Flavien Maucourt

What does it take for a mycobacteriophage to infect M. smegmatis mc² 155? 🦠🗺️ We mapped it for 70 phages using genome-wide CRISPRi. Our new preprint from the Phage Foundry is out! (phagefoundry.org) 🥳🧵 Read the preprint here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

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This work was possible 🙏 because of U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science BRaVE phagefoundry.org at Biosciences Area at Berkeley Lab. 🎨 Illustration by me 🎨

biorxiv.orgThe porin MspA is a phage-specific determinant of mycobacteriophage infectionMycobacteriophages are being developed as therapeutics for mycobacterial infections, but their highly variable host ranges limit this application and the bacterial factors that determine whether infec...

Another preprint from Fossati lab came out, which also show that Msp are determinants of the mycophage-M.smegmatis interaction. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

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Why does it matter? 👀 Understanding how phages infect their hosts helps us design phage therapies against pathogens like M. tuberculosis and M. abscessus 💉

Huge thanks to my PI @vivekmutalik.bsky.social, Alexey Kazakov, @igmurray.bsky.social , and our collaborators Graham Hatfull, Michael Niederweis, Adam Deutschbauer, Katie S. Wetzel, Colin Lewis and Deborah Jacobs-Sera 🎉

Key findings 🤯 - Determinant usage is largely independent of phage cluster. - Porins (Msp) are candidate primary receptors for 46 phages, the first proposed protein receptor for any mycobacteriophage. - Arabinogalactan is a candidate secondary receptor for 5 phages.

- Mmpl11 is a candidate secondary receptor for 14 phages. - Lsr2 (nucleoid-associated protein) is a determinant for 31 phages.

Flavien Maucourt reposted

7 July

A little sad to be missing #VOM2026 this year, but excited that our lab will still be well represented! 🎉 look out for @lucasmoriniere.bsky.social talk on 1000+ phage receptor predictions @fmaucourt.bsky.social poster on 70+ M smeg 😳phage screens using CRISPRi!! Cheering 🙌 them on from afar.

20 May

🎊 New Preprint from phagefoundry.org! Extremely happy to be part of this dream team! 🥰

Vivek Mutalik@vivekmutalik.bsky.social

🎊 New Preprint from phagefoundry.org ! Super excited to share our latest work on generating systematic phage-MDR P. aeruginosa interaction dataset & use of ML to predict phage susceptibility & phage cocktails from target genome sequences alone, w validations www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...

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20 May

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15 Mar

New paper 🔔 Collaboration @sullivan-lab.bsky.social Marissa Gittrich led the work Klebsiella phage biology has focused almost entirely on capsulated strains, but capsule loss is the #1 resistance mechanism under phage predation. We used a naturally acapsular host to reveal the receptor landscape

4 Apr

🎉🥳 Preprint out 🥳🎉 Here is a work you will hear about for a while, lead by @lucasmoriniere.bsky.social in the @vivekmutalik.bsky.social's lab, we developed a workflow predicting phages receptor specifity and identifies RBP from genomes🤯 Very happy to be part of this adventure and this dream team 🥰

Lucas Moriniere@lucasmoriniere.bsky.social

🔥Preprint fresh off the press🔥 Hello Bluesky! I'm delighted to share the story I have been working on for the past 3y in @vivekmutalik.bsky.social's lab at LBNL and Adam Arkin's lab @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social. It's a wild story about 255 phages & 1,000+ HT genetic screens, are you ready? 🧵

biorxiv.orgbiorxiv.org

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3 Apr

📣Huge preprint 🔔 Today we share something our group has been working toward for a long time, led by @lucasmoriniere.bsky.social We asked can we predict which receptor a phage targets from its genome sequence alone? For most phages, we couldn’t. So Lucas set out to do something I had only dreamed of.

biorxiv.orgIdentifying Phage Host Receptors Using TraDISThe growing antimicrobial resistance crisis has sparked renewed interest in using bacteriophage (phage) as a treatment for antibiotic-resistant infections. Phage are viruses that infect and often kill...

2 Dec 2025

One more paper about phage-host interaction! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #microsky #phagesky

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Ákos T Kovács

@evolvedbiofilm.bsky.social

27 Nov 2025

The host range of generalist and specialist phages in capsule-diverse Klebsiella hosts is driven by the evolvability of receptor-binding proteins @plosbiology.org from @pilardomingoc.bsky.social journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

journals.plos.orgThe host range of generalist and specialist phages in capsule-diverse Klebsiella hosts is driven by the evolvability of receptor-binding proteinsCapsule diversity limits phage host range by affecting RBP interactions in capsulated bacteria. This study shows that generalist phages evolve host range through RBP mutations and recombination, while...

