Professor of microbiology at the University of Toronto Department of Molecular Genetics
www.nature.com/articles/d41... Coverage of our collaboration with the Liu group.. ' “This is crazy directed evolution!” - Makoto Saito'
Powerful CRISPR system inserts whole gene into human DNA‘Directed’ evolution in the laboratory creates an editing tool that outperforms classic CRISPR systems.www.nature.com
Extracting @NCBI SRA files with fasterq-dump can require 17x the size of the accession while decompressing. Our new tool xsra extracts sequences at 5x throughput with significantly less disk usage, built-in compression, and optional BINSEQ outputs github.com/arcInstitute...
GitHub - ArcInstitute/xsra: An efficient CLI to extract sequences from the SRAAn efficient CLI to extract sequences from the SRA - ArcInstitute/xsragithub.com
The latest discovery from the lab and great colleagues at McMaster and U Illinois, Chicago. Lariocidin, a new lasso peptide antibiotic that inhibits the ribosome. rdcu.be/efdha
A broad-spectrum lasso peptide antibiotic targeting the bacterial ribosomeNature - A new lasso peptide antibiotic exhibits broad-spectrum activity against Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria by interfering with bacterial protein synthesis, is unaffected by common...rdcu.beFinally in peer-reviewed form: Mapping the ultrastructural topology of the corynebacterial cell surface. @bupbuse.bsky.social @vikramalva.bsky.social Please also see concurrent beautiful work from @adriasogues.bsky.social and Han Remaut.
PLOS BiologyThe unique #CellEnvelope of #corynebacteria: @tbharat-lab.bsky.social &co map the C. glutamicum cell surface, revealing a patchy S-layer & specific assembly of the PS2 protein, thereby informing our understanding of cell envelopes that contain #MycolicAcids @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/3Y6JNgw
People spend a lot of time wondering why the left is worse at using independent media to control the national narrative. A useful exercise is to ask why the left is also worse at selling snake oil and pyramid schemes, because I think the reasons are basically exactly the same.
Excited to share a main project from my PhD, out now in @naturecomms.bsky.social! 📝 We've designed and brought to life the “CORE cycle” – a new-to-nature pathway that provides a novel route for biological CO2 capture 🦠🌱 nature.com/articles/s41... Take a look! Thread below... 🧵
Read ‘Plasmid-driven strategies for clone success in Escherichia coli.’ From @sangerinstitute.bsky.social @uitnorgesarktiske.bsky.social, the University of Oslo, and others, in @naturecomms.bsky.social, here ⤵️ www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Plasmid-driven strategies for clone success in Escherichia coli - Nature CommunicationsPlasmids can encode multiple traits that contribute to the emergence and dissemination of their bacterial hosts. Here the authors use Nanopore long-read technology to sequence the complete genomes of ...www.nature.com
Quick weekend read when you get the chance! I’m excited to announce that the preprint for a major chapter of my thesis work is out on BioRxiv! In this study, we highlight the essential role that pyrimidine metabolism plays in promoting activity of the SaeRS TCS in Staphylococcus aureus! 1/3
bioRxiv MicrobiologyPyrimidine sufficiency is required for Sae two-component system signaling in Staphylococcus aureus https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.03.20.644390v1
If you generate, or use MAGs, you should really read the work we have done benchmarking their limitations. Using complex mock communities (70 species), we assessed how deeply you need to sequence to accurately conduct common metaG analyses. Webwere shocked to see even HQ MAGs are often chimeric!
bioRxivpreprintBenchmarking of shotgun sequencing depth highlights strain-level limitations of metagenomic analysis https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.03.27.645659v1
