LATEST NEWS: Our paper on bacterial foraging strategy published in Science

How do bacteria overcome nutrient scarcity in natural environments? In collaboration with leading microbiologists across ETH Zurich, EPFL, USC, and others, we reveal that contact-dependent antagonism — specifically, the type VI secretion system (T6SS) — enables bacteria to lyse neighboring cells and extract nutrients for growth. Using single-cell imaging and stable isotope–Raman microspectroscopy, we demonstrated that bacteria can survive starvation by slowly releasing and acquiring nutrients from lysed cells. This study proposes a new perspective on microbial interactions and their role in global biogeochemical cycles. Read more here.