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Kranzusch Lab @kranzuschlab.bsky.social · 2d

Differential activation of cGAS in naked mole rats! An exciting addition to our understanding of species-specific mutations tailoring the cGAS-STING pathway in individual organisms

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

A cGAS-mediated mechanism in naked mole-rats potentiates DNA repair and delays aging

Efficient DNA repair might make possible the longevity of naked mole-rats. However, whether they have distinctive mechanisms to optimize functions of DNA repair suppressors is unclear. We find that na...

www.science.org

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Kranzusch Lab @kranzuschlab.bsky.social · 2d

All science arises only because of the shared broader community. I want to especially recognize Rotem Sorek @soreklab.bsky.social Aude Bernheim @audeber.bsky.social our collaborators and the many wonderful labs and scientists in the field bringing together human and bacterial antiviral research!

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Kranzusch Lab @kranzuschlab.bsky.social · 2d

and amazing people sharing science in our lab. Including members who bravely started exploring bacterial cGAS-like enzymes Aaron @aaronwhiteley.bsky.social Carina @oliveiramann.bsky.social James Eaglesham, Wen Zhou, Ben @benmorehouse.bsky.social Brianna Duncan-Lowey, Apurva Govande, Eric Nieminen

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Kranzusch Lab @kranzuschlab.bsky.social · 2d

I am incredibly grateful to my postdoc advisors Jennifer Doudna @doudna-lab.bsky.social and James Berger (berger.med.jhmi.edu) for their constant mentorship and the ideas we started together

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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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Reposted by Kranzusch Lab

Jason McLellan @mclellanlab.bsky.social · 3d

I'm honored to receive a MacArthur Fellowship. As always, I extend my sincerest thanks to all my wonderful mentors, colleagues, collaborators, admins, and trainees who make this work possible. #MacFellow

Texas Science @texasscience.bsky.social · 3d

UT Austin has a new “genius grant” recipient!

Texas Science professor Jason McLellan has been awarded a MacArthur Fellowship — aka the “genius grant” — by The MacArthur Foundation.

#TexasScience @mclellanlab.bsky.social #MacArthurGenius @utaustin.bsky.social
cns.utexas.edu/news/accolad...

Virus Slayer Awarded ‘Genius Grant’ by MacArthur Foundation

The award recognizes Jason McLellan’s work to investigate how viruses infect our cells and to develop new treatments for infectious disease.

cns.utexas.edu

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Reposted by Kranzusch Lab

Doudna Lab @doudna-lab.bsky.social · 9d

"Jane Goodall showed us what a life in science could look like: rigorous discovery paired with fierce advocacy for what you study. She gave the world six decades of groundbreaking research on chimpanzees and their habitats, then turned that knowledge into a global movement for conservation." (1/2)

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Malcolm White @mfwhite2.bsky.social · 9d

My pleasure @erinedoherty.bsky.social and @benmorehouse.bsky.social - for me this was the stand-out discovery of the last year in the field

Erin Doherty @erinedoherty.bsky.social · 9d

And thanks to @mfwhite2.bsky.social for this great perspective on both works! www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Bacteria use a decoy defence molecule to set a trap for viruses

Some bacterial-infecting viruses use ‘sponges’ to mop up defence molecules, but bacteria can fight back by responding when a sponge captures decoy molecules.

www.nature.com

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Reposted by Kranzusch Lab

Max Fels @mfels.bsky.social · 9d

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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Reposted by Kranzusch Lab

Ben Adler @benadler.bsky.social · 10d

Today in @nature.com , we highlight how a cousin of CRISPR-Cas10, mCpol, establishes an evolutionary trap in anti-phage immune systems.

Check out @erinedoherty.bsky.social and my work from @doudna-lab.bsky.social lab here:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A miniature CRISPR–Cas10 enzyme confers immunity by inhibitory signalling - Nature

Panoptes, an anti-phage defence system against virus-mediated immune suppression, is revealed.

www.nature.com

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Reposted by Kranzusch Lab

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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Reposted by Kranzusch Lab

Seth Bordenstein @symbionticism.bsky.social · 12d

"Tick–pathogen–microbiome interactions based on #hologenome-wide analysis" from 16,000 ticks, 48 species, and 8 genera. 👀

Nutritional endosymbionts are prevalent with a new 7,783 bacterial genomes from 1,373 bacterial species. @holobiontbiology.bsky.social

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

Genome-resolved metagenomics reveals microbiome diversity across 48 tick species - Nature Microbiology

