Phage homing endonuclease amplifies anti-defense genes to evade bacterial immunity - Nature Communications Phages employ diverse counter-defense strategies to overcome bacterial immune systems. Here, the authors reveal that the phage homing nuclease SegB facilitates immune evasion by promoting the segmenta...

Happy to share our new work on how phages escape bacterial immunity.

We show that a phage homing endonuclease drives segmental amplification of anti-defense genes, pointing to a versatile and rapid mode of adaptation.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

#PhageSky #MicroSky

Feels like this paper on protein-templated DNA synthesis by a natural enzyme warrants some comment.
So here's a 🧵. /1
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

2'3'-cGAMP-induced membrane shearing promotes broad antiphage immunity An evolutionarily conserved CBASS transmembrane effector—ancestral to the mammalian cGAS-STING pathway—is activated by 2'3'-cGAMP to assemble into membrane-spanning filaments that disrupt membranes via a newly defined mechanism of vertical lipid shearing.

Now online! 2'3'-cGAMP-induced membrane shearing promotes broad antiphage immunity

I am so excited to share our new findings with you! We provide the structural evidence for a direct protein-to-DNA information pathway, showing how a bacterial enzyme 'reads' its own structure to 'write' DNA. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Very proud of this work and all the efforts from my team and collaborators on this! You can now use DGRs for in vivo targeted hypermutagenesis in E. coli. We also included some early proof of concept in Yeast thanks to @seth-shipman.bsky.social !

Excited to share our new findings in @science.org on how the DRT3 bacterial defense system uses a reverse transcriptase that builds DNA repeats without a nucleic acid template. Microbes never cease to amaze!

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

A bacterial CARD–NLR-like immune system controls the release of gene transfer agents - Nature Microbiology An immunity-like system functions as a lysis control hub to promote gene transfer agent particle release from host bacterial cells, suggesting that bacterial immune systems may be co-opted to promote ...

Delighted to share our latest work on gene transfer agents (GTAs). We found a lysis control hub which allows GTAs to escape their bacterial host cells and transfer DNA 🧬 between bacteria. Thanks to @tunglejic.bsky.social, all co-authors, and our amazing collaborators!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Excited to share that our review: “𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗶𝗻𝗳𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝗴𝘂𝘁 𝘃𝗶𝗿𝗼𝗺𝗲: 𝗸𝗻𝗼𝘄𝗻𝘀, 𝘂𝗻𝗸𝗻𝗼𝘄𝗻𝘀, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗮𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘂𝗲𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗳𝘂𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝘀𝘁𝘂𝗱𝗶𝗲𝘀” written together with Nataliia Kuzub has just been published in 𝗘𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴.

Check the 𝗽𝘂𝗯𝗹𝗶𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 here and see the thread below: 👇
doi.org/10.1016/j.en...

Excited to share our new paper out today in @science.org 🎉

We show that HGT via natural competence drives diversification of chromosomal integrons in V. cholerae 🤩

Below a 🧵 on key findings incl. background on natural competence in V. cholerae 1/
#microsky #phagesky
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Postdoc in Soil viral ecology - Vacancy at Aarhus University Vacancy at Department of Agroecology - Plant Pathology and Microbiology, Aarhus University

I'm hiring my first postdoc! Apply by 20/4/26, position #20443. Seeking an environmental microbiologist with experience in metagenomics (preferably viromics) and molecular biology. Experience with targeted metabolomics is a plus.
international.au.dk/about/profil...

PostDoc position available!
(links in post below)

Feel free to share!

Postdoc position available in St Andrews for a structural biologist: www.vacancies.st-andrews.ac.uk/Vacancies/W/...

The phage nucleus synergizes with an anti-defense protein to resist bacterial immunity Morgan et al. show that a phage-encoded protein functions as an antitoxin to counter DarTG2-mediated phage defense. They further explore the interplay between this anti-defense protein, the phage nucleus replication compartment, which encloses chimallivirus genomes, and the DarTG2 phage defense system.

