Bacteriophages (phages) are viruses that specifically infect bacteria and play a central role in shaping microbial communities and bacterial evolution. Beyond t...

Bacterial tRNA genes often form arrays that are thought to enhance translational efficiency. Recent work shows that tRNA gene arrays also regulate persistence in Burkholderia, correlating with phylogenetic relationships. These findings implicate tRNA gene arrays in niche-specific adaptive evolution, extending bacterial persistence beyond survival under lethal stresses.

Small RNAs (sRNAs) are bacterial RNA species that are anywhere between 50 and 500 nucleotides in length. Many sRNAs employ a short sequence (as few as 6 nucleotides), known as the seed sequence, to ba...

Diverse genomes of lytic phages are found in bacterial assemblies, challenging assumptions about the nature of the lytic lifestyle.

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...

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 reveal a previously unrecognized RNA-level regulatory layer in phage-host interactions and highlight the role of post-transcriptional control in promoting phage infection.

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...

In bacteria, many small regulatory RNAs (sRNAs) associate with the RNA chaperone Hfq to modulate gene expression at the post-transcriptional level. Here, the authors identify global Hfq-mediated RNA-R...

Phage therapy is not a recent discovery; it dates back to the early 20th century, with two scientists making impactful discoveries within two years of each other. But research priorities shifted towar...

It’s likely that many people are unrecognized carriers of the drug-resistant bacteria, which could lead to community spread, CDC scientists said.

The Azrieli International Visiting PhD Fellowship offers outstanding international PhD candidates the opportunity to conduct short-term research in Israel, fostering academic collaboration and strengt...

Microcolony-seq systematically uncovers inherited phenotypic diversity directly from infected human samples, revealing that bacteria can retain long-term genetic and nongenetic memory from the host en...

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

Nature Reviews Microbiology, Published online: 25 July 2025; doi:10.1038/s41579-025-01213-7Metal ions are required for all cells, and their homeostasis relies on ancient mechanisms that facilitate their import, distribution and storage. In this Review, Helmann discusses the key chemical concepts underlying microbial metal physiology and highlights several exemplary microbial systems.

The presence of tRNAs in bacteriophage genomes has intrigued scientists since their discovery in the early 1960s, as phages were believed to rely on the host tRNAs for their translation. Over the years, a multitude of hypotheses have been explored, providing evidence that phages with different lifestyles utilize tRNAs in distinct ways. In recent years, several studies have provided evidence that phage tRNAs play a crucial role in evading phage defense systems. In this review we summarize the current state of the field of phage tRNAs, highlighting their diverse roles in phage infection. We also discuss the host response to phage tRNAs and the application of this knowledge to improve phage-based therapeutics to combat bacterial infections.

Prokaryotic defense-associated reverse transcriptases (DRTs) were recently identified with antiviral functions; however, their functional mechanisms remain largely unexplored. Here we show that DRT9 f...

Linking genotype to phenotype is a central goal in biology. In the microbiological field, transposon mutagenesis is a technique that has been widely used since the 1970’s to facilitate this connection...

The RNA-binding protein CsrA switches from upregulation to downregulation of virulence genes in bacteria through unclear mechanisms. Here, the authors show that the switch between promoting and repres...

In Our Time · Episode

Abstract. Bacteriophages with RNA genomes are among the simplest biological entities on Earth. Since their discovery in the 1960s, they have been used as i

Jeremy Barr discusses how he began studying bacteriophages, the historic use of the T-series phages and how they have shaped the field.

Salmonella virulence chiefly relies upon two major pathogenicity islands, SPI-1 and SPI-2, which enable host cell invasion and intracellular survival, respectively. There has been increasing evidence ...

Bacterial single-cell sequencing via MATQ-seq combines index sorting, random priming and rRNA depletion, and offers high cell retention and transcript capture rates, making it ideal for experiments wi...

The apicoplast organelle of Plasmodium falciparum is essential for parasite replication, however the details of its biogenesis, inheritance and regulation throughout the cell cycle are unknown. Here, ...

The SubtiToolKit (STK) is a high-efficiency Golden Gate (GG) cloning toolkit for Bacillus subtilis and Gram-positive bacteria. It contains pilot libraries of characterized parts, genetic devices for s...

by Lucas Le Nagard — Swimming E. coli typically cover a distance equivalent to the radius of a human hair each second. It might not seem very impressive… But for a 2 µm bacterium, it corresponds to 10...

Leveraging RNA-targeting dCas13d enables selective interference with phage protein translation and facilitates measurement of phage gene fitness at a transcriptome-wide scale.

I stumbled onto a small RNA (sRNA) induced by oxidative stress when I did the “wrong” northern blot experiment as a second-year graduate student. I wa…