Another amazing discovery from the Sternberg lab 😊 These RT based phage defense systems don't cease to amaze. This time with double RTs 💕
Can't wait to read this in detail. Congrats Megan, Kanta, Hiroshi & Sam et al! 🍻
Great thread below ⤵️
Avigail Stokar-Avihail
AF2BIND: predicting small-molecule binding sites using the pair representation of AlphaFold2 www.nature.com/articles/s4...
Awesome!
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...
www.biorxiv.org
It's amazing to me that even in extensively studies phages like Lambda there are still new things to discover 🧐
Check out the nice article summary by Silverman & @SaharMelamed on a sRNA boosting DNA replication ⤵️
Avigail Stokar-Avihail
Ming Tommy Tang
Now online! Phages communicate across species to shape microbial ecosystems
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...
Excited to share the upcoming EMBO | EMBL Symposium “Metabolic interactions shape ecosystems” 🧬🌍
📍 Heidelberg & online
📅 21–24 July 2026
Abstract deadline: 14 April!
More info & registration: www.embl.org/about/info/c...
#Metabolism #Microbiome #SystemsBiology #Ecology #EMBL #EMBO
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.
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...
Most scientific papers are written for other scientists. We were happy to write for JoLSP, a postdoc initiative, a lay summary of our research on how a tiny viral RNA hijacks bacterial replication machinery.
www.journaloflifesciences.org/archives/157...
#RNA #phages
@hebrewuniversity.bsky.social
dlvr.it
Gallego-del-Sol et al. show that arbitrium-coding phages can sense non-cognate peptide signals from other phages to regulate lysis-lysogeny decisions. This crosstalk affects lysis-lysogeny outcomes of phage infections, mixed lysogenic communities, and polylysogens. Our results demonstrate that crosstalk is an important mechanism that drives phage interactions in microbial communities.
This study highlights that Schlafens are ancient, mechanistically conserved immune effectors that mediate antiviral immunity in organisms ranging from humans to bacteria.
