I'm really happy to have been granted an @erc.europa.eu Starting Grant! We'll study the molecular principles of RNA phages—from infection to replication to bacterial immunity. Interested in joining? Feel free to reach out! Formal job ads to follow. More info here: tinyurl.com/RIBO-PHAGE #ERCStG

Super excited to receive the ERC starting grant to explore what phage-bacteria interactions can teach us on host-pathogen conflicts 🤩 I'm immensely grateful to my wonderful team and to present and past mentors 🙏

📢 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 out! Together with @reneechang.bsky.social @kranzuschlab.bsky.social and the amazing @soreklab.bsky.social, we explored viral sponges to map their diversity and function. Discovered huge diversity, including sponges that inhibit Pycsar & Type IV Thoeris! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Stoked to finally have a preprint out for Phold, our tool that uses protein structural information to enhance phage genome annotation #phagesky 1/n www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

We wrote a review on the free nucleotide pool as a central playground in human, bacterial, and plant immunity – now out in Nature Reviews in Immunology www.nature.com/articles/s41... Was fun to write this piece with Dina Hochhauser! Here is a thread to explain the premises 1/

1/16 New pre-print from the Sternberg Lab! We uncover how temperate phages can use RNA-guided transcription factors to remodel the flagellar composition of their bacterial host and enhance their fitness. Find the preprint and full story here: tinyurl.com/mshwjd77

🦠🧍‍♀️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/...

Next up from our lab - a ring nuclease with a novel fold which cleaves all cOA species involved in Type III CRISPR defence. It's also found in plasmid and phage genomes, where it presumably functions as an anti-CRISPR. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

A new preprint led by Sonomi Yamaguchi in our lab describes a bacterial anti-phage defense system named Clover that uses nucleotide signals to both activate and inhibit host immunity. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Here we show how the type III signalling molecule SAM-AMP is bound and degraded by a specialised lyase enzyme encoded in cellular and phage genomes. More great work by @haotianchi.bsky.social and the team. @uniofstandrews.bsky.social academic.oup.com/nar/article/...

📢Preprint out! Excited to share my final work from the @soreklab.bsky.social! We mined phage dark matter using structural features shared by anti-defense proteins (viral tools that help phages bypass bacterial immunity) to guide discovery. Found 3 new families targeting immune signaling!

Excited to unveil Boltz-2, our new model capable not only of predicting structures but also binding affinities! Boltz-2 is the first AI model to approach the performance of FEP simulations while being more than 1000x faster! All open-sourced under MIT license! A thread… 🤗🚀

Cool work by Sanasar investigating how bacteria-phage dynamics affect the distribution of antiphage defense systems in the genome www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

We're thrilled to share the published version of our DRT9 story, online today @nature.com! Congratulations to all authors! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Really excited to share our resource and analysis of AlphaFold-predicted monomers and homodimers across viruses and phages. Project driven by fab PhD student @rodai.bsky.social and with our great collaborators Joana Pereira @joanampereira.bsky.social and @ninjani.bsky.social

1/10 Today in @science.org in collaboration with the Liu group we report the development of a laboratory-evolved CRISPR-associated transposase (evoCAST) that supports therapeutically relevant levels of RNA-programmable gene insertion in human cells. drive.google.com/file/d/1I-Ub...

Out in Nature today: A new immune signaling molecule, His-ADPR, is produced by defensive TIR domain proteins in bacteria to protect from phage Joint work with the Tamulaitienė and Kranzusch labs www.nature.com/articles/s41... Congrats Carmel Avraham, Dziugas Sabonis, Renee Chang and co-authors!

Elegant prokaryote-style innate immunity revealed in Nature paper led by 🇱🇹 team Histidine+ADP-ribose = His-ADPR New bacterial “danger” molecule made during phage infection Produced by TIR domains, recognized by Macro domains, and blocked by viral evasion proteins www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I'm happy to share the first publication from my lab @hoerlab.bsky.social, now out in @narjournal.bsky.social! I take a look at the biology of RNA phages, focusing on how meta-omics methods are discovering new RNA phage families and bacterial defense strategies. #PhageSky doi.org/10.1093/nar/...

SPARHA represents a two-component defense system based on a suicidal cellular response, in which activation of the HNH effector by the pAgo sensor leads to filament formation, promoting efficient degradation of invading nucleic acids.

It was an honor for my lab and myself to host the meeting on the Immune Systems of Bacteria. Such a high from all the incredible science and sharing with scientists from the whole world the greatness of Paris in the spring. Vive la science, et vive Paris!

