Why did severe #StrepA infections in children increase after the pandemic?
Our new @jamanetworkopen paper suggests COVID restrictions delayed immunity development in young children.
tiny.cc/63vt001
Applications for @ukri.org Medical Research Council funded MRes+PhD studentships in Interdisciplinary Health Sciences at @imperialcollege will open on Tuesday 7 October.
www.imperial.ac.uk/multisci-mrc...
#PhD #Interdisciplinaryhealthscience #Scholarships
The 2024 rankings of bacterial threats
This first-author publication is my… first! Archaea kill bacteria by targeting their Achilles’ heel: peptidoglycan. Big shoutout to @ahocher.bsky.social, @valeriesoo.bsky.social, Pauline Misson, @tobiaswarnecke.bsky.social and MRC LMS Proteomics. A thread 🔽
journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...
Left: Results of spotting various supernatants onto lawns of Halalkalibacterium halodurans, Phycicoccus endophyticus, and Virgibacillus salexigens. a,b: top fraction (>3 kDa) of supernatant from Haloferax volcanii expressing an intact (a) or catalytic mutant (b) version of Woldo; c,d: bottom fraction (<3 kDa) of supernatant from H. volcanii expressing an intact (c) or catalytic mutant (d) version of Woldo; e: unfiltered supernatant from Halogranum salarium B-1; f,g: top fraction (>3 kDa) of supernatant from H. volcanii expressing (f) Danwoldo or (g) and empty plasmid control; h,i: bottom fraction (<3 kDa) of supernatant from H. volcanii expressing (h) Danwoldo or (i) and empty plasmid control. Top right: Structural overlay of zoocin A from Streptococcus zooepidemicus (UniProt ID: O54308) and Woldo, a candidate PGH from Halogranum salarium B-1 (UniProt ID: J2ZZK6), highlighting homologous M23 domains but divergent cell wall binding domains. TRD: target recognition domain. PG: peptidoglycan. Bottom right: Images of bacterial cells following exposure to H. volcanii supernatants expressing Woldo, Danwoldo or the control (as above). Bacteria are stained using LIVE/DEAD BacLight bacterial viability staining kit with ingress of red dye into bacterial cells indicative of cells with terminally compromised cell wall integrity.
Archaea-on-bacteria action! @romainstrock.bsky.social @tobiaswarnecke.bsky.social &co show that many #archaea encode #peptidoglycan hydrolases, which specifically target #bacterial cell walls, experimentally confirming the killing capacity of 2 of these enzymes @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4lrJBBa
Very happy to see this work published + getting the recognition it deserves! Archaea are very cool + understudied organisms and we are only scratching the surface! Since the preprint last year, we (@romainstrock.bsky.social) have included more evidence of bacteria getting killed by archaeal arsenal.
Putting our deductive, problem-solving, and team-working skills to good use - we had so much fun at the Sherlock Escape Room aaand we escaped in 53 minutes! #teampbp #escaperoom
The MIMIC lab is hiring a Postdoctoral Research Associate to join my team at @Cambridge_Uni!
Exploration and engineering DNA-mimicking proteins (wet-lab position.) 🧬
Details: www.jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/50652/
Please get in touch / circulate !
With @jrpenades.bsky.social, we challenged Google AI co-scientist to generate hypotheses. In just 2 days, it recapitulated our unpublished, experimentally confirmed mechanism for how cf-PICIs spread between bacterial species! @imperialcollegeldn.bsky.social
tinyurl.com/3byyaeh2
I hope I managed to convince the families that scientists nowadays can look very different than what is typically portrayed. For instance, I lead an all-girls group now and I am enjoying it! [2/2]
I volunteered at the half-term workshops focused on microbes and the immune system at the Invention Rooms, and I had great conversations with kids and families. Some parents asked sharp questions about why we wanted to become scientists in the first place! www.imperial.ac.uk/news/258715/... [1/2]
Wow, that looks amazing! 🤩
