Bacteriophage P22 ejects four internal proteins into infected cells to assemble a channel for genome translocation across the cell envelope. However, how these proteins cooperate to build the trans-en...

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

Diverse E. coli phage genomes have hypermutable DNA regions that promote reversible frameshift mutations through DNA polymerase slippage, generating population heterogeneity that enables host exploita...

Diverse E. coli phage genomes have hypermutable DNA regions that promote reversible frameshift mutations through DNA polymerase slippage, generating population heterogeneity that enables host exploita...

Author summary With the increasing severity of the problem of drug-resistant bacteria, phage therapy is regaining renewed attention as an effective alternative strategy. Myophage phi92 exhibits broad-...

DNA glycosylases, typically used for DNA repair, can also protect bacteria against phages that would otherwise evade host immunity by incorporating modified bases into their genomes.

Many important biological functions arise not from single genes but from complex interactions encoded by entire genomes. We report the first generative design of complete bacteriophage genomes using g...

Author summary Biofilm formation by the opportunistic pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa represents a major clinical challenge, with biofilms typically associated with chronic infection, increased antibi...

Structural and biochemical follow-up of a serendipitous discovery reveals that Akkermansia muciniphila carbohydrate sulfatases are uniquely adapted to digest colonic mucins in collaboration with other...

The development of a leucine auxotroph-based genetic system for Mycobacterium abscessus addresses critical challenges in mycobacterial genetics. By avoiding established antibiotic resistance markers, ...

Shomar, Guillaume, et al. report the genomics-driven discovery of a family of more than 2,000 lanthipeptide biosynthetic gene clusters with anti-phage potential. They experimentally demonstrate anti-p...

Bacteriophages (phages) are one of the most important drivers of bacterial evolution, regulating physiology, genetic diversity, population dynamics, and coevolution through complex host-phage interact...

Ge et al. develop a receptor-centered strategy to identify phage proteins that target host receptors during infection and discover the λ outer-membrane protein Lom. Lom binds and occludes LamB, blocki...

Biophysical characterisation shows that NanX, a membrane transport protein from the major facilitator superfamily (MFS), forms both monomers and dimers after purification. AlphaFold modelling and sub...

PALACE combines homology features and deep learning to improve phage assembly from metagenomics.

Here we introduce OpenEvo, a fully open-source, low-cost turbidostat platform for automated continuous culture and directed evolution experiments. Existing tools are expensive, complex, or lack open-s...

Conjugative plasmids are a class of mobile genetic elements capable of efficient transfer between bacterial cells. Although they can introduce beneficial traits such as antibiotic resistance to recipi...

Genetic manipulation of bacteriophages is essential for interrogating phage biology and advancing antimicrobial therapies. However, current genome editing approaches can be inefficient, require multip...

The END nuclease targets eight phage families with at least ten different known DNA modifications, but not unmodified DNA. Its specificity is dictated by the C-terminal iEndoIII domain. To combat END,...

The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) is one of the world’s leading public health universities. Our mission is to improve health and health equity in the UK and worldwide; working i...

Abstract. Cobamides, including vitamin B12, are essential cofactors exchanged between organisms across diverse ecosystems including oceans, soils, and the

Mycobacteria have not yet been reported to engage in interbacterial competition via secretion of proteinaceous toxins. Here, Benedict et al. show that some mycobacteria can use their type-VII secretio...

Nature Microbiology, Published online: 23 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41564-026-02395-3Predicting infection heterogeneity requires looking beyond the host. Phage–bacteria coevolution in tomato fields maintains diverse bacterial strategies and explains uneven disease occurrence across plant populations.

Cryo-EM structural, biochemical and functional analyses of the bacterial twin-arginine translocation system for protein transport across membranes reveal mechanisms of substrate binding.

The structure of the Tat protein complex bound to a substrate reveals how folded proteins are recognized and offers insight into subsequent substrate transport across the membrane.

Abstract. DNA replication is a fundamental process in biology, and initiation marks a key regulatory step. In bacteria, DNA replication is initiated by the

Pseudaminic acids (Pse) are a family of carbohydrates found within bacterial lipopolysaccharides, capsular polysaccharides and glycoproteins. Now, monoclonal antibodies have been developed that recogn...

Contractile injection systems (CISs) are nanomachines that inject proteins into target cells. Here, the authors resolve the atomic structure of a CIS in the opportunistic human pathogen Salmonella ent...

Auxiliary metabolic genes, acquired by cyanobacterial viruses (cyanophages) from their hosts, are thought to manipulate host metabolism during infection. A recent study by Nadel et al. performed in vi...

Bacteriophage receptor-binding proteins (RBPs) determine bacterial host recognition and are central to phage host-range evolution, yet the structural principles governing how RBPs diversify and expand...

Abstract. Streptomycetes are prolific producers of bioactive natural products, but many of the biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) are silent in the laborato

Cayman enables computational analysis of carbohydrate-active enzymes (CAZymes) in microbial community data. It revealed novel mucus-foraging gut microorganisms and differences in gut microbial CAZyme ...