kranzuschlab.bsky.social
Kranzusch Lab
@kranzuschlab.bsky.social
250 followers 100 following 38 posts
Harvard Medical School, Dana Farber Cancer Institute https://kranzuschlab.med.harvard.edu
kranzuschlab.med.harvard.edu
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doudna-lab.bsky.social
Doudna Lab @doudna-lab.bsky.social · 6d
"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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Reposted by Kranzusch Lab
mfwhite2.bsky.social
Malcolm White @mfwhite2.bsky.social · 6d
My pleasure @erinedoherty.bsky.social and @benmorehouse.bsky.social - for me this was the stand-out discovery of the last year in the field
erinedoherty.bsky.social
Erin Doherty @erinedoherty.bsky.social · 6d
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
mfels.bsky.social
Max Fels @mfels.bsky.social · 6d
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
benadler.bsky.social
Ben Adler @benadler.bsky.social · 6d
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
benmorehouse.bsky.social
Ben Morehouse @benmorehouse.bsky.social · 6d
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
symbionticism.bsky.social
Seth Bordenstein @symbionticism.bsky.social · 8d
"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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kranzuschlab.bsky.social
Kranzusch Lab @kranzuschlab.bsky.social · 8d
>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.farnunglab.com
Lucas Farnung @lucas.farnunglab.com · 9d
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
dijiang319.bsky.social
Di Jiang @dijiang319.bsky.social · 9d
@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
helenbrabs.bsky.social
Helen Brabham @helenbrabs.bsky.social · 9d
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
mblokesch.bsky.social
Melanie Blokesch @mblokesch.bsky.social · 11d
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
danafarbernews.bsky.social
Dana-Farber News @danafarbernews.bsky.social · 11d
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
computingcaitie.bsky.social
Caitie McCafferty @computingcaitie.bsky.social · 14d
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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Reposted by Kranzusch Lab
wormsrock.bsky.social
Matt Rockman @wormsrock.bsky.social · 13d
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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kranzuschlab.bsky.social
Kranzusch Lab @kranzuschlab.bsky.social · 12d
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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kranzuschlab.bsky.social
Kranzusch Lab @kranzuschlab.bsky.social · 12d
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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kranzuschlab.bsky.social
Kranzusch Lab @kranzuschlab.bsky.social · 12d
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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kranzuschlab.bsky.social
Kranzusch Lab @kranzuschlab.bsky.social · 12d
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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kranzuschlab.bsky.social
Kranzusch Lab @kranzuschlab.bsky.social · 12d
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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Reposted by Kranzusch Lab
markjmandel.bsky.social
Mark Mandel @markjmandel.bsky.social · 13d
Join us on Friday at noon for a great seminar from Tera Levin @teralevin.bsky.social! @uwmadisonmmi.bsky.social
Announcement: Medical Microbiology & Immunology Seminar Series, September 26, 12:00 pm, MSB 1520. "The Evolution of Immunity and Pathogenesis within Environmental Microbial Battlegrounds". Dr. Tera Levin, University of Pittsburgh.
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kranzuschlab.bsky.social
Kranzusch Lab @kranzuschlab.bsky.social · 15d
The mechanism of STING NF-κB signaling has remained a mystery. An exciting new study from the Paludan lab now uses data throughout animal STING evolution to provide new answers – including isolating white blood cells from turtles and carp!

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
STING signals to NF-κB from late endolysosomal compartments using IRF3 as an adaptor - Nature Immunology
Here the authors show how the DNA-sensing cGAS–STING pathway activates NF-κB and inflammatory gene expression with delayed kinetics via post-Golgi endolysosomal signaling.
www.nature.com
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Reposted by Kranzusch Lab
martinsteinegger.bsky.social
Martin Steinegger 🇺🇦 @martinsteinegger.bsky.social · 17d
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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kranzuschlab.bsky.social
Kranzusch Lab @kranzuschlab.bsky.social · 20d
Cell death plays important roles in antiviral immunity across all kingdoms of life. Great panel discussion in @natsmb.nature.com from leading experts in the field highlight open mysteries in how and why cell death functions:

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
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Reposted by Kranzusch Lab
adi-gajigan.bsky.social
Andrian Gajigan @adi-gajigan.bsky.social · 20d
Naiavirus: an enveloped giant virus with a pleomorphic, flexible tail
nature.com/articles/s41467-025-63463-6
Naiavirus: an enveloped giant virus with a pleomorphic, flexible tail - Nature Communications
Rodrigues and Queiroz et al. report the discovery of Naiavirus, the largest enveloped virus, isolated from a Brazil biome. With an oval capsid and flexible tail, its giant genome holds many novel gene...
nature.com
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Reposted by Kranzusch Lab
julsportell.bsky.social
Júlia Portell Montserrat @julsportell.bsky.social · 21d
My first first-author paper is out!🎉
Here we propose a model where a silencing complex, PIWI*, assembles on target RNAs to recruit effectors and shut down transposon activity.
Huge thanks to the Brennecke and Plaschka labs, especially Julius and Clemens, and all co-authors!
juliusbrennecke.bsky.social
Julius Brennecke @juliusbrennecke.bsky.social · 21d
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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