Alvaro San Millan
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sanmillan.bsky.social
Alvaro San Millan
@sanmillan.bsky.social
Plasmid biology, antimicrobial resistance plasmidlab.es
Reposted by Alvaro San Millan
So happy to share this! Bacteriocins were first discovered over 100 years ago, but what do they actually do? We look at >1000 bacteriocin plasmids and find links to virulence and antimicrobial resistance, and frequent bacteriocin sharing in Enterobacteriaceae.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Bacterial warfare is associated with virulence and antimicrobial resistance - Nature Communications
Bacteria employ a range of competition systems that deliver toxins to inhibit competing strains. This study shows that these systems are particularly important for the ecology of virulent and antibiot...
www.nature.com
November 5, 2025 at 7:32 AM
Reposted by Alvaro San Millan
New preprint out! 📣🚨

We found that loss-of-function mutations in the carbapenem entry porin OprD of Pseudomonas aeruginosa do more than confer #AntibioticResistance: they reshape the bacterial membrane and interaction with the host, enhancing epithelial colonization capacity 🦠

#Microsky
Carbapenem-resistance oprD mutations reshape Pseudomonas aeruginosa host-pathogen interactions during infection https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.24.684370v1
October 25, 2025 at 12:29 PM
Reposted by Alvaro San Millan
One of the most exciting works of my career, years in the making. We used high-throughput precision genome editing to test the fitness effects of thousands of natural variants. Our findings challenge the long-held assumption that common variants are inconsequential.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Massively parallel interrogation of the fitness of natural variants in ancient signaling pathways reveals pervasive local adaptation
The nature of standing genetic variation remains a central debate in population genetics, with differing perspectives on whether common variants are almost always neutral as suggested by neutral and n...
www.biorxiv.org
October 22, 2025 at 5:46 PM
Reposted by Alvaro San Millan
✨New paper from @jrpenades.bsky.social and @sanmillan.bsky.social labs. We found that non-conjugative plasmids 🧬 tend to have low mobility to promote functional diversity ⚔️💊 in bacterial communities🦠🦠.
Brilliant work by Akshay, @asantoslopez.bsky.social and others.

www.cell.com/cell-reports...
Non-conjugative plasmids limit their mobility to persist in nature
Sabnis et al. explain why non-conjugative plasmids move at a low rate in nature. While increased mobility can easily evolve by incorporating phage DNA into plasmids, this is disadvantageous because it...
www.cell.com
October 22, 2025 at 1:37 PM
New paper with my (amazing) friend and mentor @jrpenades.bsky.social
Really looking forward to see what plasmid aficionados think of this one!!
With @asantoslopez.bsky.social @wfigueroac3.bsky.social Akshay Sabins and others
www.cell.com/cell-reports...
Non-conjugative plasmids limit their mobility to persist in nature
Sabnis et al. explain why non-conjugative plasmids move at a low rate in nature. While increased mobility can easily evolve by incorporating phage DNA into plasmids, this is disadvantageous because it...
www.cell.com
October 22, 2025 at 1:12 PM
Reposted by Alvaro San Millan
New paper just out from #OurImperial @tcostalab.bsky.social

The assembly of a hybrid type IV secretion system by a Crohn’s disease-associated Escherichia coli strain.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
The assembly of a hybrid type IV secretion system by a Crohn’s disease-associated Escherichia coli strain - Nature Communications
Adherent-invasive strains of E. coli are commonly isolated from patients with Crohn’s disease. Here, the authors show that an AIEC harbours a hybrid Type IV secretion system (T4SS) that mediates pilin...
www.nature.com
October 20, 2025 at 6:38 PM
Reposted by Alvaro San Millan
DYK most P. aeruginosa carry filamentous phage(s) that don't need to kill the cell to reproduce?

We 👉🏻@nanamikubota.bsky.social show that these Pf phages can go ROGUE.

