(1/6) Thrilled to share this story! In our preprint from my PhD in the @kranzuschlab.bsky.social, with help from the Hatfull lab and @soreklab.bsky.social, we discover RyDEP, a phage-encoded RyR-domain glycosidase that allows phages to evade Thoeris defense. Highlights below! doi.org/10.64898/202...

Our aRES story is finally out 😀 Beyond what was reported in the preprint, we found that aRES is activated by direct binding of the phage DNA polymerase. Another NAD-degrading defense system — and multiple phage strategies to overcome it. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

🚨After 4 fantastic years in the Sorek lab @soreklab.bsky.social, I’ll be starting my own group at EMBL @embl.org bl.org Hamburg. www.embl.org/groups/oster... Metabolism-driven immunity: phages, metabolites, and discovery of new enzymes, molecules, and pathways 🦠🧬

Preprint Alert 🚨 @philcarella.bsky.social lab stepping into TIR-ritory!! Project started by me but finished by talented PhD student @ebkennedy.bsky.social (Please follow her), with contribution from Zhao He and @jonathandgjones.bsky.social We investigated EDS1-dependency of TIR domain. See thread👇

A nice piece at @science.org covers the exploding field of bacterial immunity, and how it led to the understanding that components of the human immune system evolved from bacterial defenses against phage www.science.org/content/arti...

Predicting phage anti-defenses that shoot the messenger Mahler & @yuping-li.bsky.social highlight @science.org work developing a structure-guided approach to identify phage proteins counteracting bacterial nucleotide signaling defenses using metagenomic data. www.cell.com/cell-host-mi...

Happy to share our latest pre-print on the Druantia defense system. We find that Type III Druantia uses a cooperative helicase-nuclease mechanism to sense and degrade replication-associated forked DNA structures. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... A🧵

1/9 New preprint from the Sternberg Lab in collaboration with the Nishimasu Lab! We uncover how the DRT3 antiphage immune system pairs two reverse transcriptases, one RNA-templated and one protein-templated, to build a double-stranded DNA effector. doi.org/10.64898/202...

With Eugene Koonin, we wrote a rather comprehensive review on the origin, evolution and organization of the #virosphere. We describe all 10 viral realms and the logic behind them, and so much more. Check it out! comptes-rendus.academie-sciences.fr/biologies/ar...

That's a wrap on three days of incredible science at #SISB2026! Special thanks to @rockefeller.edu for hosting us on their beautiful campus, to our speakers and poster presenters, and most of all to this community that never fails to inspire. Can't wait for #SISB2027 🫶

TIR-like NADases act in bacterial immunity and the RNA vault https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.01.722283v1

Bacterial immune proteins have repeatedly evolved to become parts of eukaryotic immunity. But how? Our new preprint uncovers a recent horizontal transfer event & shows how eukaryotes co-opted a toxic bacterial immune protein 🦠🧪🧵 1/

Excited to share our discovery of a new programmable RNA-guided DNA-targeting system hiding inside bacteriophages that predates CRISPR. We call it VIPR (Viral Interference Programmable Repeat), and it uses an entirely new logic to find its targets. Thread + link below.

Congratulations to @aragucci.bsky.social and @sadieantine.bsky.social for their nuclease-NTPase work now online in final form at @natmicrobiol.nature.com www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Very nice that after discovering the conservation of innate immune systems across the tree of life, the Sorek lab is realizing the possibility of discovering new features of animal innate immunity from bacteria (and plants in this case) Cool 😎 🧪

Bacterial immunity illuminating novel aspects of animal immunity !

Long believed to be enzymatically inactive, eukaryotic TIR domains (including human TLR4), can actually hydrolyze NAD+ 🤯 Amazing finding from @bhurieva.bsky.social and @soreklab.bsky.social 🙌

🎉Excited to share our new preprint! TIR domains from diverse animals, including human TLR4, are catalytically active and produce cyclic ADP-ribose (cADPR). This enzymatic activity is widespread in animals and conserved across the tree of life. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

We found that TIR domains in animal immune proteins, including the human TLR4, are enzymes that cleave NAD+ to produce the signaling molecule cADPR Read our new preprint by talented Bohdana Hurieva: “Conserved catalytic activity of immune TIR domains in animals” www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

"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...

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/...

Over two billion years, a fierce battle has raged between bacteria and the viruses that infect them. The resulting evolution has shaped the way our bodies fight disease today. @vcallier.bsky.social reports: www.quantamagazine.org/the-ancient-...