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biorxiv.orgBarTn7: Optimizing Bacterial Lineage Tracking at Sub-Species Resolution for Population Dynamics in Ecological and Evolutionary StudiesCommunities of bacteria undergo population bottlenecks which are crucial to their population, ecological, and evolutionary dynamics. However, conventional amplicon sequencing cannot distinguish such d...

25 Nov 2025

#microsky 🎊🎉 High resolution lineage tracking tech from Robin & Adam D team from Berkeley! 🙌 We have used this for phage-host interaction work too in the forthcoming preprint.

Robin A. Herbert@robinherbert.bsky.social

Very excited to share a big part of my dissertation work with the Deutschbauer lab at LBNL and @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social! BarTn7: A method for bacterial lineage tracking at sub-species resolution in population, ecological, and evolutionary experiments. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

biorxiv.orgBacteriophage genome-wide transposon mutagenesisBacteriophages have genomes that span a wide size range, are densely packed with coding sequences, and frequently encode genes of unknown function. Classical forward genetics has defined essential gen...

25 Nov 2025

Awesome work from the JBD lab! Genome-wide mutagenesis of phages is so interesting and helpful! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

24 Nov 2025

Hey phage lovers, What do you think of the phage-fantasy paintings I've made?

24 Nov 2025

Wow! Terrific work!

Dorentina Humolli@humollidorentina.bsky.social

🚀New preprint from our lab! I am very excited to finally share what has been the main focus of my PhD for the past almost 3 years! It is about viral dark matter and a powerful tool we built to shed light on it. 🧬💡 Continue reading (🧵)

24 Nov 2025

📣 New preprint from phagefoundry.org team 📣 What are the phage-host interactions at a strain-level scale? Here Avery (Machine Learning) and Lucas (Experimental validation), share their new workflow to predict these interactions! I am very very grateful to work with these talented scientists!

Avery Noonan@averynoonan.bsky.social

We built GenoPHI: a machine learning workflow that predicts phage-host interactions at strain level. This could help rapidly select phages to treat drug-resistant bacterial infections or for microbiome engineering without exhaustive lab testing. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

biorxiv.orgbiorxiv.org

17 Nov 2025

What a nice paper!

Vivek Mutalik@vivekmutalik.bsky.social

#microsky The phenotypic landscape of the mycobacterial cell www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

biorxiv.orgbiorxiv.org

science.orgCryo-EM structure of bacteriophage Bas63 reveals structural conservation and diversity in the Felixounavirus genusCryo-EM of phage Bas63 reveals unique capsid and tail features, offering insights into Felixounavirus evolution and architecture.

15 Nov 2025

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... Beautiful paper describing the structure of E.coli bacteriophage Bas63!

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Nature Biotechnology

@natbiotech.nature.com

12 Aug 2025

Targeted delivery of diverse biomolecules with engineered bacterial nanosyringes - @zhangf.bsky.social go.nature.com/46OFcoj

go.nature.comTargeted delivery of diverse biomolecules with engineered bacterial nanosyringes - Nature BiotechnologyRibonucleoproteins, nucleic acids and proteins are delivered into target cell types with nanosyringes.

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muellershewrote.comLetter From a Federal WorkerThis is a heartbreaking letter that a federal worker has asked me to share with the public.

19 Feb 2025

This is really heartbreaking. So many, so many ppl suffering. 😢

Allison Gill@muellershewrote.com

NEW: A letter from an anonymous federal worker. Please read and share: www.muellershewrote.com/p/letter-fro...

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31 Jan 2025

NSF stopping salaries of postdocs and researchers is outrageous to say the least.

Flavien Maucourt reposted

usa.govFind and contact elected officials | USAGovUse USAGov’s Contact Your Elected Officials tool to get contact information for your members of Congress, the president, and state and local officials.

28 Jan 2025

If you are in the USA, & want to do something worthwhile, call your elected official. This is damn 🚨 urgent. Do it today.

Katie Mack@astrokatie.com

It is very easy to call your representatives’ offices. They have to log your calls and the call numbers are meaningful. You don’t even have to try to convince anyone; just call and tell them your concerns. They are there to represent you. Let them know what that means. www.usa.gov/elected-offi...

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Rebecca Tarnopol

@tarnopol.bsky.social

20 Dec 2024

Excited to share the major work of my dissertation, out now in @currentbiology.bsky.social! We use Drosophila genetics to dissect the evolution of phage-derived toxins that were horizontally transferred to insects and now function as potent anti-parasitoid defenses (1/n): tinyurl.com/2k9ypyxr

sciencedirect.comExperimental horizontal transfer of phage-derived genes to Drosophila confers innate immunity to parasitoidsMetazoan parasites have played a major role in shaping innate immunity in animals. Insect hosts and parasitoid wasps are excellent models for illumina…

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