"Filamentous cheater phages drive bacterial and phage populations to lower fitness"

🔗 authors.elsevier.com/c/1lt5I3QW8S...
October 2, 2025 at 3:55 PM
Reposted by Alvaro San Millan
Nuestro compañero Álvaro San Millán (@sanmillan.bsky.social), investigador en el #CNB_CSIC ha recibido el Premio María Moliner, que reconoce la labor de quienes se inician en la dirección de tesis doctorales, destacando su compromiso en el acompañamiento del talento emergente.

¡Enhorabuena!👏
csic.es CSIC @csic.es · Oct 9
🏆 El #CSIC entrega las Medallas Margarita Salas, Premios Tesis Relevante y Premios María Moliner   

🔬 Con estos galardones, la institución reafirma su compromiso con la excelencia investigadora, el aprendizaje y la formación de nuevas generaciones

👉 https://f.mtr.cool/zledhiknbb
October 9, 2025 at 1:21 PM
Reposted by Alvaro San Millan
New pre-print www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Plasmid-dependent phage (PDPs) are ubiquitous, but the selective pressures that they impose on plasmids are not well understood. Project led by Daniel Cazares in collaboration with @brockhurstlab.bsky.social!
#phagesky#microsky
Trade-offs between phage resistance and conjugative ability shape the ecological and evolutionary response of a multidrug resistance plasmid to plasmid-dependent phage
Phage therapy is a promising alternative to antibiotics to treat multidrug resistant infections. Plasmid dependent phages (PDPs) are particularly attractive as therapeutics because they can both kill ...
www.biorxiv.org
October 9, 2025 at 10:07 AM
Reposted by Alvaro San Millan
El proyecto "Descubrir actividades de resistencia antimicrobiana más allá de la resistencia" de
@sanmillan.bsky.social (#CNB, @csic.es) y @jaescudero.bsky.social (@ucm.es) recibe una ayuda del Programa #Fundamentos de Fundación BBVA.

ℹ️Lee la noticia aquí👇

bit.ly/48cvkp1
October 2, 2025 at 11:32 AM
Reposted by Alvaro San Millan
Delighted to see our paper studying the evolution of plasmids over the last 100 years, now out! Years of work by Adrian Cazares, also Nick Thomson @sangerinstitute.bsky.social - this version much improved over the preprint. Final version should be open access, apols.
Thread 1/n
September 25, 2025 at 9:29 PM
Reposted by Alvaro San Millan
Recent paper from the lab studying predictors of phage cocktail efficacy against complex clinical Pseudomonas populations

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/epdf/10....

Led by Rosanna Wright with extraordinary MSc (PhD) student Maisie Czernuska
Bacteria–phage infection network structure and genomic defence system content predict efficacy of a phage therapy cocktail against Pseudomonas aeruginosa from chronic lung infections
royalsocietypublishing.org
September 25, 2025 at 1:55 PM
Reposted by Alvaro San Millan
New ERC funded computational postdoc position in my lab! We are looking for someone who will study the genomics of bacterial evolution using samples from experimental evolution and clinical trials. Lots of opportunities for interesting and fun collaboration!
my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru...
Job Details
my.corehr.com
September 25, 2025 at 2:31 PM
Reposted by Alvaro San Millan
Excited to share our new Perspective in npj Antimicrobials & Resistance:

"Towards the integration of antibiotic resistance gene mobility into environmental surveillance and risk assessment.”

www.nature.com/articles/s44...

1/3

#AMR #microsky
Towards the integration of antibiotic resistance gene mobility into environmental surveillance and risk assessment - npj Antimicrobials and Resistance
npj Antimicrobials and Resistance - Towards the integration of antibiotic resistance gene mobility into environmental surveillance and risk assessment
www.nature.com
September 16, 2025 at 12:26 PM
Reposted by Alvaro San Millan
How do loci for bacterial capsules (Klebsiella) manage to get swapped around despite their outstanding phenotypes? They just plug and play, having little impact on the rest of the genome. Kudos to @julielebris.bsky.social , check her thread below
How complex functions, with important physiological and evolutionary impacts get repeatedly and efficiently transferred across genomes?
That’s what we explored using one of the fastest-evolving loci in Bacteria: the capsule locus.
The paper: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Thread👇
Serotype swapping in Klebsiella spp. by plug-and-play
Understanding how complex, multi-gene systems evolve and function across genetic backgrounds is a central question in molecular evolution. While such systems often impose costs through epistatic inter...
www.biorxiv.org
September 11, 2025 at 6:18 AM
Reposted by Alvaro San Millan
Continuing work on our exhibition #microbes 🎨
Honored by a talk from Prof. Itzik Hen, director of The Institute for Advanced Studies Jerusalem and a researcher, followed by a food tour at Mahane Yehuda Market, and a recital by Ido Grinshpan and Shelly Jonathan.🎻
Stay tuned for #exhibition details! 🦠
September 11, 2025 at 10:19 AM
Reposted by Alvaro San Millan
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 Alvaro San Millan
Check out @julielebris.bsky.social’s thread on our latest manuscript describing phenotypic heterogeneity in capsule production in Klebsiella & Acinetobacter @klebclub.bsky.social