The phage nucleus synergizes with an anti-defense protein to resist bacterial immunity: Cell Reports www.cell.com/cell-reports...

Clever screening strategy to uncover anti-RNA phage defenses! 🔎🧬

Repurposing anti-phage defenses to differentially arrest the viral lifecycle reveals the regulatory logic of a parasitic satellite www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.04...

Whenever I presented Phold, I was frequently asked "can you do the same beyond phages?" We ( @oschwengers.bsky.social @linsalrob.bsky.social @binomicalabs.org et al) finally did it with Baktfold github.com/gbouras13/ba... www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Nucleoid-associated proteins sense phage-induced genome damage to elicit abortive infection www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.04...

Latest from the lab!
Between clinical S. aureus, most gene transfer mechanisms are blocked, yet lateral transduction remains highly efficient.
Restriction modification-defective strains act as gateways for horizontal gene transfer, enabling DNA flow across populations. rdcu.be/fbNQK

Phage receptor prediction from genome sequencing alone. Bacterial receptor (blue) interacting with phage proteins (purple) is shown here

📣Huge preprint 🔔
Today we share something our group has been working toward for a long time, led by @lucasmoriniere.bsky.social We asked can we predict which receptor a phage targets from its genome sequence alone? For most phages, we couldn’t. So Lucas set out to do something I had only dreamed of.

Excited to see our work out in Science today! Using machine learning to identify prokaryotic immune systems www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

How diverse is bacterial immunity ?

We report in @science.org how language models allowed us to predict 2.4M antiphage proteins spanning >23K novel potential systems.
👏 @emordret.bsky.social, @alexhv.bsky.social & al doi.org/10.1126/scie...

Explore them here defensefinder.mdmlab.fr/wiki/refseq_...

Please remember that the International Symposium on Plasmid Biology (ISPB 2026) will take place 7–11 September 2026 in Berlin, Germany!

A great opportunity to meet, reconnect, and engage with the global plasmid biology community. 🤝

plasmid-biology-2026.de

And the preprint is out! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

We compared plasmid conjugation in liquid and on solid across 13 AMR plasmids with different types of conjugative pili.

The PhageExpressionAtlas just made it to bioRxiv. Visually explore the transcriptomes of phage-host interactions or harness the database for analysis across infections! Please leave feedback, which functionalities/data you find missing.
Preprint:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

#phagesky #microsky

Hey #Phagesky [Ph]ans! My first work with the Penadés lab is out! Come read how arbitrium-coding phages sense non-cognate Arbitrium signals from other phages to influence their lysis-lysogeny decisions. www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Phages communicate across species to shape microbial ecosystems Gallego-del-Sol et al. show that arbitrium-coding phages can sense non-cognate peptide signals from other phages to regulate lysis-lysogeny decisions. This crosstalk affects lysis-lysogeny outcomes of...

This paper started as an idea @albertomarina.bsky.social had many years ago… which of course means he was right all along 😄. Some of us just needed a few years (and a lot of experiments) to catch up.
Grateful (and slightly humbled) to be part of this. Thanks Alberto!
www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Open Positions -

Open postdoc position in my lab on HGT and interbacterial competition. We seek candidates with a PhD in microbiology (or related fields)+ strong 1st-author publications.
Curious, highly motivated, and dedicated team players ready to contribute fully are encouraged to apply. Details: tiny.cc/cz01101

Out now–our work on bacterial cGAS-like enzymes making 2′,3′-cGAMP! Read Uday's thread for updates since the preprint including determining our lab's first protein structure and developing a new system to study bacterial STING homologs in phage defense👇

Our lab is hiring!

As our fierce technician is moving on to graduate school (GO ANNA!), we’re looking for a new tech to join our team studying bacteria-phage interactions.

Ideal for recent grads interested in molecular biology and microbiology - please reach out with a CV to aviramn@mskcc.org.