Jose Bengoechea
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josebengoechea.bsky.social
Jose Bengoechea
@josebengoechea.bsky.social
1K followers 540 following 64 posts
Working on innate immunity & host-pathogen interactions. Finding new ways to treat infections by antibiotic resistant bacteria. All views are my own.
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josebengoechea.bsky.social
For anyone interested in doing a PhD at the interface of microbiology and immunology focusing on how AMR pathogens subvert host defenses...you may consider applying to our MRC LID DTP project in which we will explore how Klebsiella hijacks the immune checkpoint PD-L1 mrc-lid.lshtm.ac.uk/apply/
How to Apply - MRC London Intercollegiate Doctoral Training Partnership Studentships
MRC LID is open for application for 2026-27 PRE-APPLICATION STEPS 1. Find out more about...
mrc-lid.lshtm.ac.uk
November 10, 2025 at 8:48 AM
Reposted by Jose Bengoechea
magicmicrobe.bsky.social
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 Jose Bengoechea
hetanshah.bsky.social
Government has published one of those quiet but important documents that might get overlooked as it is not 'newsy'. The headline finding is that £1 of public R&D investment generates £8 in net economic benefits for the UK over the long term
www.gov.uk/government/p...
The value of public R&D
www.gov.uk
October 30, 2025 at 1:28 PM
Reposted by Jose Bengoechea
biobiiana.bsky.social
What makes PhD students happy? Good supervision www.nature.com/articles/d41...
What makes PhD students happy? Good supervision
Supervisors who invest in positive mentoring relationships with their PhD candidates also reap the benefits for their own research.
www.nature.com
October 23, 2025 at 9:33 AM
Reposted by Jose Bengoechea
plosbiology.org
Intrinsic resistance pathways & #ResistanceBreaking. Study shows that inhibiting efflux pumps & cell envelope biogenesis sensitizes #bacteria to #antibiotics, but rapid evolutionary recovery may limit long-term effectiveness of resistance-breaking strategies #AMR @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4huAtvo
Genome-wide screen to identify Escherichia coli gene knockouts hypersensitive to trimethoprim and chloramphenicol. Top left: Schematic showing the screening strategy for identifying hypersensitive gene knockouts from the Keio mutant library. All mutants were cultured in LB and LB supplemented with trimethoprim (TMP) and chloramphenicol (CMP) at their respective IC50s. Top right: Distribution of drug-susceptibilities of Keio mutants grown in indicated growth media obtained after normalizing the growth of each mutant to wild type (set to 1). Mean ± S.D. derived after fitting each distribution to a Gaussian function are shown. Bottom left: Analysis of gene functional categories for hypersensitive mutants compared with the frequency of genes in each category encoded by E. coli K-12 MG1655. Percentage of the total in each case is provided above each bar. Bottom right: Comparison of hypersensitive mutants identified in the trimethoprim and chloramphenicol screens shown as a Venn diagram. Representative genes from each set are named and gene names are colored by functional categories.
October 23, 2025 at 12:58 PM
Reposted by Jose Bengoechea
sergemostowylab.bsky.social
Enhanced virulence and stress tolerance are signatures of epidemiologically successful Shigella sonnei
@sydneylmiles.bsky.social @katholt.bsky.social
🙏to transformative collaborative effort

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
October 13, 2025 at 9:48 PM
Reposted by Jose Bengoechea
sanmillan.bsky.social
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 Jose Bengoechea
lshtm.bsky.social
#WHO report shows rising #antibiotic resistance in common bacteria

@katholt.bsky.social & @josebengoechea.bsky.social explain resistance worryingly high in #Klebsiella & E.coli as 1 in 6 lab-confirmed #bacterial infections in 2023 shown resistant to antibiotics.