Preprint alert! ✨ In this project that I co-led with @benadler.bsky.social, we show that a miniature CRISPR-Cas10-like enzyme, mCpol, uses a novel inverse signaling mechanism to prevent the spread of viruses that attempt immune evasion by depleting host cyclic nucleotides. Check it out:

Join our favorite microbiology meeting! Fantastic talks, poster sessions, new technologies, and all the hot areas of microbiology in a great environment - experts in cell & systems biology, microbiomes, environment & evolution, pathogenesis, phage & antibiotics DON’T MISS abstract deadline, April 1

Hello BlueSky! Inaugural post here from the Sternberg Lab. We're excited to share our latest work, in which we teamed up with the @WiedenheftLab to study how DRT9 reverse transcriptases provide antiviral immunity. Here’s what we found: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

I am super excited to share our work uncovering the structure and mechanism of an ATPase-associated reverse transcriptase (RT) involved in prokaryotic antiviral defense, now available as a preprint on bioRxiv!🧬🦠🔬 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 🧵👇

Phage satellites are now known to be very diverse, numerous and ancient. They pose many evolutionary, ecological and mechanistic questions. Lots of fun in perspective! Great pleasure to write this review to show it, with @jrpenades.bsky.social @dbikard.bsky.social Kim Seed & John Chen.

we recently found some really neat RNA-guided DNA-cutting systems in phages. Despite remarkable similarities to CRISPR systems, including encoding guide RNAs in arrays, they appear entirely evolutionarily distinct (but definitely related to snoRNAs 🤓) We decided to call them TIGR-Tas systems 🐯

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

New version of DefenseFinder available defensefinder.mdmlab.fr (& cli) Now encompassing 263 systems (+111 this year..!). Thanks @ftesson.bsky.social, DefenseFinder grandmaster. Full list of systems here: defense-finder-models/List_system_article.md at master · mdmparis/defense-finder-models

New online! Self-sacrificing cell death to thwart phage infection

🚨 🧬 Updated preprint on the completed BASEL collection - what's new? Some fun with bacterial immunity and a new P22 relative infecting E. coli K-12. A thread 🧵

Happy to share our latest piece of work on the PARIS bacterial immune system. We performed a detailed characterization of the AriB Toprim nuclease, the effector of PARIS immunity. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

This was a very fruitful collaboration with @ostermanilya.bsky.social 🙌 Thanks to all co-authors, and reviewers who provided us with very constructive comments.

Our paper is finally published in Science! 🎉The HPLC, NMR, MS, purification, and characterization of the new molecule felt like a real detective story. I was especially thrilled to use and reference my grandfather, Lev Osterman's, 1966 paper—he was the main reason I became a scientist.

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...

A nice article in The Scientist explains Jens Hör's discovery of bacteria that conjugate ubiquitin-like proteins to interfere with virus assembly www.the-scientist.com/bacteria-dis...

A machine learning model that discovers new bacterial immune systems An interesting new tool, plus dozens of new defense systems, from the Mike Laub lab

Actinobacteria metabolites made a revolution in medicine, antibiotic golden era started 80 years ago. Now, new anti-phage proteins - will it be revolution again? super cool work from @audeber.bsky.social Congratulations!

Thank you to Nathan P. Bullen and @aaronwhiteley.bsky.social for the beautiful review of our NARPs paper.

🦠Bacteria serve as an amazing reservoir of immune genes for eukaryotes but also of essential cellular functions! ⬇️New exaptation example : euk RNA-guided RNA modification originated from "bridge RNA" IS110 transposons. Led by @hugovaysset.bsky.social and C. Meers from Sternberg lab! rdcu.be/d5ovZ

N&V about papers in @ScienceMagazine: "TIR-mediated immunity: Small molecules unlock broad-spectrum plant resistance" rdcu.be/d5riU ... have elucidated the mechanism by which TIR NADase-derived 2′cADPR and pRib-AMP/ADP activate EDS1–PAD4–ADR1 (EPA) signalling, thereby inducing immune responses.

🚨New review🚨 Evolution and ecology of anti-defence systems in phages and plasmids Link: www.cell.com/current-biol...

Discovery of a new family of viral proteins that sequester immune signaling molecules - by Renee Chang, Philip Kranzusch and co

Exciting times! Our latest preprint is now live 🤩! After nearly 16 yrs of running my lab, I truly believe this is one of the most significant contributions we've made. It offers fresh hypotheses about how pandemic Vibrio cholerae spreads globally. Let’s dive in!🧵..1/n www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Thanks to Arturo Carabias and Guillermo Montoya for the beautiful review of our discovery and especially for the very nice and clear summary figure - I will use it a lot😀

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...