Widespread antibiotic use in clinical medicine and the livestock industry has contributed to
the global spread of multidrug-resistant (MDR) bacterial pathogens, including Acinetobacter …

Background Double-stranded DNA bacteriophages (dsDNA phages) play pivotal roles in
structuring human gut microbiomes; yet, the gut virome is far from being fully characterized, …

CrAssphage is the most abundant human-associated virus and the founding member of a
large group of bacteriophages, discovered in animal-associated and environmental …

Recent advances in metagenomic sequencing have enabled discovery of diverse, distinct
microbes and viruses. Bacteriophages, the most abundant biological entity on Earth, evolve …

To spread, transposons must integrate into target sites without disruption of essential genes
while avoiding host defense systems. Tn7-like transposons employ multiple mechanisms for …

Transposition is a major mechanism of horizontal gene mobility in prokaryotes. However,
exploration of the genes mobilized by transposons (cargo) is hampered by the difficulty in …

Holobionts are assemblages of microbial symbionts and their macrobial host. As extant
representatives of some of the oldest macro-organisms, corals and algae are important for …

Temperate bacteriophages lyse or lysogenize host cells depending on various parameters of
infection, a key one being the ratio of the number of free viruses to the number of host cells. …

Background Diversity-generating retroelements (DGRs) are genetic cassettes that selectively
mutate target genes to produce hypervariable proteins. First characterized in Bordetella …

Background Bacteriophages encode genes that modify bacterial functions during infection.
The acquisition of phage-encoded virulence genes is a major mechanism for the rise of …