PhD student in Sean Eddy’s lab! I like introns, phages, fermentation, and stamps.
Liana Merk
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Phages invented sgRNAs before humans!! 🧬
Obviously, for mischief… 😈
Loved seeing this story unfold!
🎉 New year, NEW PREPRINT!
Bacteria exhibit astonishing genetic diversity, but where do new genes come from?
My best friend Arya Kaul (/labmate in the @baym lab) investigates how advantageous deletions can spawn new genes - "deletion-born fusions." 🧵:
This is it!!! This is the work I never want to stop hearing about. Kepler’s creativity and curiosity really shine through in this paper. Give it a read and enjoy 😎
Great new story from Sophie Helaine and Molly Sargen!
www.helainelab.com
This was a really fun and interesting Molecule of the Month to do! Check out the article to see even more elaborate RNA-only structures.
🚀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 (🧵)
Excited to see our work out in Science today! Using machine learning to identify prokaryotic immune systems www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
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.
Everyone's least favorite lab mate
Liana Merk
Dr. Indra Gonzalez Ojeda gave a great thesis defense this morning, including some wisdom for starting PhD students, or frankly, anyone.
Kranzusch Lab
Rafael Pinilla-Redondo (Rafa)
Dorentina Humolli
What is the best strategy to win any contest?
Eliminate your opponents of course.
Recently, my friend @fernpizza.bsky.social showed how plasmids compete intracellularly (check out his paper published in Science today!). With @baym.lol, we now know they can fight.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Janet Iwasa
Peter DeWeirdt
Kenneth Loi
Everyone's least favorite lab mate
Novel genes arise from genomic deletions across the bacterial tree of life https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.05.697752v1
