Ryan Cook

ryancook94.bsky.social

09 May 2026 05:59

Been really fun to re-visit this with @cyanoney.bsky.social, Alise Ponsero, Slawomir Michniewski, @telatin.bsky.social, Thomas Sicheritz-Pontén, @evelienadri.bsky.social, and @milja001.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Ryan Cook

ryancook94.bsky.social

09 May 2026 05:59

Anti-defence systems are widespread on (mostly virulent) phages. Some of them co-occur. It's know that defence systems act synergistically and don't co-occur randomly in bacteria (Great work by @fnobrega.bsky.social lab)- maybe phages are similar for their anti-defence repertoires?

Ryan Cook

ryancook94.bsky.social

09 May 2026 05:58

A small number of clinically/agriculturally relevant genera dominate as isolation hosts (~50% of phages from only 6 genera). Escherichia has also displaced Mycobacterium as #1. Big jumps up for Vibrio and Klebsiella also. Strep decrease due to removal of satellite phages (cool but not autonomous!)

Ryan Cook

ryancook94.bsky.social

09 May 2026 05:58

In raw numbers, the number of complete phage genomes from cultured isolates has doubled but the amount of unique genomes has slightly decreased- we're starting to sequence the same phages again. People are also getting better at giving their phages unique names! (Please no more phages named P1)

bioRxiv Microbiology

biorxiv-microbiol.bsky.social

10 April 2026 18:08

Who Infects Whom? Exploiting Bacterial Minicells for Targeted Virome Enrichment and Phage-Host Interaction Analysis through an Integrated Metagenomic Approach https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.04.08.717211v1