Sequencing the genome and microbiome of about 1,500 tick samples from regions across China revealed host–microbe associations in ticks that could have implications for controlling ticks and tick-borne diseases.

www.nature.com

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Kranzusch Lab @kranzuschlab.bsky.social · 12d

>18,000 new genomes of giant DNA viruses! An incredible trove of new genes and insights into evolution of host-virus interactions from @fmschu.bsky.social and @jgi.doe.gov

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

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Reposted by Kranzusch Lab

Lucas Farnung @lucas.farnunglab.com · 12d

New week, new tool: Find our Protein Domain Designer tool to generate publication-ready protein domain diagrams here: domaindesigner.farnunglab.com

Protein Domain Designer tool for the generation of publication-ready protein domain diagrams

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Reposted by Kranzusch Lab

Di Jiang @dijiang319.bsky.social · 12d

@science.org Deazaguanylation is a nucleobase-protein conjugation required for type IV CBASS #immunity | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... ❄️🔬🧬🦠🧫

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Reposted by Kranzusch Lab

Helen Brabham @helenbrabs.bsky.social · 12d

Super excited to see our work on the NLRseek program finally published 🥳 Here we identify new NLRs against major wheat pathogens and present a pipeline for NLR identification. Huge thank you to all of the co-authors for bringing this work together! @matthewmoscou.bsky.social rdcu.be/eIGvv

Discovery of functional NLRs using expression level, high-throughput transformation and large-scale phenotyping

Nature Plants - Rapid discovery of functional resistance genes is enabled by a high-expression signature and high-throughput transformation. This approach identified 31 new resistance genes for...

rdcu.be

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Reposted by Kranzusch Lab

Melanie Blokesch @mblokesch.bsky.social · 14d

What an amazing accomplishment of my colleague/lab neighbor Andrea Ablasser & her team => Citation Laureate on their incredible work on the cGAS-STING pathway together w/ Zhijian ‘James’ Chen & Glen Barber. Big congrats 🥳!!

clarivate.com/citation-lau...

2025 Citation Laureates in Physiology or Medicine | Nobel-Class Researchers | Clarivate

Explore the 2025 Citation Laureates in Physiology or Medicine — Nobel-class researchers recognized for groundbreaking discoveries that have advanced human health and biomedical science.

clarivate.com

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Reposted by Kranzusch Lab

Dana-Farber News @danafarbernews.bsky.social · 15d

New research published in @science.org led by @danafarber.bsky.social’s Doug Wassarman and @kranzuschlab.bsky.social reveals new protein chemistry named deazaguanylation that controls activation of immunity.

Read more: bit.ly/3WeKsLb

Doug Wassarman of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

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Reposted by Kranzusch Lab

Caitie McCafferty @computingcaitie.bsky.social · 18d

I am excited to share our new preprint on the CAGE complex, a mysterious hollow protein complex that I first saw years ago while surveying Tetrahymena ciliary lysate www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #cilia #protistsonsky 🧬🧪

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Matt Rockman @wormsrock.bsky.social · 17d

C. elegans is a real animal and we set out to understand how it comes to have its distinctive biogeography. Its ancestral center of diversity is in the higher elevation forests of Hawaii. Its closest relatives are spread across east Asia. Did they travel from Asia? [Preprint 🧵]

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Kranzusch Lab @kranzuschlab.bsky.social · 16d

NDG is the initial step in our model of a new form of protein conjugation chemistry. Preprints from Doug + Angela Gao and the Bae lab also link NDG to QatABCD defense, highlighting further roles for Q biosynthetic enzymes in immunity

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

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Kranzusch Lab @kranzuschlab.bsky.social · 16d

In phage defense, an N-terminal glycine residue in the substrate protein takes the place of ammonia in canonical Q biosynthetic chemistry to create a protein-nucleobase conjugation modification named N-terminal deazaguanylation or NDG

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Kranzusch Lab @kranzuschlab.bsky.social · 16d

Why defense islands would encode nucleobase biosynthetic machinery was a mystery. We searched in vain for modified nucleotides as signals in CBASS defense… until Doug surprisingly discovered a Q-like base directly conjugated to the N-terminus of a substrate protein!

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Kranzusch Lab @kranzuschlab.bsky.social · 16d

In addition to ACGU, "Q" is a modified nucleobase required for tRNA maturation in bacteria, plants, and animals. Since 2020, type IV CBASS phage defense islands were known to encode proteins with homology to the enzymes QueC (Q modification) and TGT (Q installation)

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

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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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