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Reposted by Courtney Ellison

M. Stephen Trent @mstrent.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

We are recruiting postdocs to work on antimicrobial resistance and bacterial cell envelope biology. PLEASE SHARE.

Courtney Ellison @ckellison.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

I am pleased to share my lab’s latest publication - Acinetobacter species lack canonical DNA repair pathway activation mechanisms, and we discovered a conserved transcriptional activator that fills this role: academic.oup.com/nar/article/...

academic.oup.com

A WYL transcriptional regulator activates the DNA damage response pathway in Acinetobacter species

Abstract. The ability to sense DNA damage and activate DNA damage response pathways is critical for repairing DNA damage in all domains of life. The most w

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Reposted by Courtney Ellison

Lori L. Burrows @dr-lori-burrows.bsky.social · 11/03/2026

New paper alert! Outstanding work by PhD candidate Nathan Roberge, great collab with the Ellison and Maxwell labs. #Pseudomonas #phage DMS3 encodes Aqs1, an inhibitor of #T4P assembly ATPase PilB, but how it binds and leads to loss of function was unknown. @mcmasteriidr.bsky.social

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Reposted by Courtney Ellison

Yves Brun lab @brunlabcaulo.bsky.social · 26/02/2026

🧵 Proud to present a tour de force by postdoc @gregbwhitfield.bsky.social solving the mystery of how bacterial Tad pili can extend and retract with a single motor ATPase. Great collaboration with Lynne Howell, @dr-lori-burrows.bsky.social, @ianyyen.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

biorxiv.org

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Reposted by Courtney Ellison

Alex Merz 🇺🇸🇨🇦🇺🇦 @merz.bsky.social · 16/02/2026

🧵 After years out of the field, I and my lab are again working on bacterial type IV pili. We have just posted our first preprints, and I'm excited to share what we have discovered. This shows Neisseria gonorrheae bacteria infecting a human epithelical cell. Here, you can see the pili in red. 1/

Fluorescence micrograph. Emma Miller and Alex Merz, unpublished.

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Reposted by Courtney Ellison

Lori L. Burrows @dr-lori-burrows.bsky.social · 13/10/2025

New paper alert! We used our fav technique, genetic suppression, to understand how FimX controls function of the T4P PilB motor ATPase in Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Great collab with the Ellison lab at U Georgia who helped with some fancy microscopy to capture pilus dynamics! doi.org/10.1371/jour...

doi.org

Twitching motility suppressors reveal a role for FimX in type IV pilus extension dynamics

Author summary Type IV pili enable Pseudomonas aeruginosa to attach to surfaces, move (twitch), and form biofilms. Pilus extension is powered by the motor protein PilB, which is regulated by other fac...

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