Cracking a Bacterial Mystery: Yansong Zhao Awarded Prize for New Discoveries

Experimental evolution meets giant viruses – new insights into how bacteria gain new genetic tools

Yansong Zhao, a doctoral researcher in the Department of Microbial Population Biology (supervised by Director Paul Rainey), received a Best Poster Prize at the recent EMBO Workshop “The Immune System of Bacteria” in Paris. His poster was one of four selected from a total of 144 entries.

Zhao’s research provides new information on how DNA moves between bacterial cells. It has long been known that DNA is frequently exchanged between bacteria, but in many cases, it is unclear how this happens. In his work, Zhao exposed a single bacterial strain to material filtered from garden compost. The bacterium acquired new "genomic islands" — segments of DNA that provide defence against viruses known as phages.

These islands, however, are unable to move between cells on their own. Zhao’s experiments showed that a “jumbo phage” — a virus with a very large genome — acts as a vehicle. The islands appear to sabotage the virus, redirecting it to package and transport their DNA instead of its own. This process may help explain how genetic elements spread across bacterial populations.

The awarded poster is titled “Experimental Capture of Genomic Islands Defines a Widespread Class of Elements Transduced by a Jumbo Bacteriophage”. The work builds on a preprint already available https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.08.29.610337v1 and includes contributions from Christina Vasileiou, Department of Microbial Population Biology at the MPI, in addition to the authors listed on the preprint.

The EMBO workshop took place in Paris and focused on the immune systems of bacteria. Poster prizes were supported by Eligo Bioscience, a biotechnology company closely connected to the Pasteur Institute.