Megan Bergkessel

Incredibly excited about our latest work on R-bodies, 5+ years in the making! These coiled protein ribbons extend into ~10 µm needles in a pH-dependent manner & we caught them springing open inside amoebae after P. aeruginosa gets eaten. (animation: Jegg Yoon)🧵1/2 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Congratulations to the authors on this very comprehensive study of protein turnover during starvation in E. coli! Definitely worth a read if you care about bacteria living outside of steady state exponential growth (and you should!)

Here's Katie Noble, the winner of 2026's Early Career Microbiologist of the Year prize, talking after her win on Tuesday🏆 We agree with Katie that all the finalists' talks were exceptional and a massive well done to everyone involved!

Are you a motivated researcher interested in bacteria-host interactions? We have postdoc position available in my lab to join our Wellcome Trust funded collaborative team. We will study the role and regulation of the enigmatic sphingolipids in E. coli. Please share. www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DSX115/r...

Congrats on this interesting work!

Postdoc opportunity in my group! Please share! 🔁 Investigate the epigenetic mechanisms underlying stress memory in plants 🧬🌱 Looking for someone excited about computational genomics + plant molecular biology. 📍 Dundee, Scotland | 3 years 📅 Apply by 21 Sept www.dundee.ac.uk/work-for-us/...

New in JB: Authors: Meyer, Bergkessel and DePas link antibiotic resistance the formation of biofilms by Mycobacterium smegmatis. journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/... @asm.org #JBacteriol @microsky.bsky.social

Pseudomonas.com has been dealing with heavy AI bot activity, which has negatively impacted site uptime and speed in serving your requests. This is a common problem for many sites nowadays. We apologize for the inconvenience to researchers while we address these issues.

Latest research from the lab out now. We examined the role and expression of fimbriae during UPEC bloodstream infection. A real team effort and brilliant collaboration with Mark Schembri’s lab in Brisbane. Thanks to the MRC and BBSRC for supporting our research @ukri.org

Tvp complexes support formation of the VgrG-PAAR spike during Type VI secretion system assembly Sarah Coulthurst and colleagues link.springer.com/article/10.1...

We have a PhD studentship open! (UK only sadly) but if you are or know a student keen to work on some *really* weird mycobacterial enzymes then get in touch! #glycotime Advert below www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Want to research the basis of how drug resistant bacteria interact with human immune cells? Fully funded 4-year PhD position available (UK home students). Come and join our amazing interdisciplinary team at the intersection of microbiology, immunity, metabolism and the clinic! Please spread the word

🌱 We’re excited to launch the BBSRC-funded UK Plant Epigenetics Network (UK-PEN) with our inaugural workshop (free!): “Plant Epigenetics: From Model to Crop Species” 📅 11–12 June 2026 📍 Uni of Dundee (hybrid) We look forward to welcoming you! Feel free to repost to help us reach the community

How much protein diversity can Life on Earth actually generate? With DIAMOND DeepClust, we show how billions of proteins across the tree of life can be clustered at low-identity for downstream analytics tasks. 📚Paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41... 💻Code: github.com/bbuchfink/di...

Two post-doctoral positions open in our lab. We're looking for people with expertise in molecular microbiology and/or genome-scale tools. Initially 3 yrs, posts could be extended for upto 8 yrs. If you'd like to know more about us take a look at www.graingerlab.com www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DQY475/r...

Here’s the latest preprint from my work on evolved resistance to Type VI Secretion system (T6SS) weaponry, funded by a @wellcometrust.bsky.social Sir Henry Wellcome Fellowship. So happy to see this out! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Tvp complexes support formation of the VgrG-PAAR spike during Type VI secretion system assembly https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.23.707444v1

Congratulations to MD-PhD student, Amanda Velez and all co-authors on our new PNAS paper describing how the innate immune protein calprotectin incapacitates autolysins, inducing tolerance to B-lactam antibiotics. A fun collaboration with Thomas Kehl-Fie. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Congratulations to Sean Yu-Hao Wang, Will DePas, @catarmbruster.bsky.social and colleagues on their use of experimental evolution to identify regulators of Mycobacterium abscessus biofilm production! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Regulatory Rewiring Drives Intraspecies Competition in Bacillus subtilis bioRxiv from @bacteriacities.bsky.social #competition #rapP #comP www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Identification of Previously Unknown DNA-Binding Proteins Using DNA Affinity/Pull-Down Methods Followed by Mass Spectrometry Jutras, Babb, Jusufovic, Krusenstjerna, Saylor, Verma, and Stevenson Current Protocols 2025, 5:e70264 doi: 10.1002/cpz1.70264 #MicroSky

🚨Preprint alert - this is a big one! We transfer the revolutionary power of TnSeq to bacteriophages. Our HIDEN-SEQ links the "dark matter" genes of your favorite phage to any selectable phenotype, guiding the path from fun observations to molecular mechanisms. A thread 1/8

An Rhs effector uses distinct target cell functions to intoxicate bacterial and fungal competitors https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.28.685041v1

Independent research fellowships leading to tenured positions at the John Innes Centre. Repost = nice. Thank you very much!!!

New preprint from the lab! @findunmun1.bsky.social @chemsley.bsky.social We looked at new protein synthesis and genetic fitness during starvation in P. aeruginosa. Resources are dynamically redistributed to support ongoing activity, even over days of total starvation: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

yes, the MMBs studied by george schaible and roland hatzenpichler are fascinating 𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗺𝘂𝗹𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗲𝗹𝗹𝘂𝗹𝗮𝗿 bacteria 🤩 STC had mentioned them first in 2007 > schaechter.asmblog.org/schaechter/2... and recently in > schaechter.asmblog.org/schaechter/2... #MicroSky

In @molecularmicro.bsky.social: two special issues on Prokaryotic Chromosome Organization. Many excellent contributions, including a vision article: 'Future directions of the Prokaryotic Chromosome Field', outcome of BioPhyChrom 2023 @biophychrom.bsky.social onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Polyphosphate: The “Dark Matter” of Bacterial Chromatin Structure onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... #jcampubs

www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour...

Congrats to Findlay and many thanks to examiners Dan Neill and Martin Welch for their work on a successful viva today! Findlay has worked so hard and accomplished so much while blazing the trail as the first PhD student in the lab :)

Together with @frimanscience.bsky.social and our Chinese colleagues, we have worked out how to predict (i) siderophore molecular structures www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... and (ii) siderophore interaction networks in communities www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... from sequence data!