Alberto HCA

Alberto HCA

@albertohca.bsky.social

PhD interested in antibiotic resistance, MGE, ecology and evolution

107 followers136 following12 posts

Alberto HCA reposted

Alberto HCA reposted

The final version of our latest paper is now published in @natcomms.nature.com! This study illustrates how #AntibioticResistance mechanisms can reshape bacterial physiology beyond resistance itself, ultimately influencing infection dynamics in clinically relevant ways🦠 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

nature.comCarbapenem-resistance oprD mutations reshape Pseudomonas aeruginosa host-pathogen interactions during infection - Nature CommunicationsIn this work, authors show that the loss of the carbapenem porin OprD in Pseudomonas aeruginosa reduces mucus entrapment and enhances airway epithelial barrier crossing, illustrating how antibiotic re...
Pablo Laborda@pablolaborda.bsky.social

New preprint out! 📣🚨 We found that loss-of-function mutations in the carbapenem entry porin OprD of Pseudomonas aeruginosa do more than confer #AntibioticResistance: they reshape the bacterial membrane and interaction with the host, enhancing epithelial colonization capacity 🦠 #Microsky

Alberto HCA reposted

Alberto HCA reposted

Alberto HCA reposted

Excited to share our latest work! 📝 We measured the fitness effect of 136 AMR genes and found that many are neutral or even beneficial without selection. 🤯🧬 Oxygen availability can flip their fitness and our stochastic model indicates that oxygen fluctuations help maintain them. Learn more 👇🏼

bioRxiv Microbiology@biorxiv-microbiol.bsky.social

Fitness effects of antimicrobial resistance genes in changing environments https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.06.710025v1

Here we go again!!! 🤟🏻🧑🏼‍🔬

Alfonso Santos Lopez@asantoslopez.bsky.social

What a fantastic new addition to my lab! 🚀 Welcome @albertohca.bsky.social to the @uam.es family! Stay tuned for the science we’re going to build together in the coming years!

Alberto HCA reposted

Alberto HCA reposted

Alberto HCA reposted

Alberto HCA reposted

Alberto HCA reposted

Alberto HCA reposted

Imagine we could travel back in time ⏪⌛️to explore the world of bacterial pathogens before humans discovered and industrialised antibiotics We just did that to study the history of #AMR spread @science.org doi.org/10.1126/scie... If you like time travel & biology, this 🧵is for you👇

doi.orgPre- and postantibiotic epoch: The historical spread of antimicrobial resistancePlasmids are now the primary vectors of antimicrobial resistance, but our understanding of how human industrialisation of antibiotics influenced their evolution is limited by a paucity of data predati...

Alberto HCA reposted

I am so proud to be part of this work, that we initiated Fernando de la Cruz and I, when he was on sabbatical in my lab in 2009... it took so much time for this achievement, 1000 thanks to Raúl Fernández-López! this brought me back to my PhD on cyanobacteria genetics. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

pnas.orgMutations in the circadian cycle drive adaptive plasticity in cyanobacteria | PNASCircadian clocks allow organisms to anticipate daily fluctuations in light and temperature, but how this anticipatory role promotes adaptation to d...

Alberto HCA reposted

New paper out!

Alicia Calvo-Villamañán@aliciapcv.bsky.social

This work is finally published! 🥳🧬 Plasmids are associated with very variable fitness costs in their different bacterial hosts. But, what is the contribution of each of the plasmid-genes in these host-specific effects? Study led by @jorgesastred.bsky.social, @sanmillan.bsky.social and myself! 1/14

Alberto HCA reposted

Alberto HCA reposted

Our new manuscript is out! A bit of everything cool: Plasmids ✅ Insertion Sequences ✅ AMR Evolution ✅ Microbial Communities ✅ Databases analyses ✅ Mathematical modeling ✅ See the scientific thread below of Jorge Sastre, who has brilliantly led this work with @palomarodera.bsky.social

Jorge Sastre Domínguez@jorgesastred.bsky.social

New paper out! 🔈🔈📣📣 Plasmids promote antimicrobial resistance through Insertion Sequence-mediated gene inactivation. Combining experimental and computational approaches, we unveil how two of the most prevalent bacterial MGE accelerate the evolution of AMR. 🧵👇🏻 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Alberto HCA reposted

New paper out! 🔈🔈📣📣 Plasmids promote antimicrobial resistance through Insertion Sequence-mediated gene inactivation. Combining experimental and computational approaches, we unveil how two of the most prevalent bacterial MGE accelerate the evolution of AMR. 🧵👇🏻 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

biorxiv.orgPlasmids promote antimicrobial resistance through Insertion Sequence-mediated gene inactivationAntimicrobial Resistance (AMR) is a major threat to public health. Plasmids are mobile genetic elements that can rapidly spread across bacterial populations, promoting the dissemination of AMR genes i...