Our current understanding of the Metis defense system - carved in wood By @naamalila.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Breaking news: The crew of NASA’s Artemis II mission has zoomed more than 248,655 miles from Earth — farther than any other humans — as they make a historic 10-day voyage around the far side of the moon.

Want to annotate a bacterial genome with structures? @oschwengers.bsky.social bakta and @gbouras13.bsky.social phold got together, and the result is Baktfold: protein annotation across the microbial tree of life using structures www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... #phagesky #microsky #microbiomesky

📣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.

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_...

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...

We are excited to share our new paper in Molecular Cell uncovering how the viral lncRNA RNA2.7 reshapes host cell biology! sciencedirect.com/science/authShare/S1097276526001565/20260324T143400Z/1?md5=16c84051c2f253c4665427f837a529d3&dgcid=author A thread 🧵

Little is known about bacterial immunity to RNA phages. The @jenshoer.bsky.social lab discovers ApeA recognition of phage RNA stem loops. With RNA viruses dominating emerging pathogens in humans, a very exciting area of comparison in host antiviral immunity! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

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...

New preprint: Cyclic tri-adenylate signalling by a Panoptes anti-phage guard system with a CARF-TM effector. Great work led by Sabine Grüschow www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

AlphaFold database has entered the era of complexes. Together with NVIDIA, DeepMind and EBI, we use ColabFold, OpenFold and MMseqs2-GPU to predict ~31 million complexes (homo & hetro-dimers) resulting in 1.8 million high-quality predictions 📄 research.nvidia.com/labs/dbr/ass... 🌐 alphafold.ebi.ac.uk

Ubercool. Toxin-antitoxin systems were discovered 40 years ago in E. coli, and later on in many genomes including in euks. Now the 1st TA system is reported in the mouse genome! It affects embryo killing. Amazing distribution of a simple yet efficient genetic system www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

We found a viral Trojan Horse: a virus can hide inside another virus.This one surprised us: deltaviruses don’t just borrow a helper virus. They can travel inside it. A literal Trojan Horse “virus-in-a-virus” route into cells. 🤯 Kudos to 1st author @viroscope.bsky.social and co-authors !

After >10 years of our lab studying bacterial cGAS-like enzymes, @hobbslabutah.bsky.social finally reconstitutes viral sensing in vitro and discovers how these ancient receptors sense phage protease enzymes to detect virion assembly and activate antiviral immunity www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

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...

Very excited to see this work out today! Discovering viral immune antagonists directly from predicted protein structures. 🤩 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... Huge thanks to the amazing collaborators! 🤗

@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/...

Structure-based discovery of three new protein families in phages, all to evade bacterial immunity. Congratulations Nitzan and coauthors!👏

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:...

Ribosome centric perspective on the evolution of life. @mkrupovic.bsky.social and Eugene Koonin arxiv.org/abs/2602.23268

Cell death is a fundamental mechanism of antiviral immunity across diverse organisms, including bacteria. As my final PhD project with @jbdsf.bsky.social, I was curious whether cell death is required for successful immunity with the ancient cGAS pathway known as ‘CBASS.’ Spoiler – the answer is no!

The 2026 symposium on the immune system of bacteria, New York, May 5-7 A fantastic lineup of speakers, looking forward to seeing top unpublished discoveries on bacterial immunity

RNA splicing generates a functionally specialized Rep protein isoform in geminiviruses — enabling timely control of the viral cycle. Strikingly, similar strategies might have evolved in DNA viruses infecting different kingdoms: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Spearheaded by @delphinem-p.bsky.social!

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...

Very timely review; thank Alex Hong and @jbdsf.bsky.social for putting this together journals.plos.org/plospathogen...

Koonin's lab in NIH is looking for postdocs. If you know someone who is interested, please spread the word. The details about the position are below: www.training.nih.gov/jobs/pdf-ecb...

Excited to share our new paper led by a wonderful Jing Liu on designing de novo IDRs🧪🖥️

Abstract submission is now OPEN for the 2026 Symposium on the Immune System of Bacteria! sisb2026.rockefeller.edu 🗓 May 5–7, 2026 📍 Rockefeller University, New York City ⏰ Abstract deadline: March 16, 2026 Attendance will be capped, be sure to register early and secure your spot. See you in NYC!