This work started when I was still in @pasteur.fr & got finished in @cbitoulouse.bsky.social
#microsky #phagesky
September 9, 2025 at 5:11 AM
Reposted by Alvaro San Millan
Thrilled to share our two latest papers with the @tcostalab.bsky.social
lab! In the first, we uncover a new mechanism of satellite transfer: cf-PICIs hijack tails from diverse phages to spread across species.
@imperialcollegeldn.bsky.social
www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...
Chimeric infective particles expand species boundaries in phage-inducible chromosomal island mobilization
Capsid-forming PICIs (cf-PICIs) produce their own capsids and exploit phage tails from unrelated species to transfer their DNA across bacterial hosts. This tail piracy enables broad dissemination and ...
www.cell.com
September 9, 2025 at 5:05 PM
Reposted by Alvaro San Millan
Our second paper with @tcostalab.bsky.social and GoogleDeepMind
reports our experience with Google’s co-scientist: remarkably, the AI independently recapitulated our experimental discovery on cf-PICIs, showcasing AI’s potential to accelerate biology.
www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...
AI mirrors experimental science to uncover a mechanism of gene transfer crucial to bacterial evolution
By solving a previously unsolved biological question, the AI co-scientist predicted a complex mechanism of gene transfer and generated hypotheses that opened new research directions, illustrating AI's...
www.cell.com
September 9, 2025 at 5:23 PM
Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) could cause 10 million deaths by 2050. At PLAS-FIGHTER, we are working to change this!
🔎 We study how plasmids spread resistance to open up new avenues for future containment and diagnostic strategies.
Find out more 👇
plasmidlab.es/project/

#AntibioticResistance
Project - Plasmidlab
PLAS-FIGHTER Exploiting plasmid-bacteria interactions to fight
plasmidlab.es
September 8, 2025 at 8:41 AM
Reposted by Alvaro San Millan
For anyone who has used pling for comparing plasmids using rearrangement distances ("how many structural events apart are these plasmids"), here's how to tweak parameters, and integrate it with typing info, and the host phylogeny
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
github.com/iqbal-lab-or...
Clustering of plasmid genomes for genomic epidemiology by using rearrangement distances, with pling
Integration of plasmids into genomic epidemiology is challenging, because there are no clearly defined evolving-units (equivalent to species), and because plasmids appear to evolve as much by structur...
www.biorxiv.org
September 7, 2025 at 2:56 PM
Reposted by Alvaro San Millan
Lots of heterogeneity in capsule production in Klebsiella and Acinetobacter. Given the pleiotropic impact of capsules, this provides opportunities for multiple types of phenotypical heterogeneity. Check @julielebris.bsky.social thread on our recent publication.
September 7, 2025 at 5:17 PM
Reposted by Alvaro San Millan
El grupo de Álvaro San Millán revela el coste de mantener la resistencia en enterobacterias

El trabajo traza un mapa funcional del plásmido pOXA-48, con potencial para guiar nuevas terapias contra resistencias

bit.ly/4p0fCmY

@sanmillan.bsky.social @aliciapcv.bsky.social @jorgesastred.bsky.social
Identifican el coste fisiológico de mantener la resistencia microbiana en enterobacterias - CNB
bit.ly
August 27, 2025 at 8:32 AM