🔥Preprint fresh off the press🔥

Hello Bluesky!

I'm delighted to share the story I have been working on for the past 3y in @vivekmutalik.bsky.social's lab at LBNL and Adam Arkin's lab @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social.

It's a wild story about 255 phages & 1,000+ HT genetic screens, are you ready? 🧵

A defense system that protects against RNA viruses by sensing a conserved RNA structure in the viral genome - cool!

I love this concept -- plasmid to Cryo structure in a day!

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

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_...

How do you kill a MRSA superbug armed with 15 different anti-phage defense systems? You make a smarter phage. Check out our latest preprint on overcoming bacterial immunity using defense-guided engineering to build durable therapeutic phage cocktails! Led by Sarah Voss. doi.org/10.64898/202...

Bacterial 2′,3′-cGAMP activates a SAVED effector to form membrane-disrupting filaments and restrict phage replication Tak et al. discover that bacteria use 2′,3′-cGAMP, the same signaling molecule employed by mammalian cGAS-STING, for phage defense. In response to phage, 2′,3′-cGAMP activates filament formation of Ca...

Happy to share the final version of my postdoc work on bacterial CBASS immunity with @aaronwhiteley.bsky.social published in @cp-cellhostmicrobe.bsky.social

www.cell.com/cell-host-mi...

Host innate immune response profiling reveals hidden viral infections across diverse animal species www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03...

Can't believe I actually managed to get my name as a social media handle, sans the random numbers or letters

Hope this works!
bsky.app/profile/prok...

Couldn’t have said it better myself!🥳

Awesome! This really feels like the best option at the moment. Thanks a lot!

I’m really enjoying the vibe on Bluesky right now. I joined Twitter super late (like a year ago) and always felt like I was playing catch-up. Here, it feels like everyone’s figuring things out together, and it’s exciting! You know what I mean?😅

Exactly! Pinning posts is like shouting, 'Hey everyone, look at what I secretly want to save!' 😂

Thank you for doing this!

Such a cutie!😍

A clinical mutation in uvrA, a DNA repair gene, confers survival advantage to Mycobacterium tuberculosis in the host DNA repair pathways play an essential role in maintaining the genomic integrity of bacteria, and a perturbation in their biological activity helps bacteria survive under duress. In drug-resistant clin...

Sharing this preprint here again🚨📢
The study shows that a clinical mutation in the uvrA DNA repair gene gives Mycobacterium tuberculosis a survival edge inside the host!🦠🔬This finding could open doors to understanding Mtb resistance and persistence. Check it out!🔗
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Gotta say, I miss the bookmark button from Twitter. Guess I'm just over here bookmarking things in my brain now... wish me luck.

Thank you! Happy to be here🥳

Nothing like a bit of academic peer pressure to push you to a new platform👋
Academic Twitter said, "The cool scientists are over here now!"