic potential as antimicrobials. However, gaps in our understanding of phages and our inability to rapidly engineer them with new genetic cargo hinders progress towards phage-based therapies. To address the lack of unbiased, genome-wide mutational tools for phages, we developed transposon mutagenesis employing CRISPR-anti-CRISPR (Acr)-based selection and deep-sequencing (Phage Tn-seq). Transposon mutagenesis was effective for phages with unmodified or hypermodified genomes and a jumbo phage that protects its DNA within a nucleus. Phage Tn-seq enabled phage gene essentiality assignment consistent with structural proteomics and core gene conservation. Insertion biases allowed prediction of transcriptional direction and early injected phage DNA regions. We exploited the method to rapidly deliver new cargo to phage genomes in just a few days and used an AI-designed Acr to expand the phage transposon toolbox. Phage Tn-seq is a versatile tool to advance our understanding and applications of phages. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. Royal Society Te Apārangi, https://ror.org/04tajb587 Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, https://ror.org/012kf4317 The L’Oréal Groupe Australia University of Otago, https://ror.org/01jmxt844

A structural catalogue of the Asgard archaeal pangenome reveals hundreds of eukaryotic-like proteins that suggest a higher degree of cellular complexity in the archaeal ancestor of eukaryotes.

The emergence of a chemical system capable of self-replication and evolution is a critical event in the origin of life. RNA polymerase ribozymes can replicate RNA, but their large size and structural ...

Names matter; they are not mere labels. They operate as anchors of memory, social coordinates, and references of collective identity. When a name becomes established through long-term use and broad ad...

Extracellular contractile injection systems (eCISs) are bacteriophage tail-derived toxin delivery complexes that are present in many prokaryotes. Here, the authors present an analysis of eCIS tail fib...

Bacteriophages and PICIs spread bacterial defenses via lateral transduction, shaping microbial immunity and pathogen evolution.

Heavily optimized library for DEFLATE/zlib/gzip compression and decompression - ebiggers/libdeflate

Zagieboylo and colleagues demonstrate that the human commensal Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron secretes two self-targeting proteins that induce heterogeneity within its own population. Differential expre...

Using RIL-seq, Silverman et al. map the RNA interactome of E. coli during phage lambda infection and uncover a conserved phage-encoded sRNA that activates host replication machinery. Their findings re...

Abstract. Comparisons of long-read and short-read (meta)genome assemblies typically show that short-read sequence assemblies are less error-prone, but stru

Toll/interleukin-1 receptor (TIR) domains are important for immune signaling across humans, plants and bacteria. These domains were recently found to produce immune signaling molecules in plant immuni...

Abstract. Viruses are ubiquitous in all environments and impact host metabolism, evolution, and ecology, although our knowledge of their biodiversity is st

An anvi'o program. Predict contig circularity from paired-end read alignments in a given BAM file.

A renewed interest in bacteriophages has emerged from the explosive discovery of the complex pan-immune bacterial defense system and a revival of t...

Competing theories seek to explain inconsistencies surrounding Alexander Fleming’s famed discovery.

Abstract. Polyethylene terephthalate (PET)-hydrolyzing enzymes (PETases) are a recently discovered enzyme class capable of plastic degradation. PETases are

dplyr but make it bussin fr fr no cap. Contribute to hadley/genzplyr development by creating an account on GitHub.

The climate crisis is one of the most urgent and complex challenges of our time. Although often overlooked in models and policy, microorganisms play a critical role in climate dynamics. They are sensi...