Philipp Engel

Philipp Engel

@pengellab.bsky.social

Microbiologist at UNIL Switzerland, interested in Microbiota-host interactions, symbiosis, evolution and genomics, and social bees engelbeelab.com

1.3K followers609 following46 posts

Philipp Engel reposted

Faculté de biologie et de médecine
@fbm-unil.bsky.social

Congratulations @acabirol.bsky.social from @pengellab.bsky.social @dmf-unil.bsky.social @fbm-unil.bsky.social @unil.bsky.social on this new publication @pnas.org 👏

Amélie Cabirol@acabirol.bsky.social

Really happy to see our paper finally published in PNAS 🎉 We used honey bees to study how gut microbiota shape cognition and found that learning benefits only appear when the full microbial community is present — not with individual bacterial species alone. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Philipp Engel reposted

Amélie Cabirol
@acabirol.bsky.social

Really happy to see our paper finally published in PNAS 🎉 We used honey bees to study how gut microbiota shape cognition and found that learning benefits only appear when the full microbial community is present — not with individual bacterial species alone. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Philipp Engel reposted

Mizrahi Lab
@mizrahilab.bsky.social

New study on honeybee gut microbiota! It shows how priority effects allow first-arriving strains to dominate their niche, creating unique microbial profiles even in identical environments. Cool Study! @aiswarya.bsky.social, @pengellab.bsky.social, @dmf-unil.bsky.social doi.org/10.1093/isme...

doi.orgPriority effects drive strain-level community composition of honeybee gut microbiotaAbstract. Gut microbial communities often differ at the strain level among individual hosts, but the mechanisms driving this variation remain poorly unders

Philipp Engel reposted

Faculté de biologie et de médecine
@fbm-unil.bsky.social

🦠 Who gets there first... wins? 🐝 A new study on #honeybee #gut #microbiota shows that microbiome assembly isn’t just about who is present, but when they arrive. Published by @aiswarya.bsky.social @pengellab.bsky.social @dmf-unil.bsky.social 👉 Read the paper: academic.oup.com/ismej/advanc...

academic.oup.comPriority effects drive strain-level community composition of honeybee gut microbiotaAbstract. Gut microbial communities often differ at the strain level among individual hosts, but the mechanisms driving this variation remain poorly unders

Philipp Engel reposted

Yolanda Schaerli
@yschaerli.bsky.social

New preprint! 🐝 We engineered a bacterial biosensor to reveal micron-scale arabinose gradients in the honeybee gut. Congratulations to Audam and all co-authors. Great collaboration with @pengellab.bsky.social as part of the NCCR Microbiomes at @fbm-unil.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

biorxiv.orgEngineered symbiont biosensor maps micron-scale sugar gradients in the honeybee gutThe honeybee gut microbiota plays a key role in shaping host health and susceptibility to disease. Yet, the nutrient environment it experiences within the gut remains poorly characterized. In particul...
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Philipp Engel
@pengellab.bsky.social

Result? Firstcomer strains dominated almost every time, indicating strong priority effects at the strain level. When we removed the firstcomer strain (“dropout” experiments), latecomers only partly took over, meaning both within-species and between-species interactions matter.

Philipp Engel
@pengellab.bsky.social

Bottom line: priority effects strongly shape how gut communities form at the strain level in bees. This matters for understanding microbiome assembly… and for designing better probiotic strategies in beekeeping.

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Philipp Engel
@pengellab.bsky.social

We asked whether these priority effects also happen within species, where different bacterial strains compete for the same niche. If so, even similar environments could end up with very different microbial communities.

Philipp Engel
@pengellab.bsky.social

Honeybees are perfect for this 🐝: their gut microbiota has the same core species, but each bee carries different strains. We gave microbiota-depleted bees two microbial communities with the same 12 species but different strains, added in different orders.

Philipp Engel
@pengellab.bsky.social

Gut microbes can vary a lot at the strain level between individuals, but we still don’t fully understand why. One big suspect: priority effects ⌛ — basically “first come, first served” in microbial colonization.