www.lshtm.ac.uk/newsevents/n...
October 20, 2025 at 9:53 AM
Reposted by Jose Bengoechea
ilyasalav.bsky.social
My nose must be riddled with S. aureus then 🫠
September 22, 2025 at 5:16 PM
Reposted by Jose Bengoechea
nizet.bsky.social
𝘒𝘭𝘦𝘣𝘴𝘪𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘢 𝘱𝘯𝘦𝘶𝘮𝘰𝘯𝘪𝘢𝘦 is a Gram-negative, non-motile, straight rod-shaped bacterium that can divide rapidly, with some strains having a median doubling time of < 30 min, forming biofilms that interfere with both antibiotic and immune clearance
September 21, 2025 at 3:36 PM
Reposted by Jose Bengoechea
olayarendueles.bsky.social
What an incredible week for @julielebris.bsky.social with one published ms in @asm.org #mBio on #capsule phenotypic heterogeneity & a preprint on the modular evolution of a highly exchangeable locus ⏩️capsule 😅
All her hard work is paying off!
#ProudPI
#microsky @klebclub.bsky.social
Check her 🧵👇🏻
julielebris.bsky.social Julie Le Bris @julielebris.bsky.social · Sep 10
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 12, 2025 at 12:56 PM
josebengoechea.bsky.social
Cool work Lindsay, congrats.
halllab.bsky.social Hall Lab @halllab.bsky.social · Sep 11
Excited to share our @cp-cellhostmicrobe.bsky.social led by Magda showing how Bif has co-evolved with different animal hosts 🐒🐭🐷🐦

Key takeaways:
🔹 Host ancestry + diet shape Bif evolution
🔹 Mammals enriched for carb-busting enzymes
🔹 Untapped diversity in non-human hosts = new probiotic potential
cp-cellhostmicrobe.bsky.social Cell Host & Microbe @cp-cellhostmicrobe.bsky.social · Sep 11
Bifido adaptations across hosts

@halllab.bsky.social survey insects, reptiles, birds & mammals to uncover how Bifidobacterium adapts to hosts. Bifidobacterium & host exhibit strong co-phylogenetic associations, driven by vertical transmission & dietary selection
www.cell.com/cell-host-mi...
September 11, 2025 at 4:52 PM
Reposted by Jose Bengoechea
natmicrobiol.nature.com
#NewResearch

This study uses Salmonella strains genetically engineered to express minimal effector subsets and mass cytometry to characterise infection of the spleen, revealing bottlenecks overcome by these effectors

#MicroSky

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Single-cell analysis of genetically minimized Salmonella reveals effector gene cooperation in vivo - Nature Microbiology
A minimal effector subset enables Salmonella Typhimurium to overcome bottlenecks regulated by the early innate immune response and establish infection within a CD62L+ monocyte niche in the spleen.
www.nature.com
September 8, 2025 at 5:50 AM
Reposted by Jose Bengoechea
jessicamablair.bsky.social
A good way to think about institutional research culture!
rogerkline.bsky.social Roger Kline @rogerkline.bsky.social · Sep 1
Thanks for sharing this Vijaya Nath
September 1, 2025 at 7:57 AM
josebengoechea.bsky.social
Good opportunity here to work with a super talented new PI.
jwanford.bsky.social Joe Wanford @jwanford.bsky.social · Aug 26
🚨 Job alert 🚨

I’m recruiting two postdoctoral research associates to join my lab at KCL to study how #Klebsiella pneumoniae regulates virulence factor expression during infection! #klebclub

