An exciting opportunity has arisen for a Postdoctoral Researcher to join the Wilkinson Group at the John Innes Centre, working in collaboration with the Hutchings lab, on a project titled: Global...

Heritable microbes profoundly influence insect biology, yet the traits they confer often evolve rapidly and differ among closely related symbiont s...

To cause rice blast disease, the filamentous fungus Magnaporthe oryzae develops a specialised infection cell called an appressorium, which generates enormous turgor to breach the rice leaf cuticle. Al...

Animal cells extensively remodel their cytoskeleton during differentiation and can notably switch between two major motility modes: flagellum-based swimming and actin-based crawling. We previously sho...

Ancient symbioses may enable ants to thrive in diverse niches, but how these relationships are regulated remains unclear. This study reveals that some ants can dynamically regulate symbiont-derived be...

Cultivation-dependent techniques, computational analyses and genome-scale metabolic models show widespread amino acid auxotrophies, suggesting that soil microorganisms exist within integrated ecologic...

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SyeA was present in the Buchnera ancestor, is secreted into the host cytoplasm, is homologous to secreted effectors of bacterial pathogens and is essential for Buchnera transmission.

Experts hope a revamp at the Norwich Research Park could lead to more scientific breakthroughs.

A plant pathogen effector suppresses an activated helper NLR via a host ENTH domain–containing protein, NbTOL9a.

The repeated evolution of similar phenotypes, or convergent evolution, is widespread in nature, but there are few studies investigating the genetic mechanisms across wide evolutionary timescales. This...

The blast fungus Magnaporthe oryzae is the causal agent of the most serious disease of cultivated rice and an emerging threat to wheat production. Controlling blast diseases is therefore critical t...

An exciting opportunity has arisen for a Postdoctoral Researcher to join the newly starting Schreier group at the John Innes Centre, working on cutting-edge science in the field of photosynthesis…

Bacterial competition drives the evolution of antibacterial mechanisms, yet how new activities arise remains poorly understood. A major route to innovation is the reuse of pre-existing genetic systems, whereby conserved protein modules are repurposed in new biological contexts to generate new capabilities. Here, we show that the ParB-CTPase fold, a conserved nucleotide-binding module best known for its role in chromosome segregation, can be functionally repurposed as an antibacterial toxin. We identify ToxB, a ParB-like domain embedded within the polymorphic toxin region of contact-dependent inhibition systems and show that it functions as a potent antibacterial effector. Structural and biochemical analyses reveal that ToxB retains the core architecture of the ParB-CTPase fold but lacks DNA-binding capability and preferentially binds ATP. This shift in nucleotide specificity underpins a distinct mode of action, in which ATP binding and hydrolysis trigger rapid nucleoid compaction, chromosome segregation defects, oxidative stress, cell chaining, and ultimately cell lysis. ToxB also exhibits toxic activity in plant cells, suggesting that it targets conserved cellular processes. Together, these findings provide direct experimental evidence that the ParB-NTPase fold is biologically versatile and can be repurposed for biological roles fundamentally distinct from its ancestral function in DNA segregation. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. Wellcome Trust, https://ror.org/029chgv08, 221776/Z/2/Z, 227755/Z/23/Z Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, https://ror.org/00cwqg982, BB/X01097X/1 Diamond Light Source, MX32728

The Department of Molecular Microbiology is organising a one and a half day Early- Career Microbiologists Mini-Symposium. The symposium will be held from Tuesday 22nd – Wednesday 23rd September 2026.

This study reveals that enhanced autophagy in root-hair-forming cells helps Arabidopsis store excess sodium, control oxidative stress and tolerate salt stress.

The Cluster of Excellence EXC 2124 “Controlling Microbes to Fight Infections” (CMFI) at the University of Tübingen invites applications for Indepen...

Formicamycins and their biosynthetic precursors, the fasamycins, form part of the phenylnaphthacenoid family of polyketide natural products. A recent atroposelective total synthesis of formicamycin H brought into question our original stereochemical assignment of the axially chiral linkage between C-6 and C-7. To address this, we obtained an X-ray crystal structure for formicamycin H that unambiguously confirmed our original assignment as the Sa atropisomer. X-ray structures for multiple additional fasamycins and formicamycins confirmed that this is common to all congeners. However, these studies identified a compounded error made by us whereby several structures previously reported as para-methoxy were found to have ortho-methoxy groups on the hanging E-ring. To address this for congeners that did not crystallize or gave nondiffracting crystals, we turned to the surprisingly underutilized 1,n-ADEQUATE NMR experiment. In total, we generated X-ray structures for 15 phenylnaphthacenoid metabolites and by combining these results report the corrected structures for three formicamycins, six fasamycins, and three biosynthetic lactone intermediates, noting that several revised fasamycin structures now match previously reported naphthacemycins. Our results highlight the utility of 1,n-ADEQUATE experiments for regiochemical determination in polysubstituted aromatic molecules. Moreover, our investigations uncovered a potential deracemization step during biosynthesis of the formicamycin framework.

An immunity-like system functions as a lysis control hub to promote gene transfer agent particle release from host bacterial cells, suggesting that bacterial immune systems may be co-opted to promote ...

Why mammals cannot regenerate limbs like amphibians do presents a long-standing puzzle in biology. To uncover the underlying differences, we compared amputation responses of embryonic mouse (Mus musculus) and Xenopus laevis tadpole limbs. Lowering ...

Large mobile genetic elements known as Starships act as vehicles for transferring transposable elements (TEs) between fungi. Here, Griem-Krey et al. show that these ‘hitchhiking’ TEs can drive rapid e...