TIR domains across diverse eukaryotes are enzymatically active. Especially interesting is the human TLR4 TIR, long thought to be enzymatically inactive, now shown to be catalytically active and to produce cADPR, a molecule involved in immunity across domains of life. Congrats, Bohdana!!

Honored to be part of the 2026 cohort and looking forward to the journey ahead! @schmidtfellows.bsky.social

The plot thickens! Exciting new discoveries in the NAD⁺ centric battlefield between bacteria and phages. Congrats, Ilya!

A massive expansion of Thoeris defense systems ! Congrats @erezyirmiya.bsky.social and @soreklab.bsky.social

New Thoeris systems and new bacterial TIRs, this time also producing plant and human immune signals 2'cADPR and cADPR!!! Congratulations to @erezyirmiya.bsky.social and Azita Leavitt! It was a pleasure to be involved in this project.

New Thoeris systems reveal a deep connection between bacterial TIR-produced immune signals to plant and human immunity🦠🌱🧍‍♀️ It was a great honor to contribute to this project! Congratulations to @erezyirmiya.bsky.social and Azita Leavitt!!🎉🥂

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

Incredible to learn how far-reaching and diverse Thoeris really is! TIRs play key roles across kingdoms, and this work beautifully highlights their bacterial origins. Congrats @erezyirmiya.bsky.social & Azita! 👏🌟

Thoeris - the gift that keeps on giving 🦠🎁! Congrats Erez, Azita et al.!

I’m happy to share our new preprint! We uncovered the full diversity of bacterial TIR-based antiviral immune signaling, massively expanded the known diversity of Thoeris systems, and revealed conservation of TIR-derived immune signals across the tree of life. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Such a beautiful and well-rounded discovery, yet another exciting strategy in bacterial immunity. Congrats, Ilya!

📢 New preprint alert! We designed synthetic proteins that can block bacterial immune systems, allowing phages + plasmids to overcome natural defenses. This could transform phage therapy + genetic engineering. Here’s what we found 🧵 Preprint🔗: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Preprint: De-novo design of proteins that inhibit bacterial defenses Our approach allows silencing defense systems of choice. We show how this approach enables programming of “untransformable” bacteria, and how it can enhance phage therapy applications Congrats Jeremy Garb! tinyurl.com/Syttt 🧵

Congrats @romihadary.bsky.social and @reneechang.bsky.social for dissecting the functional diversity of ALL Sponges! 🧽

An absolute masterpiece by the talented @dinahoch.bsky.social on nucleotide-based immunity

Amazing work identifying novel immune inhibitors based on structural and genomic traits. Congrats Nitzan and everyone!

Hello everyone! I am pleased to share information on the first ever Computational Structural Virology Symposium, conducted August 4th on zoom and highlighting work in this emerging field. You can register for this event here: forms.gle/CNiqskMwQEuV.... Please re-post!

This was our latest journal-club paper. Nice use of large-scale AlphaFold modelling & various experiments. Phage proteins’ ability to recognise eukaryotic homologues of their bacterial targets is striking - suggests these proteins evolved to recognise their targets in a fairly mutation-resistnt way.

A fun collaboration with the Whitney, Prehna, and Bosis labs, in which we reveal the role of DUF2169 proteins: assisting PAAR-like domains in forming spike complexes and #T6SS assembly. 🦠 search.app/jDxaUi5yJK9B...

Check out our latest paper using protein structures to uncover immune inhibitors hidden among millions of phage genes! These inhibitors block immune proteins from bacteria, plants and even humans, highlighting how immunity and counter-immunity mechanisms are conserved across the tree of life! 🦠🌿🧍‍♀️

Incredbile work from @soreklab.bsky.social demonstrating how to mine viral genomes to identify immune-modulatory proteins that work across bacteria, plants and animals 😱. Bacteria have been amazing ressources of molecular diversity for biotech and medicine, now viral diversity can be explored too!

Really cool! Remarkable that phage proteins can inhibit human and plant TIR proteins and human cGAS. Conservation of function across such long evolutionary distances identifies new immunomodulators Congrats to @soreklab.bsky.social and Kranzusch labs! What a great collaboration that is 😍 🧪

Viral immune evasion proteins are widespread and block both bacterial and human immune proteins! Go check out Erez’s paper using AlphaFold-multimer to screen for new anti-defense proteins!!🤩🤩

Been waiting a long time to see this in print - phage proteins are capable of inhibiting immune systems across host-domain boundaries 🤯 Big congrats @erezyirmiya.bsky.social et al!!

I'm excited to see the published version of this amazing work. @erezyirmiya et al identified viral proteins that inhibit host immunity using structural predictions of protein-protein interactions. Congrats to you all @soreklab & Kranzusch lab! 🥂

A high-throughput AlphaFold screen reveals phage proteins that bind and inhibit bacterial immune proteins 🤯 Some of them even bind and inhibit eukaryotic immune proteins as well ! Congrats @erezyirmiya.bsky.social @soreklab.bsky.social et al for these beautiful discoveries 👌

Our paper out @CellCellPress: Structure guided discovery of viral proteins that inhibit host immunity Congrats Erez Yirmiya, Azita Leavitt, Gil Amitai, our collaborators at the Kranzusch lab, and coauthors A 🧵 1/10 www.cell.com/cell/abstrac...

I'm thrilled to announce our latest work is now published in Cell! Viruses encode numerous proteins that inhibit host defenses, but identifying immune-modulatory proteins among millions of viral sequences has been nearly impossible - until now! www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Finally moved to #Bluesky and happy to share our recent work about a new phage anti-defense system, based on NAD reconstitution by new enzymatic reactions. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Seems like a good time to finally move here ! Taking the opportunity to share our most recent work : www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Happy to see our paper out @ Nat Comm We discovered a bacterial NLR-like pattern recognition receptor that can sense 3 different viral proteins as a signature for infection. This explains its broad defense against different phage families Congrats Nathalie Béchon! www.nature.com/articles/s41...