Romain Strock
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romainstrock.bsky.social
Romain Strock
@romainstrock.bsky.social
PhD student @ MRC LMS & Imperial College London. Evolution / bioinformatics & ML / microbiology. Current focus on conflicts between archaea and bacteria.
Pinned
This first-author publication is my… first! Archaea kill bacteria by targeting their Achilles’ heel: peptidoglycan. Big shoutout to @ahocher.bsky.social‬, @valeriesoo.bsky.social‬, Pauline Misson, @tobiaswarnecke.bsky.social‬ and MRC LMS Proteomics. A thread 🔽
journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...
Archaea produce peptidoglycan hydrolases that kill bacteria
Archaea regularly interact with bacteria but reports of archaea killing bacteria are very rare. This study shows that many archaea encode peptidoglycan hydrolases, which specifically target bacterial ...
journals.plos.org
Reposted by Romain Strock
Early Microbial Evolution

"The origin of life on Earth remains one of the greatest and most pervasive mysteries in science. We know the story in broad strokes: Around 4 billion years ago, simple chemical compounds gave rise to living cells, which later formed..."

🦠

asm.org/articles/202...
Early Microbial Evolution | ASM.org
How did life begin, and why does it matter? Scientists are tracing early microbial life—from LUCA to multicellularity—to unlock insights for biotech, climate science and even space exploration.
asm.org
November 3, 2025 at 12:48 PM
Reposted by Romain Strock
Alternate between predicting structure with AF3 and designing sequence with ProteinMPNN to generate proteins, including protein, small molecule and nucleic acid binders

@yehlincho.bsky.social @sokrypton.org

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
October 15, 2025 at 10:01 PM
Reposted by Romain Strock
Thrilled to see this work in its preprint form! A great collaboration with Jovana and Tung to explore the evolution and properties of the surprisingly versatile nucleotide binding domain of ParB.
October 11, 2025 at 1:02 PM
Reposted by Romain Strock
New preprint!

Ever wondered why only a fraction of genomes encode CRISPR immunity? 🧬 🦠

Turns out CRISPR is rarely beneficial against virulent phages, being most beneficial against those for which resistance mutations are rare!

An epic effort by Rosanna Wright

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Resistance mutation supply modulates the benefit of CRISPR immunity against virulent phages
Only a fraction of bacterial genomes encode CRISPR-Cas systems but the selective causes of this variation are unexplained. How naturally virulent bacteriophages (phages) select for CRISPR immunity has...
www.biorxiv.org
October 6, 2025 at 6:27 AM
Reposted by Romain Strock
hey bluesky 👋 visa hurdles mean I’m looking for opportunities outside the US. I’m a computational biologist (bacterial + phage genomics, postdoc in Koonin’s group @ NIH). I am interested in teaming up on funding apps. reach out if this resonates!
September 15, 2025 at 5:26 PM
Reposted by Romain Strock
Sometimes you meet absolutely incredible bioinfo-magicians.
It was a huge privilege when @shenwei356.bsky.social
joined our group for a year on an @embl.org sabbatical.
While here, he developed a new way of aligning to
millions of bacteria, called LexicMap 1/n
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Efficient sequence alignment against millions of prokaryotic genomes with LexicMap - Nature Biotechnology
LexicMap uses a fixed set of probes to efficiently query gene sequences for fast and low-memory alignment.
www.nature.com
September 10, 2025 at 9:12 AM
Reposted by Romain Strock
Please re-post:

Interested in chromatin and its evolution? Good news! There's still time to join us in beautiful Catalonia (9-12 Dec) to discuss eukaryotic, bacterial, archaeal, and viral chromatin and how it all hangs together meetings.embo.org/event/24-evo...

Abstract deadline: 30 September
EvoChromo: Evolutionary approaches to research in chromatin
Chromatin is the complex of DNA, RNA and protein that is found making up the chromosomes in eukaryotic cells. Chromatin is essential for proper genome function and is involved in chromosome segregati…
meetings.embo.org
September 8, 2025 at 11:14 AM
Reposted by Romain Strock
Preprint: De-novo design of proteins that inhibit bacterial defenses

Our approach allows silencing defense systems of choice. We show how this approach enables programming of “untransformable” bacteria, and how it can enhance phage therapy applications

Congrats Jeremy Garb!
tinyurl.com/Syttt
🧵
Synthetically designed anti-defense proteins overcome barriers to bacterial transformation and phage infection
Bacterial defense systems present considerable barriers to both phage infection and plasmid transformation. These systems target mobile genetic elements, limiting the efficacy of bacteriophage-based t...
www.biorxiv.org
September 2, 2025 at 10:48 AM
Reposted by Romain Strock
Please re-post: If you know (or are!) somebody who might fancy doing a PhD (Oct 2026 start) in my group @oxfordbiochemistry.bsky.social, working on chromatin evolution in prokaryotes (or other things we're interested in), please have a look at www.bioch.ox.ac.uk/supervisors-...
Supervisors and Projects
www.bioch.ox.ac.uk
September 1, 2025 at 9:27 AM
Reposted by Romain Strock
Do plasmids evolve faster 🐇, slower 🐢, or just like chromosomes 🧬?

In our new paper, we tackled this question using theory, simulations, bioinformatics, and experiments!

👇 Check out all the details in Paula’s thread!

