Scaling laws of bacterial and archaeal plasmids www.nature.com/articles/s41...
02.07.2025 11:35
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Scaling laws of bacterial and archaeal plasmids www.nature.com/articles/s41...
🚨🚨New paper out in @natcomms.nature.com!!
Come for the first large-scale analysis of plasmid copy number across species,
stay for one of the most intriguing results of my lab: universal scaling laws in plasmid biology! 📈🧬
👉 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
12/ Congrats again to the team and particularly to Ryan, Hye-in and Grayson.
11/ After successfully eliminating the target plasmid, DoS safely self-destructs via induced self-cutting, leaving behind plasmid-free bacteria. This built-in containment ensures minimal ecological impact, maximizing safety and utility.
10/ Conceptually, DoS operates as a microbial gene drive. While gene drives have been widely explored in insect population control, our design demonstrates a novel application to bacterial plasmids.
9/ Once inside, DoS spreads efficiently by hijacking the target plasmid's own transfer machinery. It simultaneously outcompetes and suppresses the target plasmid through incompatibility and/or CRISPR-guided cutting.
8/ In mixed bacterial communities, self-transmissible plasmids transfer from their original hosts into cells carrying the DoS plasmid. This process exposes a critical vulnerability known as "retrotransfer." This allows DoS to infiltrate target-host populations.
7/ How does DoS work? It contains a transfer origin (oriT) but lacks its own transfer machinery, staying dormant unless interacting with bacteria that carry the targeted self-transmissible plasmid.
6/ We engineered a "denial-of-spread" (DoS) plasmid that acts as a Trojan horse, infiltrating and targeting bacterial populations harboring harmful conjugative plasmids.
5/ Traditional methods for plasmid curing, such as chemical agents, often lack specificity, inadvertently harming beneficial plasmids and disrupting microbial communities.
4/ Thus, proactive control of these mobile plasmids is critical for antibiotic stewardship efforts aimed at curbing the spread of resistance genes.
3/ Self-transmissible conjugative plasmids are major vectors spreading antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Their high mobility helps them persist even if they are costly to bacterial hosts.
2/ This was the final chapter of the dissertation work by Ryan Tsoi (now a Senior Scientist at Merck) and was carried through the finish line by Hye-in Son (now at BillionToOne) and @graysonshamrick.bsky.social
1/ What's the worst enemy of a plasmid? Another plasmid! Our new study demonstrates synthetic plasmids engineered as "Trojan horses" to eliminate plasmids encoding antibiotic resistance. @dukeubme.bsky.social www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
12/ Congrats again to the team and particularly to Ryan, Hye-in and Grayson.
11/ After successfully eliminating the target plasmid, DoS safely self-destructs via induced self-cutting, leaving behind plasmid-free bacteria. This built-in containment ensures minimal ecological impact, maximizing safety and utility.
10/ Conceptually, DoS operates as a microbial gene drive. While gene drives have been widely explored in insect population control, our design demonstrates a novel application to bacterial plasmids.
9/ Once inside, DoS spreads efficiently by hijacking the target plasmid's own transfer machinery. It simultaneously outcompetes and suppresses the target plasmid through incompatibility and/or CRISPR-guided cutting.
8/ In mixed bacterial communities, self-transmissible plasmids transfer from their original hosts into cells carrying the DoS plasmid. This process exposes a critical vulnerability known as "retrotransfer." This allows DoS to infiltrate target-host populations.
7/ How does DoS work? It contains a transfer origin (oriT) but lacks its own transfer machinery, staying dormant unless interacting with bacteria that carry the targeted self-transmissible plasmid.
6/ We engineered a "denial-of-spread" (DoS) plasmid that acts as a Trojan horse, infiltrating and targeting bacterial populations harboring harmful conjugative plasmids.
5/ Traditional methods for plasmid curing, such as chemical agents, often lack specificity, inadvertently harming beneficial plasmids and disrupting microbial communities.
4/ Thus, proactive control of these mobile plasmids is critical for antibiotic stewardship efforts aimed at curbing the spread of resistance genes.
3/ Self-transmissible conjugative plasmids are major vectors spreading antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Their high mobility helps them persist even if they are costly to bacterial hosts.
2/ This was the final chapter of the dissertation work by Ryan Tsoi (now a Senior Scientist at Merck) and was carried through the finish line by Hye-in Son (now at BillionToOne) and @graysonshamrick.bsky.social
17/n Huge congratulations again to the team, particularly Dongheon & Mack
16/n. Our work highlights a need to develop the capability to measure and control θ – an ongoing work in our lab.
15/n. In contrast, despite its critical role, θ is much less quantified. In fact, it can be indirectly estimated only for a handful of experimental systems (often from experiments on purified components).
14/n. Of the two parameters, v is typically straightforward to measure and has been reported for many experimental systems.
13/n. This work provides a quantitative framework to predict and optimize condensate-mediated metabolic pathway control, highlighting opportunities for designing synthetic metabolic strategies for biotech and therapeutic applications.