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Kranzusch Lab @kranzuschlab.bsky.social · 2d

Thank you to the Blavatnik Family Foundation and The New York Academy of Sciences for honoring our research uniting human innate immunity and bacterial anti-phage defense at @danafarber.bsky.social @harvardmicro.bsky.social @harvard.edu

bit.ly/4pZUDkF

blavatnikawards.org/news/items/t...

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Ben Morehouse @benmorehouse.bsky.social · 10d

Our story describing the Panoptes bacterial immune defense system is now finally peer-reviewed and published today! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The Panoptes system uses decoy cyclic nucleotides to defend against phage - Nature

The Panoptes antiphage system defends bacteria by detecting phage-encoded counter-defences that sequester cyclic nucleotide signals, triggering membrane disruption and highlighting a broader strategy of sensing immune evasion through second-messenger surveillance.

www.nature.com

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Sadie Antine @sadieantine.bsky.social · 5d

Congrats Max!!

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Max Fels @mfels.bsky.social · 10d

Are viruses capable of regulating protein synthesis in the nuanced way of cellular organisms? Kinda! I’m excited to share some of my postdoc work that leveraged giant DNA viruses to address this question.

Giant DNA viruses encode a hallmark translation initiation complex of eukaryotic life

In contrast to living organisms, viruses were long thought to lack protein synthesis machinery and instead depend on host factors to translate viral transcripts. Here, we discover that giant DNA virus...

www.biorxiv.org

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Florian Schur @schurlab.bsky.social · 16d

Huntingtin binds and bundles F-actin!
Thrilled to team up with the Humbert (Sorbonne Université) and Song (KAIST) labs on this discovery.
We had a blast doing cryo-ET on this unexpected complex — and now so many new questions lie ahead!
#TeamTomo #CryoET #HTT #actin

doi.org/10.1126/scia...

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Kranzusch Lab @kranzuschlab.bsky.social · 16d

You’ve heard of ubiquitination, meet deazaguanylation: Doug Wassarman in our lab discovered phage defense pathways have co-opted Q nucleobase biosynthetic enzymes to catalyze a new form of protein conjugation chemistry @science.org

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

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Jason Nomburg @jnoms.bsky.social · Aug 15

Very happy to share that I will be starting my lab at AITHYRA in October! My lab will use structural bioinformatics and functional genomics to understand the function of viral proteins, with a special emphasis on understanding how viruses subvert innate immunity.

AITHYRA Research Institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences @aithyra.bsky.social · Aug 15

Welcome JASON NOMBURG! With great pleasure we announce that Jason Nomburg is one of the Starting Principal Investigators LS who will join AITHYRA in October 2025. Jason wants to understand the function of proteins in the virome.
More information: www.oeaw.ac.at/aithyra/rese... #AITHYRA #StartingPI

Jason Nomburg = Science-lover + enthusiastic + driven + sarcastic + positive

@jnoms.bsky.social‬‬

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Kranzusch Lab @kranzuschlab.bsky.social · Sep 5

How can we understand the earliest events in evolution of eukaryotic immunity? @yao-li.bsky.social reports incredible molecular fossils of complete bacterial-like operons in eukaryotes that illuminate how animal immunity was first acquired from anti-phage defense

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

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abrahamlabhms.bsky.social @abrahamlabhms.bsky.social · Aug 9

Excited to share our new @natmicrobiol.nature.com paper revealing the most complete arenavirus glycoprotein complex (GPC) structures to date 🤩 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Molecular organization of the New World arenavirus spike glycoprotein complex - Nature Microbiology

Cryo-EM structures of the full-length Junin virus and Machupo virus spike glycoprotein complexes stabilized in the prefusion conformation. Analyses reveal features that regulate glycoprotein pH-depend...

www.nature.com

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Artem Nemudryi @artemnemudryi.bsky.social · Jul 25

First preprint from the Nemudryi Lab! 🍾

In this work, we link antiviral immunity in bacteria and humans by showing that homologs of human Schlafen nucleases protect bacteria from phages.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Bacterial Schlafens mediate anti-phage defense

Human Schlafen proteins restrict viral replication by cleaving tRNA, thereby suppressing protein synthesis. Although the ribonuclease domain of Schlafen proteins is conserved across all domains of lif...

www.biorxiv.org

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Kranzusch Lab @kranzuschlab.bsky.social · Jul 24

Many components of human immunity evolved from ancient pathways in bacteria. A beautiful story from @audeber.bsky.social‬ @enzopoirier.bsky.social‬ leverages this evolutionary connection to discover SIRal as a signaling protein in animal TLR-mediated innate immunity.

