Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

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Kranzusch Lab @kranzuschlab.bsky.social · 17h

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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Stephan Gruber @gruberlab.bsky.social · 19h

How do SMC complexes load onto DNA to get ready for loop extrusion?

@roisnehamelinf.bsky.social & co discovered that Wadjet, an SMC complex involved in bacterial DNA immunity, performs some impressive molecular gymnastics 🤸‍♂️🤸‍♂️🤸‍♂️.

Check out the new paper: www.cell.com/molecular-ce...

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Sorek Lab @soreklab.bsky.social · 9h

Congratulations Philip for the incredibly well deserved Blavatnik award!

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Dana-Farber Cancer Institute @danafarber.bsky.social · 1d

Congratulations to Philip J. Kranzusch, Ph.D., Professor of Cancer Immunology and Virology, who was one of three scientists awarded top honors at the 2025 Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists.

Watch to learn more about his work: bit.ly/4pZUDkF

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Marcel Dickmanns | 🌿❄️🔬 @madic.bsky.social · 2d

You can get MSAs directly from AlphaFold DB now (alphafold.ebi.ac.uk). I also missed the FoldSeek implementation, which lets you search for structurally similar proteins direktly.

This saves some clicking around. Neat!

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Malcolm White @mfwhite2.bsky.social · 8d

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 · 8d

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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Ben Morehouse @benmorehouse.bsky.social · 8d

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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Ben Adler @benadler.bsky.social · 8d

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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Emmanuele Severi @emmseveri.bsky.social · 10d

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

#phagesky #phage defence

Molecular mechanisms of CBASS phospholipase effector CapV mediated membrane disruption - Nature Communications

CBASS systems trigger bacterial suicide via membrane disruption. Here, authors show that effector CapV relocates to the cell pole upon sensing 3’3’-cGAMP, where it cleaves phospholipids and ruptures membranes, revealing a filament-dependent activation mechanism for antiviral defense

www.nature.com

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Bethany Brookshire @beebrookshire.bsky.social · 13d

In reporting this piece on the new trial for a Huntington's treatment, I was struck by one thing in particular:

The joy.

One of my sources wept for joy. He has spent his entire career studying this disease, he said it was the happiest day. www.sciencenews.org/article/hunt...

Huntington's progression slowed by experimental gene therapy

An experimental gene therapy slowed Huntington’s by up to 75 percent in a small clinical trial. While not a cure, it may give patients longer lives.

www.sciencenews.org

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Sarah Lempriere @sarahlempriere.bsky.social · 14d

I found this fascinating! Termites build and tend a fungal garden. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Gardening strategies of termite farmers

Termites use microbe-infused soil to protect a fungal symbiont

www.science.org

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Kranzusch Lab @kranzuschlab.bsky.social · 14d

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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Diego del Alamo @delalamo.xyz · 15d

Still boggles my mind that we can leave frameworks as-is and only edit CDRs and still reliably get nM binders. Complete opposite of what I would have expected given how hard it is to graft CDRs from one FW to another (such as humanizing mouse mAbs). First RFantibody and now this

Arc Institute @arcinstitute.org · 15d

In another preprint from the @brianhie.bsky.social Lab and @synbiogaolab.bsky.social, they introduce Germinal, a generative AI system for de novo antibody design.

Germinal produces functional nanobodies in just dozens of tests, making custom antibody design more accessible than ever before.

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Asaf Levy @asaflevylab.bsky.social · 16d

A recent cool preprint by John Whitney's lab on a new family of antibacterial proteins secreted by Gram-positive bacteria that enter and kill a broad spectrum of bacteria. Cell entry is receptor-independent and relies on cleavage by a co-secreted protease and the PMF.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Proteolytically activated antibacterial toxins inhibit the growth of diverse Gram-positive bacteria

Many species of bacteria produce small-molecule antibiotics that enter and kill a wide range of competitor microbes. However, diffusible antibacterial proteins that share this broad-spectrum activity ...

www.biorxiv.org

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Martin Steinegger 🇺🇦 @martinsteinegger.bsky.social · 19d

MMseqs2-GPU sets new standards in single query search speed, allows near instant search of big databases, scales to multiple GPUs and is fast beyond VRAM. It enables ColabFold MSA generation in seconds and sub-second Foldseek search against AFDB50. 1/n
📄 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
💿 mmseqs.com

GPU-accelerated homology search with MMseqs2 - Nature Methods

Graphics processing unit-accelerated MMseqs2 offers tremendous speedups for homology retrieval from metagenomic databases, query-centered multiple sequence alignment generation for structure predictio...

