🚀New preprint from our lab! I am very excited to finally share what has been the main focus of my PhD for the past almost 3 years! It is about viral dark matter and a powerful tool we built to shed light on it. 🧬💡 Continue reading (🧵)

🚨Preprint alert - this is a big one! We transfer the revolutionary power of TnSeq to bacteriophages. Our HIDEN-SEQ links the "dark matter" genes of your favorite phage to any selectable phenotype, guiding the path from fun observations to molecular mechanisms. A thread 1/8

Biology is much more complicated than most non-biologists can imagine. And AI is not going to change this anytime soon. blog.genesmindsmachines.com/p/we-still-c...

Lab’s 1st preprint! Menstruation is understudied due to societal taboos + a biological challenge: mice (a key system for research + drug discovery) don’t menstruate. @cagricevrim.bsky.social made menstruating mice + used them to discover early events in menstruation. He is on the job market!

Viral AlphaFold Database (VAD) is live in Science Advances ~27,000 predicted viral protein monomers & homodimers Conserved folds across bacteria, archaea & eukaryotic viruses New toxin–antitoxin system KreTA uncovered Vast “functional darkness” remains uncharted www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Join us on Friday at noon for a great seminar from Tera Levin @teralevin.bsky.social! @uwmadisonmmi.bsky.social

Photosynthetic slugs ??!!??! (also, I love the name 'kleptosome' for an organelle).

Come be my colleague! I've been very happy at UTSW Micro. Why? Its a supportive environment full of excellent people. There's strong ambition, reflexive empathy, and excellent resources.

Our lab’s 1st manuscript was also Elsevier’s first test case for complying with the new NIH Public Access Policy. It was a bit tricky to figure out how to make everybody happy (you could put that on my epitaph...) A🧵 on how I threaded this needle of compliance!

Very proud to have our lab’s first work published in @cp-cellhostmicrobe.bsky.social! In this work, we use functional metagenomics to find phage defenses from human and soil microbiomes! Congrats to first author @luis840alberto.bsky.social ! www.cell.com/cell-host-mi... (1/3)

🦠🧍‍♀️From bacterial to human immunity. We report in @science.org the discovery of a human homolog of SIR2 antiphage proteins that participates in the TLR pathway of animal innate immunity. Co-led wt @enzopoirier.bsky.social by D. Bonhomme and @hugovaysset.bsky.social www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

1/10 New pre-print(s) from the Sternberg Lab in collaboration with Leifu Chang's Lab! We uncover the unprecedented molecular mechanism of CRISPR-Cas12f-like proteins, which drive RNA-guided transcription independently of canonical promoter motifs. Full story here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Excited to share that my work in the @aaronwhiteley.bsky.social lab describing chaperone-mediated phage sensing by a bacterial NLR-related protein is out in @plosbiology.org!

My lab’s first preprint! We used functional metagenomics to identify phage defenses in human and soil microbiomes. We scaled these selections while maintaining accuracy, enabling us to examine 9 habitats for defense elements against 7 phages. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 1/10

Three must read papers for PhD students. #scisky #PhD #science #research #academicsky 1. The importance of stupidity in scientific research Open Access journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/...

Out in NAR, AntiDefenseFinder & our "systematic" analysis of inhibitors of antiphage systems wt Bondy-Denomy lab led by @ftesson.bsky.social and E. Huiting. Not so "systematic" as very few known, fun stuff on MGE, antidefense islands and cool phages exaptations! academic.oup.com/nar/advance-...

Wow - bluesky! 📈 🦠 Please help me amplify a special faculty search. We're looking for someone in "Microbial Systems Biology" to join me and @kreynoldslab.bsky.social at UTSW Sys Bio / Bioinformatics. There is an empty lab space right next to us waiting for you! apply.interfolio.com/154339 1/4

Oh boy! @harmitmalik.bsky.social is on bluesky?!? It's getting real! I can feel the added gravitas.

Come be my colleague! I've been very, very happy at UTSW Micro. Supportive environment. Strong ambition. Strong empathy. Excellent resources. jobs.utsouthwestern.edu/job/20847915...

🚨My department is HIRING🚨 Microbiology & Molecular Genetics at University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine invites applicants for tenure-track microbiology faculty at the Assistant or Associate Professor level. Our scope is broad, we seek creative colleagues! More info: tinyurl.com/PittMMG-Jobs

Come be my colleague! The Bioinformatics Dept at UT Southwestern has a new TT faculty position open in microbial systems biology, broadly defined: apply.interfolio.com/132461

I’m really excited to share our new pre-print “Genome-wide Characterization of Diverse Bacteriophages Enabled by RNA-Binding CRISPRi”, with co-first author Muntathar Al-Shimary  from the Doudna and the newly-minted Cress labs! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...