MolES’ Scientific Exchange sparks microbial engineering collaborations www.moles.washington.edu/moles-scient...

@flash-point.bsky.social @isbscience.org @uwgenome.bsky.social @uwbioe.bsky.social @basicsci.fredhutch.org @uwmnewsroom.bsky.social

Painted stork carefully selecting a stick for its nest. Taken at Sultanpur National Park, India. #birds #wildlife #photography #pnw #india

Allele-specific zinc metalloprotease B influences cardiac damage during invasive pneumococcal disease Luck et al. identify the bacterial protein ZmpB as a key factor in heart damage during severe Streptococcus pneumoniae infections. Variants of ZmpB with FIVAR domains enable cardiac cell invasion, whi...

My dissertation work was finally published! Check it out below!

Allele-specific zinc metalloprotease B influences cardiac damage during invasive pneumococcal disease: Cell Reports www.cell.com/cell-reports...

#microsky #science #microbiology #pathology #pathobiology

@isbscience.org postdoc @n8ritz.bsky.social (Venkatesh Lab) was selected as a 2026 WRF Postdoc Fellow. The fellowship supports early-career researchers pursuing high-impact science. Congrats Nate! 🎉
@flash-point.bsky.social
More: tinyurl.com/y772pr2j
Venkatesh Lab: venkatesh.isbscience.org

The imminent rise in healthcare insurance costs could not have been better timed with the imminent rise of infectious diseases over the winter holidays. Yay us!

See you in less than 1 hour for the kickoff to the 2025 @isbscience.org Virtual Microbiome Symposium!

This year, we will explore microbial metabolites and their impacts on the host.

@flash-point.bsky.social will start things off at 9AM Pacific Time.

#ISBmicro2025

isbscience.org/events/2025-...

@isbscience.org's Dr. Mary Brunkow gave a "practice talk" for her Nobel Lecture, and it was riveting! Mapping the Foxp3 locus was an arduous task in the late 90s, and this recognition is a fitting tribute. Thrilled for you, Mary! Your humility and grace are a wonderful example for all of us.

2025 ISB Virtual Microbiome Symposium - Institute for Systems Biology (ISB) The gut’s microbial ecosystem produces diverse metabolites that actively shape neural, immune, and endocrine function. Join leading researchers on December 12 as they share new discoveries into these ...

Please join us on Dec 12th for the 2025 @isbscience.org Virtual Microbiome Symposium, focused on "Gut Microbial Metabolites and Their Impact on Host Systems".

Co-organized by @gibbological.bsky.social

Registration is free & we have a fantastic line-up of experts!

isbscience.org/events/2025-...

2025 ISB Virtual Microbiome Symposium - Institute for Systems Biology (ISB) Symposium Schedule All presentation times are shown in Pacific Daylight Time (GMT -07:00 / UTC -07:00) Time Talk / Session 9:00 Welcoming remarks by Sid Venkatesh Session One: Neural Effects

📣 Join us for the 2025 @isbscience.org Virtual Microbiome Symposium, focused on "Gut Microbial Metabolites and Their Impact on Host Systems".

co-director - @flash-point.bsky.social 🦠💥

It's free, & we have an amazing line-up of speakers!

Dec. 12th. Please share!

isbscience.org/2025-isb-vir...

Discovery Series, Dr. Naeha Subramanian, Associate Professor, Institute for Systems Biology (ISB) · Luma Decoding Lyme Disease: Big Data Meets the Immune System Every year nearly half a million Americans are diagnosed with Lyme disease, yet the biology of this…

luma.com/9bz7uoqn

Dr. Meghan Koch from @fredhutch.org has discovered a biological mechanism sprung in the first week of life that trains a mouse pup’s #ImmuneSystem to tolerate harmless gut bugs and new foods.

⚗️ Abstract: https://bit.ly/4nt6qGh
📰 Press release: https://bit.ly/46N7vBY

Left to right: Sean Gibbons, Naeha Subramanian, Mary Brunkow, Anna Kuchina, and Sid Venkatesh

Rubbing shoulders with a @nobelprize.bsky.social laureate! 🤩What a week!

Couldn’t have happened to a nicer person: isbscience.org/news/press-r...

@isbscience.org @naehasubramanian.bsky.social @flash-point.bsky.social @annabiosys.bsky.social

This morning, @isbscience.org's Dr. Mary Brunkow was awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine! Dr. Brunkow shares the award with Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi. Read the press release here: www.nobelprize.org/.../medicine....

What a tremendous honor! Congratulations!

The 2025 #NobelPrize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi “for their discoveries concerning peripheral immune tolerance.”

Inspirational stuff from a scientific pioneer who also happens to be incredibly modest. ♥️

Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2025 The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2025 was awarded to Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi “for their discoveries concerning peripheral immune tolerance.”

www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medic...

