(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...

New preprint! 🚨 Phage proteins don't act alone. Phages rely on homooligomerisation to assemble identical protein subunits into functional forms. But figuring out those exact configurations experimentally is tough. Learn about our approach in our new preprint! 👇 (1/n) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Beyond thrilled that our paper ‘Co-migration of hundreds of microbial species over metres drives selection and promotes non-motile hitchhikers’ has been accepted in Nature Communications! 🎉🦠 (1/n) www.nature.com/articles/s41...

New paper out! 🔈 Genomic Characterization of the RyC collection: 50 Multidrug Resistant Clinical Isolates of Escherichia coli and Klebsiella spp. 50 MDR gut isolates, 2 sequencing platforms, 4 “omes,” and 1 mission: provide a resource to decode AMR and MGE dynamics www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

1/8 🚨 New preprint from the @sternberglab.bsky.social & @martinjinek.bsky.social labs! CRISPR-associated transposases (CASTs) insert large DNA cargoes at precise genomic locations — no double-strand breaks needed.

Like a prophage being awakened from its slumber, the phage field has seen a lot of renewed activity during the last decade. Check out our new @natrevmicro.nature.com review on the temperate phage life cycle here to stay up-to-date 🧫🦠 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Phage encodes a sponge protein blocking bacterial TIR-Caspase immune signaling, inhibiting type IV Thoeris. Discovered through phage mating assays. PMID:41968157, Nat Commun 2026, @NatureComms https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-71527-4 #Medsky #Pharmsky #RNA #ASHG #ESHG 🧪

The paper on my Ph.D. work is fully online! We used a ribozyme that barcodes 16S rRNA to track the transduction range of phage P1 in a synthetic community and real wastewater communities, while diving deeper into the unique range conferred by P1s two tail fibers. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I’ve started my SNSF Ambizione Group Leader position at the University of Zurich 🧬 We will study plasmid evolution, plasmid interactions, and CRISPR-Cas systems to better understand antibiotic resistance spread. Very grateful to everyone who supported me along the way.

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 🫶

What if multireplicon plasmids are not an oddity, but an evolutionary strategy? We found that they are common, more mobile, broader-host-range, and enriched in AMR. Even more interesting: their assembly doesn’t look random. 👀 Paper preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Thread below!🧵👇

Very happy to share our recent preprint: “An Lsr2-like xenogeneic silencer confers immunity against AT-rich bacteriophage infection” www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-9... @fz-juelich.de; @hhu.de; @spp2330.bsky.social

I’m thrilled to share an update to our work on bacterial NACHT domain containing proteins! In our last preprint, we reported that bNACHT11 is activated by multiple phage proteins. We’ve now expanded this work with structural insight and investigation of programmed cell death following activation.

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/

Our lab is proud to present our latest work harnessing Bridge Recombinase for genome-scale editing in diverse bacteria, microbiome editing, and programmable horizontal gene transfer.

🎉 New in @plosbiology.org: Temperate phages of Klebsiella pneumoniae show capsule-driven host tropism — but how? The working assumption was depolymerases: enzymes that chew through the bacterial sugar capsule. Turns out that's not the whole story. 🧵 journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

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.

Phage community: our plasmids for executing phage transposon mutagenesis are now on AddGene and I would love for you to try it out! It is powerful for ID'ing all essential genes and knocking out all non-essentials in a single experiment :) New exp here: www.addgene.org/browse/artic...

🎉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...

Thanks Aaron for a great community resource!

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

Feels like this paper on protein-templated DNA synthesis by a natural enzyme warrants some comment. So here's a 🧵. /1 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Now online! 2'3'-cGAMP-induced membrane shearing promotes broad antiphage immunity

I am so excited to share our new findings with you! We provide the structural evidence for a direct protein-to-DNA information pathway, showing how a bacterial enzyme 'reads' its own structure to 'write' DNA. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Very proud of this work and all the efforts from my team and collaborators on this! You can now use DGRs for in vivo targeted hypermutagenesis in E. coli. We also included some early proof of concept in Yeast thanks to @seth-shipman.bsky.social !

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/...

Delighted to share our latest work on gene transfer agents (GTAs). We found a lysis control hub which allows GTAs to escape their bacterial host cells and transfer DNA 🧬 between bacteria. Thanks to @tunglejic.bsky.social, all co-authors, and our amazing collaborators! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Excited to share that our review: “𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗶𝗻𝗳𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝗴𝘂𝘁 𝘃𝗶𝗿𝗼𝗺𝗲: 𝗸𝗻𝗼𝘄𝗻𝘀, 𝘂𝗻𝗸𝗻𝗼𝘄𝗻𝘀, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗮𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘂𝗲𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗳𝘂𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝘀𝘁𝘂𝗱𝗶𝗲𝘀” written together with Nataliia Kuzub has just been published in 𝗘𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴. Check the 𝗽𝘂𝗯𝗹𝗶𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 here and see the thread below: 👇 doi.org/10.1016/j.en...

Excited to share our new paper out today in @science.org 🎉 We show that HGT via natural competence drives diversification of chromosomal integrons in V. cholerae 🤩 Below a 🧵 on key findings incl. background on natural competence in V. cholerae 1/ #microsky #phagesky www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

I'm hiring my first postdoc! Apply by 20/4/26, position #20443. Seeking an environmental microbiologist with experience in metagenomics (preferably viromics) and molecular biology. Experience with targeted metabolomics is a plus. international.au.dk/about/profil...

PostDoc position available! (links in post below) Feel free to share!

Postdoc position available in St Andrews for a structural biologist: www.vacancies.st-andrews.ac.uk/Vacancies/W/...

The phage nucleus synergizes with an anti-defense protein to resist bacterial immunity: Cell Reports www.cell.com/cell-reports...

Clever screening strategy to uncover anti-RNA phage defenses! 🔎🧬

Repurposing anti-phage defenses to differentially arrest the viral lifecycle reveals the regulatory logic of a parasitic satellite https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.04.03.716414v1

Whenever I presented Phold, I was frequently asked "can you do the same beyond phages?" We ( @oschwengers.bsky.social @linsalrob.bsky.social @binomicalabs.org et al) finally did it with Baktfold github.com/gbouras13/ba... www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Nucleoid-associated proteins sense phage-induced genome damage to elicit abortive infection https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.04.06.716658v1

Latest from the lab! Between clinical S. aureus, most gene transfer mechanisms are blocked, yet lateral transduction remains highly efficient. Restriction modification-defective strains act as gateways for horizontal gene transfer, enabling DNA flow across populations. rdcu.be/fbNQK

📣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.

Excited to see our work out in Science today! Using machine learning to identify prokaryotic immune systems www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

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_...

Please remember that the International Symposium on Plasmid Biology (ISPB 2026) will take place 7–11 September 2026 in Berlin, Germany! A great opportunity to meet, reconnect, and engage with the global plasmid biology community. 🤝 plasmid-biology-2026.de

And the preprint is out! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... We compared plasmid conjugation in liquid and on solid across 13 AMR plasmids with different types of conjugative pili.

The PhageExpressionAtlas just made it to bioRxiv. Visually explore the transcriptomes of phage-host interactions or harness the database for analysis across infections! Please leave feedback, which functionalities/data you find missing. Preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... #phagesky #microsky

Hey #Phagesky [Ph]ans! My first work with the Penadés lab is out! Come read how arbitrium-coding phages sense non-cognate Arbitrium signals from other phages to influence their lysis-lysogeny decisions. www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

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...