TWiM explains two strategies for bacterial competition for resources: by laying down a slippery lipid and pushing away competitors, or by breaking open cells with a spike, liberating essential nutrients. Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Michael Schmidt,…

A highly reduced TWiM team presents a study of the use of phage diversity in cell-free DNA to identify bacterial pathogens in human sepsis cases, and the evolution, persistence, and host adaptation of a gonococcal antimicrobial resistance plasmid that emerged in the pre-antibiotic era.

The TWiM team reviews the movie Jezebel, played against the background of the yellow fever epidemic of 1853 in New Orleans, and prokaryotic viperins, ancestors of the eukaryotic enzymes that synthesize antiviral molecules.