"The selfish ribosome" paper is now published in @plosbiology.org . Have a look! Many thanks to the editors and reviewers!
doi.org/10.1371/jour...

Structures of the QatBC complex from Angela Gao and Doug Wassarman in our group reveal an evolutionary link between QatABCD and Type IV CBASS and a role for protein deazguanylation in diverse anti-phage defense systems

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

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_...

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...

Excited to share the first preprint from the lab! We show that ApeA defends against RNA phage infection by cleaving the phage genome:

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

SNIPE is a widespread bacterial defence system that exploits the spatial organization of phage genome injection to specifically target viral DNA, distinguishing self from non-self in prokaryotic immune systems @nature.com @mitpress.bsky.social
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Elegant study from @erinhuiting.bsky.social @jbdsf.bsky.social on CBASS phage inhibition without loss of cell viability. Especially interesting to see this phenotype with a CapV membrane-targeting effector and evidence for 3'3'-cGAMP transport!

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

To CRISPR or not to CRISPR?🥀
That’s a question plasmids face during competition 🧬⚔️

@davvi36.bsky.social et al. shows it depends on whether targeted plasmids have TAs! ⚖️

Fun to be part of this story w/ @leightonpayne.bsky.social Thanks for pulling us in!

Amazing findings in geometry-based immune activation! Two bacterial defence systems detect phage-encoded ring oligomers, assemble high-order molecular complexes, and trigger abortive infection.

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

🧬 Metabolic arms race continues!
We discovered a new NAD⁺-depleting bacterial immune system aRES and phage enzymes that overcome it.
Our preprint is out: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Great new story from Sophie Helaine and Molly Sargen!

www.helainelab.com

#microsky #phagesky #phage defence

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

A phage protein screen identifies triggers of the bacterial innate immune system - Nature Microbiology A library of 400 phage protein-coding genes is used to find a trove of antiphage systems, revealing systems that target tail fibre and major capsid proteins.

#microsky #phagesky #phage defence

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

Phold's manuscript is now available @narjournal.bsky.social thanks to @susiegriggo.bsky.social @npbhavya.bsky.social @vijinim.bsky.social @linsalrob.bsky.social @martinsteinegger.bsky.social @milot.bsky.social @eunbelivable.bsky.social & others not on bsky #phagesky academic.oup.com/nar/article/...

RNA-triggered Cas12a3 cleaves tRNA tails to execute bacterial immunity - Nature Cas12a3 nucleases constitute a distinct clade of type V CRISPR–Cas bacterial immune systems that preferentially cleave the 3′ tails of tRNAs after recognition of target RNA to induce growth arres...

#microsky #phagesky #phage defence

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

Diverse bacterial pattern recognition receptors sense the conserved phage proteome Recognition of foreign molecules inside cells is critical for immunity in all domains of life. Proteins of the STAND NTPase superfamily, including eukaryotic nucleotide-binding oligomerization domain ...

NLR-like immunity in bacteria

A new study from the Alex Gao lab. The scope of this work is incredible!!!

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Phage-associated Cas12p nucleases require binding to bacterial thioredoxin for activation and cleavage of target DNA www.nature.com/articles/s41...

#microsky #phagesky

@peterfineran.bsky.social and colleagues develop Tn-seq for phages by leveraging anti-CRISPR (Acr) as a positive
selectable marker in the presence of CRISPR-Cas counter-selection, and identify essential genes in phage from non model orgs
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Streptomyces secretes a siderophore that sensitizes competitor bacteria to phage infection - Nature Microbiology A secondary metabolite sensitizes competitor Bacillus subtilis to a wide panel of lytic phages by sequestering iron and preventing the activation of Spo0A.

Microbes weaponizing secondary metabolites to make rivals vulnerable to phage attack 🧪🦠

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

Phollow reveals in situ phage transmission dynamics in the zebrafish gut microbiome at single-virion resolution - Nature Microbiology ‘Phollow’ is a live imaging-based fluorescence tagging approach that can track phage replication and spread in situ with single-virion resolution.

Live microscopy to 'phollow' phage outbreaks 🔬✳️

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

Leveraging defense system modularity to discover anti-phage systems Bacterial exposure to constant phage attack drives rapid diversification of anti-phage defense systems, often through the exchange of modular defensive domains. Here, we leverage this modularity signa...

#microsky #phagesky

More anti #phage systems in E. coli

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

✨New preprint!

🧵1/4 Excited to share our work on AI-guided design of minimal RNA-guided nucleases. Amazing work by @petrskopintsev.bsky.social @isabelesain.bsky.social @evandeturk.bsky.social et al!
Multi-lab collaboration @banfieldlab.bsky.social @jhdcate.bsky.social @jacobsenucla.bsky.social🧬

🔗👇

Phages are full of genes of unknown function that are likely adaptive in specific conditions.
New preprint: Phage TnSeq identifies essential genes rapidly and knocks all non-essentials. We would like to send a pool of phiKZ mutants to anyone wanting it! Reach out
tinyurl.com/bdcfrejh

Preprint: Systematic discovery of TIR-based immune signaling systems in bacteria

Conservation of TIR-derived signals accross the tree of life! We found bacterial TIR immune systems that signal via canonical cADPR (like in humans) and 2'cADPR (a plant immune signal).

Documented 11 Thoeris types

Structural mechanism of the Retron-Eco7 anti-phage defense system - Nature Communications The Retron-Eco7 is a genetic element involved in anti-phage defense that encodes two effector proteins (PtuA and PtuB) and cleaves the host tRNA. Here, the authors solved the Retron-Eco7 complex struc...

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

Structural mechanism of the Retron-Eco7 anti-phage defense system

The Biology of Nucleus-Forming Jumbo Phages Nucleus-forming jumbo bacteriophages display a surprisingly intricate replication cycle inside of bacterial host cells, challenging the long-standing paradigm of prokaryotic simplicity. The phage nucl...

The Biology of Nucleus-Forming Jumbo Phages
#phage #phagesky

www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

🧬🛡️How are new immune mechanisms created?

We show how Lamassu antiphage system, originated from a DNA-repair complex and evolved into a compact and modular immune machine, wt Dinshaw Patel lab in @pnas.org.
👏 @matthieu-haudiquet.bsky.social, Arpita Chakravarti & all authors!

doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

Divergent viral phosphodiesterases for immune signaling evasion Cyclic dinucleotides (CDNs) and other short oligonucleotides play fundamental roles in immune system activation in organisms ranging from bacteria to …

Work I co-led with @jnoms.bsky.social is now online at
@cp-cellhostmicrobe.bsky.social ! We revealed a previously unrealized diversity of viral immune-evasion proteins that selectively destroy different cyclic nucleotide signals used in bacterial immunity.

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

Proteolytic activation of diverse antiviral defense modules in prokaryotes Linked protease–effector modules are widespread in prokaryotic antiviral defense, yet the mechanisms of most remain poorly understood. Here we show that four of the most prevalent modules—metallo-β-la...

I am so excited to share our project with you! We find prokaryotic proteases activate toxic enzymes and pores as a modular strategy in phage defense. We studied four fascinating protease-toxin pairs that are abundant across bacterial genomes:

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...