Mol Micro: tinyurl.com/mtrwtx5e

Infection: tinyurl.com/2s3u8ca2

Deadline: 21st September.
Postdoctoral Research Associate in Molecular Microbiology
www.kcl.ac.uk
August 26, 2025 at 3:11 PM
Reposted by Jose Bengoechea
wvschaik.bsky.social
Maybe I am being grumpy, but can people please stop using poorly curated databases of antibiotic resistance genes (I am looking at you, DeepARG) on shotgun metagenomic data and then present these results without any reflection on their validity, or shortcomings of databases?
August 20, 2025 at 10:27 AM
Reposted by Jose Bengoechea
asm.org
New in #JClinMicro! An optimized, streamlined nanopore-only workflow for epidemiologic analysis of bacterial pathogens, enabling outbreak analysis with performance comparable to that of Illumina short-read sequencing.
Get the details: asm.social/2wd
Schematic overview of benchmarking approach, highlighting the optimized pipeline.
July 29, 2025 at 4:32 PM
Reposted by Jose Bengoechea
asaflevylab.bsky.social
Several years of work with several great collaborators, that combined computational biology, molecular microbiology, biochemistry, structural biology and mycology assay culminated in today's publication on discovery of novel bacterial toxins:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Systematic discovery of antibacterial and antifungal bacterial toxins - Nature Microbiology
Genome sequence mining and computational analyses lead to the discovery and functional characterization of conserved bacterial toxins with activity against bacteria and fungi.
www.nature.com
October 22, 2024 at 5:37 PM
Reposted by Jose Bengoechea
ksbakes.bsky.social
There are half a million cases of invasive non-Typhoidal Salmonella (iNTS) every year and while you might know S. Typhimurim and Enteritidis, you may not have heard of S. Panama 💩 🩸 🧫 💊 Check out our latest in @lancetmicrobe.bsky.social doi.org/10.1016/j.la... and the 🧵 below to find out more 1/n
July 27, 2025 at 8:35 AM
Reposted by Jose Bengoechea
lshtm.bsky.social
Are you a physician, nurse, or pharmacist looking to specialise in travel medicine?✈️🌏

Gain the knowledge, practical tools & conceptual framework needed to deliver a modern, evidence-based travel health service with our expertly designed short course.

bit.ly/3Qy7Y0O
July 21, 2025 at 2:06 PM
Reposted by Jose Bengoechea
catrinm.bsky.social
I provided some comments about the aid cuts in the UK that’s affecting the Fleming Fund today: microbiologysociety.org/news/society...
Microbiology Society responds to UK aid cuts affecting global AMR programme
microbiologysociety.org
July 18, 2025 at 7:15 PM
Reposted by Jose Bengoechea
jcellsci.bsky.social
Journal of Cell Science is published by a not-for-profit charitable organisation (@biologists.bsky.social)
that exists to benefit science, not shareholders. We provide Travelling Fellowships, Training Grants, support for ECRs and more.
For details, visit: journals.biologists.com/jcs/pages/re...
Image showing three covers of Journal of Cell Science
July 9, 2025 at 3:25 PM
Reposted by Jose Bengoechea
lauraamike.bsky.social
It's seem like arginine is emerging as a major host cue. So we wrote an IAI minireview on how arginine levels vary between host tissues and affect microbial behavior.

The review is online today!
journals.asm.org/doi/epdf/10....

@brookeeryan3.bsky.social

#microsky
Known effects of arginine on Gram-positive and Gram-negative behavior
July 3, 2025 at 4:07 PM
Reposted by Jose Bengoechea
phagepasteur.bsky.social
🚨NEW PAPER ALERT!!!🚨 The BBH lab is proud to present the latest www.nature.com/articles/s41... from our collaboration with @joshuasweitz.bsky.social (now at UMaryland), evaluating the importance of alveolar macrophages (AM) for the efficacy of phage therapy against P. aeruginosa

Let's dig in (1/6)
Macrophage-induced reduction of bacteriophage density limits the efficacy of in vivo pulmonary phage therapy - Nature Communications
In vivo experiments and mathematical modelling in this work, show that alveolar macrophages lower phage densities and phage-bacteria contact rates, limiting the effectiveness of synergistic treatment ...
www.nature.com
July 2, 2025 at 1:15 PM
Reposted by Jose Bengoechea
jerorb.bsky.social
🚨🚨New paper out in @natcomms.nature.com!!

Come for the first large-scale analysis of plasmid copy number across species,
stay for one of the most intriguing results of my lab: universal scaling laws in plasmid biology! 📈🧬

👉 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Universal rules govern plasmid copy number - Nature Communications
Plasmids exhibit a broad range of sizes and copies per cell, and these two parameters appear to be negatively correlated. Here, Ramiro-Martínez et al. analyse the copy number of thousands of diverse b...
www.nature.com
July 2, 2025 at 11:08 AM