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
One of the coolest genetic elements turned into a genetic engineering tool 😎
Congratulations @raphael-microb.bsky.social @dbikard.bsky.social lab et al. for this tour de force !!
Phages keeping up as treasure troves for biotech! 🧬 Massive congratulations to the whole team for this fantastic application! 👏🎉
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/...
Finally published. Many thanks to a wonderful collaborative team and scientific platforms!!! And thanks to editors and reviewers for enthusiasm and a great review.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
A new paper reports a cytosine hypermodification pathway in phage HY126 that confers nuclease resistance
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Nucleoid-associated proteins sense phage-induced genome damage to elicit abortive infection www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.04...
Machine learning models by the Bernheim and Laub labs vastly expand the predicted space of bacterial immunity, demonstrating that we are still at the beginning of our exploration 🔎
Congrats @mdmlab.bsky.social and @pdeweirdt.bsky.social et al!
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_...
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.
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...
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...
🚨 Two weeks left to apply 👇
It was a great pleasure to host @aharms485.bsky.social at
@ciri-lyon.bsky.social and
@mmsb-lyon.bsky.social !
Great science and insightful discussions on the dark side of viral genomes 😎
Our work on bacterial Schlafens in phage defense is out today @natmicrobiol.nature.com!
Check out the final version here:
rdcu.be/e7Bmz
We are looking for postdocs and students to expand our team! Official postings are coming soon.
Please reach out if you're interested!
#phage #phagesky #microsky
What a cool piece of funky biology 😎
The Trojan Horse is real, and it’s microscopic! 🐴🦠
Our paper is out today in @cellcellpress.bsky.social!
We discovered that deltaviruses physically hide INSIDE helper viruses to sneak into new cells. And to prove it, we had to image them from every angle. 🧵👇
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
CBASS is a cyclic nucleotide-based antiviral system in bacteria that is related to cGAS-STING signaling in animals. One of the big questions is how CBASS is activated during phage infection? We made some progress on this during my final year in the Kranzusch lab.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Out today: We discovered new viral proteins that target immune signaling molecules, solely based on their AlphaFold-predicted shapes
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Congrats Nitzan Tal and coauthors! Thank you Kranzusch lab for the fun collaboration!
Linking below previous thread on our findings
@nitzantal.bsky.social @romihadary.bsky.social @soreklab.bsky.social use structure prediction and in silico binding site analysis to discover viral immune evasion proteins! Exciting for our lab @reneechang.bsky.social @riveralopz.bsky.social to help with this project.
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
"Remarkably, dCas12f–RNA–σE complexes drove potent gene expression in the absence of any requisite promoter motifs, with de novo transcription start sites defined exclusively by the relative distance from the dCas12f-mediated R-loop." 🤯
Ground-breaking studies reveal the mechanism of "natural CRISPRa" 🤩
Looking forward to seeing all the technological applications !
Out now! In collaboration with Leifu Chang, we uncover the molecular and structural underpinnings of CRISPR-Cas12f-like RNA-guided transcription systems!
Links to the published articles:
tinyurl.com/55kpavet
tinyurl.com/sk6djwx3
Previous thread for the preprint:
bsky.app/profile/did:...
New post-doctoral research position in my phage-host interactions (Phi) laboratory in @otagomicroimmuno.bsky.social at @universityofotago.bsky.social New Zealand. The project is focused on defences against jumbo phages. Please share and if interested apply using the link in the comments.
In our latest work, we characterise the Tmn defence system. We reveal plasmolysis as a new way to block phage infection, dramatically reducing secondary infections.
🎉 We are thrilled to share our latest study revealing a new mechanism by which Legionella pneumophila evades antibiotic killing via reversible genetic variation mediated by integrative and conjugative elements (ICEs).
📖 Here for the full story:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
A while back, we showed that P2-like phages and their P4-like satellites encode hotspots of defense systems.
Great work from @jmouradesousa.bsky.social et al. majorly expands the diversity of these systems and explores gene flows with other MGEs 🤩 Striking that P2s and P4s never exchange systems !
Congratulations to Sonomi Yamaguchi for her paper at @nature.com. Sonomi discovered Clover defense and explained how nucleotide signals control each step of viral sensing, immune regulation, and viral restriction – named for her beautiful "four-leaf" structures 🍀
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Chemical inhibition of a bacterial immune system
Small molecules inhibit type II Thoeris anti-phage systems from diverse bacteria. One compound, IP6C, improves phage-therapy against P. aeruginosa & is effective against Thoeris in polymicrobial communities
www.cell.com/cell-host-mi...
New layers to the NAD+ immune arms race - it’s a never ending fight!🦠🧪
I was very happy to contribute to this story. Congratulations Ilya for an amazing discovery!!🎉