Hint: 🐇 (most of the time)
July 22, 2025 at 3:05 PM
Reposted by Romain Strock
I was #TWiMAdjacent about the much missed Elio Schaechter. I tried to discuss an article later, but I was stressed for time. The first part about Elio is so worth your time, as is the paper I discussed, about how archaea make enzymes that break down the bacterial cell wall!

asm.org/podcasts/twi...
Missing the Company of Elio
Paying tribute to Elio Schaechter, former TWiM host, blogger, and microbiologist extraordinaire, and review of the finding that Archaea produce peptidoglycan hydrolases that kill bacteria - a form of ...
asm.org
August 30, 2025 at 4:37 AM
Reposted by Romain Strock
Awesome to see the transparent, systematic, and evidence-based approach behind the WHO Bacterial Priority Pathogens List 2024 out in the Lancet Infectious Diseases www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...
The WHO Bacterial Priority Pathogens List 2024: a prioritisation study to guide research, development, and public health strategies against antimicrobial resistance
The 2024 WHO BPPL is a key tool for prioritising research and development investments and informing global public health policies to combat AMR. Gram-negative bacteria and rifampicin-resistant M tuber...
www.thelancet.com
August 27, 2025 at 4:13 PM
Reposted by Romain Strock
I cannot fully put into words what publishing this Review has meant to me, so I leave you with how we closed the paper.

"The humble bacterium is still a relevant tool for the study of the underlying mechanisms that are conserved throughout life."

🧪🧫🧬📚
doi.org/10.1093/gene...
The nature of mutation: a legacy of bacterial genetics
Abstract. A central question in the fields of genetics and evolution was the nature and origin of spontaneous mutation. Bacterial genetic experiments throu
doi.org
August 25, 2025 at 4:48 PM
Reposted by Romain Strock
When we started sampling soil to isolate Bacilli and other bacterial species within @cemist.bsky.social, I did not expect that so many direct and indirect publications and numerous chapters in 6 PhD theses in my group will originate from those efforts

🧵 [1/n]
August 19, 2025 at 9:53 AM
Reposted by Romain Strock
"We show that unrelated proteins have a universal tendency towards convergent evolution of secondary and tertiary motifs, causing an excess of high-scoring FP alignment... previous methods routinely overestimate significance by up to six orders of magnitude."
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Protein structure alignment significance is often exaggerated
Machine learning has generated millions of high-quality predicted protein structures, creating a need for computationally efficient structure search algorithms and robust estimates of statistical sign...
www.biorxiv.org
August 17, 2025 at 10:53 PM
Reposted by Romain Strock
🚨New paper 🚨

Can protein language models help us fight viral outbreaks? Not yet. Here’s why 🧵👇
1/12
August 17, 2025 at 3:42 AM
Reposted by Romain Strock
📣 ABSTRACT DEADLINE EXTENDED UNTIL 18TH AUGUST!

Register here: register.oxfordabstracts.com/event/75604?...
Abstract submission: app.oxfordabstracts.com/stages/79029...
Are you an Early Career Researcher in bioinformatics? Then this symposium is for you 💡

Join us for a day of talks, networking and career discussions. Present your work to get fresh new ideas and the chance to win prizes 💸

Featuring @avsecz.bsky.social of Google DeepMind as our keynote speaker⚡️
August 15, 2025 at 1:22 PM
Reposted by Romain Strock
Archaea-on-bacteria action! @romainstrock.bsky.social @tobiaswarnecke.bsky.social &co show that many #archaea encode #peptidoglycan hydrolases, which specifically target #bacterial cell walls, experimentally confirming the killing capacity of 2 of these enzymes @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4lrJBBa
August 15, 2025 at 8:13 AM
This first-author publication is my… first! Archaea kill bacteria by targeting their Achilles’ heel: peptidoglycan. Big shoutout to @ahocher.bsky.social‬, @valeriesoo.bsky.social‬, Pauline Misson, @tobiaswarnecke.bsky.social‬ and MRC LMS Proteomics. A thread 🔽
journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...
Archaea produce peptidoglycan hydrolases that kill bacteria
Archaea regularly interact with bacteria but reports of archaea killing bacteria are very rare. This study shows that many archaea encode peptidoglycan hydrolases, which specifically target bacterial ...
journals.plos.org
August 15, 2025 at 11:19 AM
Reposted by Romain Strock
@romainstrock.bsky.social work is out!
Why should you care? Because it helps shift our view of archaea — from rare extremophiles to not-so-passive bystanders. Some archaea can also fend off bacteria.
Glad to be part of this cool project from @tobiaswarnecke.bsky.social. Opens lots of Questions.
August 15, 2025 at 10:40 AM
Reposted by Romain Strock
Very happy to see this work published + getting the recognition it deserves! Archaea are very cool + understudied organisms and we are only scratching the surface! Since the preprint last year, we (@romainstrock.bsky.social) have included more evidence of bacteria getting killed by archaeal arsenal.
August 15, 2025 at 9:12 AM
Reposted by Romain Strock
Archaea are often surrounded by bacteria. But is there ever active conflict between the two? Can archaea kill bacteria? If so, how do they do it?

Work by @romainstrock.bsky.social shows that some archaea can kill bacteria by secreting peptidoglycan hydrolases. journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...
Archaea produce peptidoglycan hydrolases that kill bacteria
Archaea regularly interact with bacteria but reports of archaea killing bacteria are very rare. This study shows that many archaea encode peptidoglycan hydrolases, which specifically target bacterial ...
journals.plos.org
August 14, 2025 at 6:50 PM
Reposted by Romain Strock
Really exciting and important tree microbiome paper published in @nature.com ‘A diverse and distinct microbiome inside living trees’ 👏 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
A diverse and distinct microbiome inside living trees - Nature
Microbiome analyses of living trees show that a single tree can host approximately one trillion bacteria, with microbial communities distinctly partitioned between heartwood and sapwood and with minim...
www.nature.com
August 11, 2025 at 5:20 PM