www.nature.com

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Alexis Verger 🧬🧫🧪 @alexis-verger.cpesr.fr · 20d

De novo design of All-atom biomolecular interactions with RFdiffusion3 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

De novo Design of All-atom Biomolecular Interactions with RFdiffusion3

Deep learning has accelerated protein design, but most existing methods are restricted to generating protein backbone coordinates and often neglect interactions with other biomolecules. We present RFd...

www.biorxiv.org

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Nature Methods @natmethods.nature.com · 21d

GPU-accelerated MMseqs2 offers tremendous speedup for homology retrieval, protein structure prediction with ColabFold, and protein structure search with Foldseek. @martinsteinegger.bsky.social @milot.bsky.social @machine.learning.bio

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

GPU-accelerated homology search with MMseqs2 - Nature Methods

Graphics processing unit-accelerated MMseqs2 offers tremendous speedups for homology retrieval from metagenomic databases, query-centered multiple sequence alignment generation for structure predictio...

www.nature.com

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Julius Brennecke @juliusbrennecke.bsky.social · 22d

PIWI clade Argonautes are essential for transposon silencing. Without them, animals are sterile due to massive transposon activity.

But how does piRNA-guided target interaction translate into silencing?

PhD student Júlia Portell Montserrat has an intriguing answer

www.cell.com/molecular-ce...

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bioRxiv Microbiology @biorxiv-microbiol.bsky.social · 24d

YprA family helicases provide the missing link between diverse prokaryotic immune systems https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.15.676423v1

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Ofer Yizhar @oyiz.bsky.social · 27d

Excited to share our latest paper - now out in @science.org - we showed how oxytocin modulates maternally-directed behavior in young mice (P15).

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Sorek Lab @soreklab.bsky.social · 28d

Phage "satellites" that produce capsids but have no genes to produce tails have puzzled scientists for a long time. These are abundant as prophages in bacteria, but it was unclear how they can infect without tails

Now, Penadés & co show that they hijack tails from other phages. Incredible!

José R Penadés @jrpenades.bsky.social · Sep 9

Thrilled to share our two latest papers with the @tcostalab.bsky.social
lab! In the first, we uncover a new mechanism of satellite transfer: cf-PICIs hijack tails from diverse phages to spread across species.
@imperialcollegeldn.bsky.social
www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Chimeric infective particles expand species boundaries in phage-inducible chromosomal island mobilization

Capsid-forming PICIs (cf-PICIs) produce their own capsids and exploit phage tails from unrelated species to transfer their DNA across bacterial hosts. This tail piracy enables broad dissemination and ...

www.cell.com

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Jörg Vogel @jorg-vogel-lab.bsky.social · 29d

Looking for a new approach to studying or eliminating phages? Check out our study introducing anti-phage ASOs (antisense oligos) out in @Nature today. nature.com/articles/s4158…

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José Cerca @naturalselection.bsky.social · Sep 10

Cool preprint! 🚨

Lanternfish lack MHC I and functional MHC II — yet still produce antibodies! 🧬🐟

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

The genome of the Glacier lanternfish shows loss of MHC I and II function and provides insight into evolution of lanternfish immune systems

Lanternfishes (Myctophidae) are one of the most abundant and species diverse orders inhabiting the mesopelagic zone. Exploitation of marine resources has recently attracted increased interest. It is t...

www.biorxiv.org

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Zamin Iqbal @zaminiqbal.bsky.social · Sep 10

Sometimes you meet absolutely incredible bioinfo-magicians.
It was a huge privilege when @shenwei356.bsky.social
joined our group for a year on an @embl.org sabbatical.
While here, he developed a new way of aligning to
millions of bacteria, called LexicMap 1/n
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Efficient sequence alignment against millions of prokaryotic genomes with LexicMap - Nature Biotechnology

LexicMap uses a fixed set of probes to efficiently query gene sequences for fast and low-memory alignment.

www.nature.com

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José R Penadés @jrpenades.bsky.social · Sep 9

Thrilled to share our two latest papers with the @tcostalab.bsky.social
lab! In the first, we uncover a new mechanism of satellite transfer: cf-PICIs hijack tails from diverse phages to spread across species.
@imperialcollegeldn.bsky.social
www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Chimeric infective particles expand species boundaries in phage-inducible chromosomal island mobilization

Capsid-forming PICIs (cf-PICIs) produce their own capsids and exploit phage tails from unrelated species to transfer their DNA across bacterial hosts. This tail piracy enables broad dissemination and ...

www.cell.com

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