Philipp Engel
@pengellab.bsky.social

Our findings show that honeybees offer a powerful model to study eco-evolutionary phage–bacteria dynamics. We now want to establish the directionality of these correlation patterns and probe both bottom-up and top-down regulatory mechanisms in the assembly of these gut communities. Stay tuned. 🦠🔄🐝

Philipp Engel
@pengellab.bsky.social

The network showed a highly modular structure, with nested phage–bacteria interactions within modules, a hallmark of coevolution and fine-tuned host–phage associations. Modules mostly aligned with genus-level bacterial diversity, suggesting phages interact across species but stay within genera.

Philipp Engel
@pengellab.bsky.social

Viral and bacterial diversity were correlated, especially at the strain level and within the interaction network. This emphasizes that scale and resolution matter for detecting such correlations and may explain why past studies found mixed results.

Philipp Engel
@pengellab.bsky.social

Malick managed to carry out paired metagenome sequencing of the viral particle fraction and the bacterial/host fraction of 49 individual honeybees. He then reconstructed the phage–bacteria interaction network using CRISPR spacer matches and genome homology, mapping who infects whom in the bee gut. 🧬

Philipp Engel
@pengellab.bsky.social

It's widely accepted that bee gut bacteria co-diversified with their hosts, but this hasn't been tested, aside from a study on bumblebees (10.1111/mec.12209). Using a standard statistical framework, we found weak co-speciation signals & much less than reported for mammalian gut symbionts 🦍🐭👫🦠.

Philipp Engel
@pengellab.bsky.social

Unfortunately, we couldn't fully convince the reviewers/editors on this point, leading to a lengthy review process and ultimately a rather generic published title. We encourage you to read the bioRxiv preprint (10.1101/2024.09.11.612390) and the review documents shared with the final version.📝

Philipp Engel
@pengellab.bsky.social

Microbial communities were mostly host-specific, but not entirely. We found both specialist and generalist bacteria, even within the same bacterial genera. Interestingly, some generalists appeared host-specific only at the strain level, hinting at recent host switches.

Philipp Engel
@pengellab.bsky.social

One of the biggest surprises? We found little evidence for co-speciation between hosts and their gut symbionts. Instead, we observed a dynamic pattern of symbiont gains, losses & replacements, leading to functional differences between host species. We see this as the paper's most important message 👇

Philipp Engel
@pengellab.bsky.social

We recovered thousands of metagenome-assembled bacterial genomes from these bees' metagenomes, uncovering surprising patterns in host–microbe relationships 🦠. We identified several novel bacterial species, expanding the known diversity of gut microbes in honeybees.... 🐝

Philipp Engel
@pengellab.bsky.social

Notably, the giant honeybee (Apis dorsata) hosted unique microbial taxa not found in the other species. Among them: Dysgonomonas species with a large set of pectin-degrading genes, suggesting a key role in pollen digestion. 🦠🏵️

Philipp Engel reposted

Benjamin Wolfe
@benwolfe.bsky.social

Such a delight to share our work on the evolution of a cheese rind fungus in @currentbiology.bsky.social. This is the fantastic PhD work of @nicolasleonlouw.bsky.social and resulted from amazing collaborations, a wedding proposal(!), an undergrad course, & more! 🧵 www.cell.com/current-biol...

cell.comLong-term monitoring of a North American cheese cave reveals mechanisms and consequences of fungal adaptationUsing a unique longitudinal sampling approach, Louw et al. demonstrate how a cheese-associated Penicillium population has adapted in an artisan cheese production facility in Vermont, USA. Adaptation i...

Philipp Engel reposted

Mark A. Hanson
@hansonmark.bsky.social

I am hiring! PhD studentship available through the SWbio DTP. The interested student will investigate the evolution of innate immune signalling in a model species group. Infection biology & #Drosophila genetics combined! #ImmunoSky #AcademicSky More info: mahansonresearch.weebly.com/blog/phd-stu...

mahansonresearch.weebly.comPhD studentship! Deadline Dec 11th 2024SWbio application link: https://www.swbio.ac.uk/biomolecular-and-biophysical-studies/ For inquiries, please email: m.hanson@exeter.ac.uk Based in: University of Exeter, Penryn, Cornwall, UK....