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

A human homolog of SIR2 antiphage proteins mediates immunity via the Toll-like receptor pathway

Key actors of mammalian immunity originated from bacterial antiphage systems. The full extent of immune system conservation between bacteria and eukaryotes is unknown. Here, we show that the silent in...

www.science.org

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Kranzusch Lab @kranzuschlab.bsky.social · Jul 17

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...

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Sadie Antine @sadieantine.bsky.social · Jul 17

Welcome to the biochemical world of anti-phage nuclease-NTPases!🤩🤩

Kranzusch Lab @kranzuschlab.bsky.social · Jul 15

Starting the lab Bluesky account to share a preprint from @aragucci.bsky.social and @sadieantine.bsky.social‬ that reveals molecular principles shared across diverse nuclease-NTPase anti-phage defense systems in bacterial immunity (1/7)

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Nuclease-NTPase systems use shared molecular features to control bacterial anti-phage defense

Bacteria encode an enormous diversity of defense systems including restriction-modification and CRISPR-Cas that cleave nucleic acid to protect against phage infection. Bioinformatic analyses demonstra...

www.biorxiv.org

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Sorek Lab @soreklab.bsky.social · Apr 30

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!

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Sadie Antine @sadieantine.bsky.social · May 1

DNA-gated ion channel🤯 Congrats Joel!!

Joel MJ Tan @joelmjtan.bsky.social · Apr 30

Excited to share my PhD work in the Kranzusch Lab published in @nature.com!

Two key discoveries:
- Nucleotides can act as negative regulators of antiviral immunity
- Ion channel activation is gated by DNA

Thank you to our all collaborators! @soreklab.bsky.social

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A DNA-gated molecular guard controls bacterial Hailong anti-phage defence - Nature

Nature - A DNA-gated molecular guard controls bacterial Hailong anti-phage defence

www.nature.com

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Melanie Blokesch @mblokesch.bsky.social · Apr 25

Join the Blokesch lab (@EPFL) as a postdoc in Molecular Microbiology 🤩
Study Vibrio cholerae defense systems (phage/plasmid) in a dynamic, collaborative environment in Lausanne close to Lake Geneva in 🇨🇭!
Please visit my lab's webpage for details about the position and how to formally apply.

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Amanda Heidt @scattercushion.bsky.social · Apr 23

🧪Exciting news out today in the world of Mendelian genetics (a statement for a niche crowd if ever there was one). Read my piece at @nature.com if, like me, you are surprised to hear we hadn't figured this out a long time ago.

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Century-old genetics mystery of Mendel’s peas finally solved

Researchers pinpoint the genes responsible for the final three pea traits studied by the famed citizen scientist.

www.nature.com

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Sadie Antine @sadieantine.bsky.social · Apr 17

Thank you so much for organizing such an incredible conference!!

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Aude Bernheim @audeber.bsky.social · Apr 11

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!

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Sadie Antine @sadieantine.bsky.social · Apr 9

Yay Felix congrats!!!

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Felix Steinruecke @felixsteinruecke.bsky.social · Apr 6

I’m excited to share my first paper in the Farnung lab, in which we report four cryo-EM structures of the human DNA replication machinery engaging with and progressing into a nucleosome.

Lucas Farnung @lucas.farnunglab.com · Apr 6

🔬 New from the Farnung Lab: We established a fully in vitro reconstituted chromatin replication system and report the first cryo-EM snapshots of the human replisome engaging nucleosomes. Brilliant work by @felixsteinruecke.bsky.social with support from @jonmarkert.bsky.social! tinyurl.com/replisome

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Sadie Antine @sadieantine.bsky.social · Apr 7

Check out Doug’s awesome work!!

bioRxiv Microbiology @biorxiv-microbiol.bsky.social · Apr 7

Deazaguanylation is a nucleobase-protein conjugation required for type IV CBASS immunity https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.04.06.647259v1

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Maya Voichek @mayavoichek.bsky.social · Mar 17

1/ Transposable elements are often called "jumping genes" because they mobilize within genomes. 🧬
But did you know they can also jump 𝘣𝘦𝘵𝘸𝘦𝘦𝘯 cells? 🤯
Our new study reveals how retrotransposons invade the germline directly from somatic cells.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
A short thread 🧵👇

Drosophila follicle showing retrotransposons (pink & yellow) expressed in somatic cells infecting the oocyte

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Martin Steinegger 🇺🇦 @martinsteinegger.bsky.social · Feb 6

Foldseek-Multimer—now published in @naturemethods.bsky.social—our fast multimer search tool, enables complex comparisons against the full PDB in seconds. It comes with BFMD, a collection of 300K+ predictions gathered from community projects.
📄 nature.com/articles/s41...
🌐 search.foldseek.com

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Alexander Harms @aharms485.bsky.social · Feb 6

🚨 🧬 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 🧵

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