Alberto HCA reposted

Do plasmids evolve faster 🐇, slower 🐢, or just like chromosomes 🧬? In our new paper, we tackled this question using theory, simulations, bioinformatics, and experiments! 👇 Check out all the details in Paula’s thread! Hint: 🐇 (most of the time)

biorxiv.orgPlasmids promote bacterial evolution through a copy number-driven increase in mutation ratePlasmids are autonomously replicating DNA molecules that stably coexist with chromosomes in bacterial cells. These genetic elements drive horizontal gene transfer and play a fundamental role in bacter...
Paula Ramiro-Martínez@paularamiro.bsky.social

New paper alert! 🚨 Plasmids promote bacterial evolution through a copy number-driven increase in mutation rate. We combine theory, simulations, experimental evolution, and bioinformatics to demonstrate that mutation rates scale with plasmid copy number. Let's dive in! 🧵👇

Great work from great people! Congrats @cserna.bsky.social 🤟🏻

Carlos Serna@cserna.bsky.social

Our paper “Global dissemination of npmA mediated pan‑aminoglycoside resistance via a mobile element in Gram‑positive bacteria” is now in @natcomms.nature.com. Part of my freshly defended PhD, so doubly happy! 😄🎉 🧵 (1/14) www.doi.org/10.1038/s414...

Alberto HCA reposted

Words cannot describe how excited I am to share the findings from the second half of my postdoc in @aaronwhiteley.bsky.social's lab where we discover that bacteria use functional amyloids to defend themselves from predatory bacteria. rdcu.be/euu5Y. See thread for details on this epic adventure 1/.

rdcu.beFunctional amyloid proteins confer defence against predatory bacteriaNature - Escherichia coli uses curli fibres, oligomers of the functional amyloid CsgA, as a barrier to protect against the predatory bacteria Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus and Myxococcus xanthus in a...

🚨🚨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...

Alberto HCA reposted

Our paper demonstrating that within-species warfare interactions are ecologically important on human skin is now published in Nature Micro! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

nature.comIntraspecies warfare restricts strain coexistence in human skin microbiomes - Nature MicrobiologyAbout 15,000 pairwise interactions within S. epidermidis from 18 people in 6 families reveal the antagonism and molecular trade-offs that shape the skin microbiota.
Chris Mancuso@mancusosci.bsky.social

Why don’t people who live together have the same strains of microbes? Tami Lieberman (@contaminatedsci.bsky.social) and I put forward one underexplored reason in our new preprint: Intraspecies warfare restricts strain coexistence in human skin microbiomes

Super honored to get the Best PhD Thesis award from @sebbm.bsky.social 🎓✨ Big thanks to everyone who supported me along the way. Huge congrats to all the other amazing winners too! 🙌

Ganadores del Premio Fundación Lilly a la Mejor Tesis Doctoral en Bioquímica y Biología Molecular 2025 👏 🥇Alberto Hipólito Carrillo  🥈Álvaro de la Gándara  🥈Andrés Gámez  https://f.mtr.cool/dkbbwgjluf

Alberto HCA reposted

Alberto HCA reposted

What a milestone!!! I’m really glad I got to add my two cents to the growing knowledge about integrons — this paper is totally worth checking out!

Jose A Escudero@jaescudero.bsky.social

🧪 Finally out after peer review, our work showing that "Mobile #Integrons carry Phage Defense Systems" is now published in Science 🎉 Short 🧵 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Alberto HCA reposted

Excited to share the first preprint from my lab, collaborating with the fantastic @sanmillan.bsky.social 's lab, led by the amazing Jorge Sastre. We've demonstrated how insertion sequences encoded in plasmids promote bacterial adaptation. This project has been incredibly fun!

Alvaro San Millan@sanmillan.bsky.social

New preprint in collaboration with @asantoslopez.bsky.social lab and led by Jorge Sastre. Combining experimental evolution and analyses of longitudinal samples from hospitalised patients, we unveiled a new mechanism of plasmid-mediated evolution beyond HGT 1/8 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

🎨

Willem van Schaik@wvschaik.bsky.social

Interesting new tool for genetic manipulation in Gram-negatives: 'The pAblo·pCasso self-curing vector toolset for unconstrained cytidine and adenine base-editing in Gram-negative bacteria' academic.oup.com/nar/advance-...

Alberto HCA reposted

Alberto HCA reposted