Philipp Engel reposted

Jack A Gilbert
@gilbertjacka.bsky.social

CALL TO ACTION: By publishing this Editorial concurrently across journals, we are demanding immediate, tangible steps that harness the power of microbiology and the expertise of researchers and policymakers to safeguard the planet for future generations. doi.org/10.1128/msys...

doi.orgMicrobial solutions must be deployed against climate catastrophe | mSystemsThis paper is a call to action. By publishing concurrently across journals like an emergency bulletin, we are not merely making a plea for awareness about climate change. Instead, we are demanding imm...

Philipp Engel reposted

Yolanda Schaerli
@yschaerli.bsky.social

Very happy to see this published! 🤩Congratulations to Audam and all co-authors. This is the result of a very nice collaboration with the @pengellab.bsky.social as part of the NCCR Microbiomes.

Yolanda Schaerli@yschaerli.bsky.social

#PLOSBiology: An engineered bacterial symbiont allows noninvasive biosensing of the honey bee gut environment dx.plos.org/10.1371/jour...

dx.plos.orgAn engineered bacterial symbiont allows noninvasive biosensing of the honey bee gut environmentThe honey bee is a powerful model system to probe host-gut microbiota interactions. This study describes the genetic engineering of a native bacterial symbiont of the honey bee to non-invasively sense...

Philipp Engel reposted

Alejandro Manzano Marín
@amanzanom.bsky.social

#SymbNET International Conference on Host-Microbe #Symbiosis. June 10 - 13, 2024. Olhão, Portugal igc.idloom.events/symbnet-conf... #SymbioSky

igc.idloom.eventsSymbNET International Conference on Host-Microbe SymbiosisSymbNET International Conference on Host-Microbe Symbiosis Olhão, Portugal   About Hosts and microbes form long-term symbiotic interactions that shape their biology at multiple levels, from physiology...
Philipp Engel
@pengellab.bsky.social

Don't miss this opportunity! Few days left to apply to the Tenure-track assistant professor position in our Department at the University of Lausanne and with the NCCR Microbiomes. Topics: microbial interactions, microbiome research, microbial symbiosis (...) Deadline: Jan 31! tinyurl.com/4k2mevax

Philipp Engel@pengellab.bsky.social

Our Department at University of Lausanne is recruiting a tenure-track Assist. Prof. on microbial interactions linked to the nccr-microbiomes.ch Don't miss this opportunity to join a friendly, dynamic department in a city with hard-to-beat quality of life. Apply tinyurl.com/4k2mevax by Jan 31! 🧪

Philipp Engel
@pengellab.bsky.social

Finally published! We show that host metabolites facilitate gutcolonization of a symbiont of social bees. Huge congrats to co-lead authors @andrewhq9.bsky.social & Yassine El Chazli. Super collabo with NanoSIMS expert Anders Meibom EPFL and our Electron Microscopy Facility FBM_UNIL 🐝 🧪

nature.comHost-derived organic acids enable gut colonization of the honey bee symbiont Snodgrassella alvi - Na...Comparative metabolomics and NanoSIMs reveal that the honey bee symbiont Snodgrassella alvi uses host-derived metabolites to colonize the gut, indicating adaptation to a specific metabolic niche in it...
Philipp Engel
@pengellab.bsky.social

We have a ‘new’ preprint spearheaded by @joanitoliberti.bsky.social It is not an easy one to get pass the editorial desk of journals, may be because we challenge previous findings. However, IMO it is an important contribution to our field & will help improving future gnotobiotic bee experiments 👇🧪

Joanito Liberti@joanitoliberti.bsky.social

🐝 New preprint on the link between the gut microbiota, behavior and physiology in honeybees! 🧠🍯 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Follow the 🧵…