The official website of the Nobel Prize - NobelPrize.org The Nobel Prize rewards science, humanism and peace efforts. This is one of the central concepts in the will of Alfred Nobel, and it also permeates the outreach activities that have been developed for...

Many congratulations, Mary Brunkow! Couldn’t be happier for you and @isbscience.org ! ♥️

www.nobelprize.org

It was an honor to highlight this fantastic work by Cheng and Venkatesh et al of the Gordon lab. Many thanks to them, and to Francis Chandra for doing all the heavy lifting on this Spotlight! @cp-cellchembiol.bsky.social

Happy to kick off 2025 with this new review on gut microbiota-neuroepithelial signaling by the very talented Taka Ohara!

Great highlight by Chandra and @pipethero.bsky.social on recently published work by my colleague @flash-point.bsky.social (from his postdoc work) on endocannabanoids produced by specific members of the gut microbiota that likely impact host satiety/appetite. @isbscience.org

doi.org/10.1016/j.ch...

Allosteric regulation of the tyrosine phosphatase PTP1B by a protein–protein interaction The rapid identification of protein–protein interactions has been significantly enabled by mass spectrometry (MS) proteomics-based methods, including affinity purification-MS, crosslinking-MS, and pr...

Happy to see this paper, led by former grad student Cassie Chartier, out in its final form at Protein Science! We characterized the interaction between PTP1B and the ubiquitous signaling adaptor Grb2 and identified new PTP1B interactors along the way!

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Accurate sequence-to-affinity models for SH2 domains from multi-round peptide binding assays coupled with free-energy regression Short linear peptide motifs play important roles in cell signaling. They can act as modification sites for enzymes and as recognition sites for peptide binding domains. SH2 domains bind specifically t...

Excited to share a new preprint from our lab, joint with the Bussemaker group, where we combined peptide display and selection with biophysically interpretable machine learning to build affinity models for SH2-phosphopeptide recognition.

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

Fantastic work! Congrats @nandangokhale.bsky.social, @ramlabuw.bsky.social and team.

Diverse viral cas genes antagonize CRISPR immunity - Nature We demonstrate that phages have co-opted cas genes from CRISPR defence systems, which subsequently evolved anti-defence functions.

Finally caught up with some beautiful work from Alex Meeske in Nature! His lab has identified proteins in Listeria that either substitute for Cas in Cascade complexes (anti-type I-B CRISPR immunity) or degrade crRNA (anti-type VI-A CRISPR immunity). Inspiring stuff!

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

ISB Named Winner of 2024-2025 Amazon Web Services IMAGINE Grant for Nonprofits ISB was selected as a winner of the 2024 Amazon Web Services (AWS) IMAGINE Grant, which will support continued development of My Digital Gut.

Warm congratulations to my @isbscience.org colleagues @gibbological.bsky.social, Andrew Magis, and team for winning a 2024 Amazon Web Services IMAGINE grant for developing "My Digital Gut", an online platform for personalized, predictive, and preventive healthcare!

isbscience.org/news/2024/12...

Bactericidal antibiotic treatment induces damaging inflammation via TLR9 sensing of bacterial DNA Nature Communications - The immunologic differences induced by bactericidal versus bacteriostatic antibiotics remain unclear. Gross et al. show that, in contrast to static antibiotics, cidal...

Bactericidal antibiotics release bacterial DNA that activates TLR9, while static antibiotics do not. This can profoundly impact treatment outcome. Should clinicians consider this when choosing antibiotics to prescribe?

Amazing work by Julia Gross and collaboration with Iain Fraser!
rdcu.be/d1Phk

ISB-Developed MetaboCore Offers Precision Cancer Care Faster Than Ever ISB's MetaboCore is a diagnostic tool that can help physicians quickly select the most effective systemic therapy for each cancer patient.

ISB Associate Professor Dr. Wei Wei has developed a promising new companion diagnostic tool called MetaboCore to help physicians quickly select the most effective systemic therapy for each cancer patient. Learn more: isbscience.org/news/2024/11...

Shah lab photo outside of Havemeyer Hall. Left to right: Jason, Minhee, Zijing, Yethmie, Loren, Katherine, Devon, Neel, Cassie, Andrew, Allyson, Anne, Anya

This job has so many ups and downs, but one constant that I’m always thankful for is this creative, hard-working, supportive group (they support me, too!!). I’m also thankful for all the awesome ideas and cool data they generate, which keep us all motivated and stimulated and make this so much fun!

Innovative and inspiring biochemistry from Joe Luna @virologistjoe.bsky.social and colleagues that combines CLIP with proximity labeling to reveal RNA:RBP interactions at subcellular resolution! Congratulations for your first paper as a corresponding author ♥️
rnajournal.cshlp.org/content/30/7...

First post on a lovely story from the lab that shows that Faecalibacterium prausnitzii can package its own genome in bite-size segments in phage-like capsids
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...