Many thanks to all those involved, including Jeffrey Liang, who stayed in our lab for several months, our own Charles Bernard and, of course, @fredoleroux.bsky.social and the usual suspects @agencerecherche.bsky.social @erc.europa.eu @cnrsbiologie.bsky.social @pasteur.fr @umontreal.ca etc

And thank you so much Pauline!!! It was very cool to see you again with other 'old' conference friends, looking forward to see you again @ Roscoff 2026/Monod conference/virus evolution ;-)?

and here is the link for the program: event.fourwaves.com/fr/scm-csm20...

And I've written a few reviews on the subject over the years, but this one is pretty short, so why not start there ;)

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Congratulation Mélanie, so cool story on phage defense and pathogen evolution in real life!

Have also a look at our back-to-back study for mobile integrons by Nicolas Kieffer from @jaescudero.bsky.social group !
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
+ a similar story in V. parahaemolyticus by @landongetz.bsky.social from @themaxwelllab.bsky.social
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

An enormous thanks for the great co-first author @eloilittner.bsky.social and for our supervisors @celineloot.bsky.social @epcrocha.bsky.social @amazeld.bsky.social @fredoleroux.bsky.social. Many thanks to all co-authors !!

On the bioinformatic side, eloilittner.bsky.social found a diverse arsenal of anti-phage defenses in SCIs. Strikingly, systems in integrons are always compact (< 3 genes), and smaller than their homologs outside integrons (likely due to cassette size constraints)

The integron of our favorite model Vibrio cholerae was mostly “dark matter” as most cassettes had no known role. We found this intriguing and cloned 88 cassettes, testing them for phage resistance. We found 16 defensive cassettes and named the systems after gallic mythology