My second story in Futures! So proud 🥳

#NewResearch Engineered Escherichia coli strains expressing a colibactin antitoxin, ClbS, on the surface prevent the genotoxic effects of colibactin released by genotoxin-producing bacteria in the mouse gut. #MicroSky #SynBio 🦠🧬🔧 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

✨New preprint! 🧵1/4 Excited to share our work on AI-guided design of minimal RNA-guided nucleases. Amazing work by @petrskopintsev.bsky.social @isabelesain.bsky.social @evandeturk.bsky.social et al! Multi-lab collaboration @banfieldlab.bsky.social @jhdcate.bsky.social @jacobsenucla.bsky.social🧬 🔗👇

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...

📢 We have multiple open PhD positions to study bacterial immune systems using cutting-edge cryo-EM, microbiology, and biochemistry in our group! Join us and uncover how bacterial defenses eliminate predators and engineer next-gen biotech tools. 🔥 Apply by Jan 8, 2026 Details: phd.pages.ista.ac.at

Bacteria can sense when a virus starts shredding their genome — by detecting methylated mononucleotides. Here’s the story of how we discovered the Metis defense system 👇 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 🧵

📢 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...

📢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!

🫴 Wow: A bacterial reverse transcriptase synthesizes long poly-A–rich cDNA for anti phage defense: 👇👇👇 @science.org www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Le MMSB propose une mobilité NOEMI Rejoignez l'équipe "Ecologie et Évolution Moléculaire des Phages" qui travaille sur les éléments génétiques mobiles et l'immunité bactérienne. Profil Génétique bactérienne, Écologie microbienne et Evolution expérimentale 🤝Contactez-nous pour rejoindre notre unité!

A new preprint from the lab in collaboration with Feng Jiang. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... This is a thread for you if you're interested in secretion systems, phages, and evolution. The extracellular contractile injection system (eCIS) is a mysterious microbial toxin delivery system.

White smoke, we have a new pope and also 16 new anti-phages systems in sedentary integrons (SCIs) ! In collaboration with the Rocha lab, we show in our new paper that cassettes of these large platforms encode many known anti-phage defenses, and uncovered 16 new ones. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

A minimal CRISPR polymerase produces decoy cyclic nucleotides to detect phage anti-defense proteins https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.03.28.646047v1

Big Fantastic Virus Database (BFVD) version 2 improves 31% of predictions through 12 ColabFold recycles. PAEs and MSAs now also available for download and in the webserver. 🌐https://bfvd.foldseek.com 💾https://bfvd.steineggerlab.workers.dev/ 1/3