David Bikard

🧬🔬🦠🧫🧪@science.org Escherichia coli with a 57-codon genetic code | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Happy that the final version of our Lamassu work @yli18smc.bsky.social is now out:

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

Thanks again to our awesome collaborators @mblokesch.bsky.social and David and co and Mark Szczelkun and @steven-shaw.bsky.social and the DCI Lausanne @fbm-unil.bsky.social

Antiviral reverse transcriptases reveal the evolutionary origin of telomerase Defense-associated reverse transcriptases (DRTs) employ diverse and distinctive mechanisms of cDNA synthesis to protect bacteria against viral infection. However, much of DRT family diversity remains ...

1/10 Genome maintenance by telomerase is a fundamental process in nearly all eukaryotes. But where does it come from?

Today, we report the discovery of telomerase homologs in a family of antiviral RTs, revealing an unexpected evolutionary origin in bacteria.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Perfect timing in the field for a beautiful review on NAD+ in bacterial immunity by @hugovaysset.bsky.social and @audeber.bsky.social @cp-molcell.bsky.social

#MicroSky

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

Two intensive sampling periods of oyster-associated vibrio and their phage, 4 years apart, and many surprises. Despite being washed by the Atlantic, wide tides, and vibrio (almost?) disappearing most of the year, we can find the exact same virulent phages 4 years later (down to 0 SNP)! preprint👇

Excited to share our preprint led by Carlos Voogdt et al

We developed new genetic tools & genome-wide libraries for species of the Bacteroidales order; constructed saturated barcoded transposon libraries in key representatives of three genera.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Targeted protein evolution in the gut microbiome by diversity-generating retroelements Diversity-generating retroelements (DGRs) accelerate evolution by rapidly diversifying variable proteins. The human gastrointestinal microbiota harbors the greatest density of DGRs known in nature, su...

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... Another breakthrough work on the fascinating biology of Diversity Generating Retroelements by Jeff Miller’s team

Manipulations génétiques, virus créés par l’IA, bactéries miroirs : quelles limites à la recherche scientifique ? Elles pourraient aider à lutter contre les cancers… mais aussi détruire toute trace de vie sur Terre ! Ce sont les bactéries miroirs. En avez-vous déjà entendu parler ? Et la vie miroir, ça vous dit q...

Entretien pour Brut sur la vie Miroir, l'ingénierie génétique et l'éthique de ces recherches: www.brut.media/fr/videos/sc...

Blavatnik National Awards

Blavatnik National Awards

Blavatnik National Awards

Blavatnik National Awards

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

Illustration depicting a bacterium under assault by phage. The bacterium “sees” phage immune evasion proteins and protects itself using a newly described antiphage system called Panoptes, named for the many-eyed mythical giant Argus Panoptes. Credit: Clair Huffine Insight Illustrations LLC

Our work on the Panoptes antiphage system is published! Here we find that Panoptes "watches" the cytosol for phage immune evasion proteins–captured in this illustration by Clair Huffine of Insight Illustrations. A beautiful example of the effector triggered immunity paradigm.

The Viral AlphaFold Database of monomers and homodimers reveals conserved protein folds in viruses of bacteria, archaea, and eukaryotes VAD is a Viral AlphaFold Database of protein monomers and homodimers from viruses infecting hosts across the tree of life.

Viral AlphaFold Database (VAD) is live in Science Advances

~27,000 predicted viral protein monomers & homodimers

Conserved folds across bacteria, archaea & eukaryotic viruses

New toxin–antitoxin system KreTA uncovered

Vast “functional darkness” remains uncharted

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

sinon il pourrait bien cesser de s’écarter pour se dresser en une barrière solide devant le spectre qui s’élance et arrêter eux-mêmes la course folle de nos débordements afin de se sauver, eux, ainsi que la culture et la civilisation !"

Par effroi et peut-être aussi par répulsion pour elle, encore est-il heureux qu’ils s’écartent, ..

Et si les autres peuples s’écartent encore devant la troïka qui galope à tombeau ouvert, ce n’est peut-être point par respect pour elle, comme le voulait le poète, mais simplement par effroi, notez-le bien...

Je viens de tomber sur ce passage des Frères Karamazov au sujet de la Russie qu'on aurait dit être écrit pour aujourd'hui: "Et il y a longtemps déjà que, dans toute la Russie, on tend les mains et on supplie que soit arrêtée cette course furieuse qui n’épargne rien. ..

Finally out, such an awesome piece of work, very proud of this one: www.cell.com/cell-systems... #MicroSky

A miniature CRISPR–Cas10 enzyme confers immunity by inhibitory signalling - Nature Panoptes, an anti-phage defence system against virus-mediated immune suppression, is revealed.

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...

For decades, human genome editing has been limited to small, localized modifications.

Today, in a new paper published in @science.org , researchers from Arc's Hsu lab show that bridge recombinase technology is capable of large-scale genomic rearrangements in human cells.

Recent paper from the lab studying predictors of phage cocktail efficacy against complex clinical Pseudomonas populations

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/epdf/10....

Led by Rosanna Wright with extraordinary MSc (PhD) student Maisie Czernuska

YouTube video by DRM News Poland Confronts Russia Over Estonia Airspace Violation, “Your Empire Will Not Be Rebuilt” | AC1G

Most well spoken and eloquent “fuck you” I’ve ever heard.

youtu.be/2fgLtZJWNJ4?...

Phenotypic heterogeneity of capsule production across opportunistic pathogens | mBio The polysaccharidic capsule is present in ~50% of species across the bacterial phylogeny, including all ESKAPE microorganisms, the six most significant multidrug-resistant (MDR) nosocomial pathogens. It is also an important virulence factor and a major ...

Delighted to share our recently published work!
Ever wondered how Klebsiella (and others) deals with capsule production’s costs ?
The paper: journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...
Thread👇

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...

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

Phages with a broad host range are common across ecosystems - Nature Microbiology Proximity-ligation-based sequencing from 111 samples and 5 environments reveals that a substantial proportion of phages infect multiple species.

You like phages ? In this publication, we use metaHiC and our new version of the MetaTOR pipeline to challenge the traditional view of phages with a narrow host range.
@rkoszul.bsky.social @natmicrobiol.nature.com @cnrs.fr @institutpasteur.bsky.social

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

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…

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 ...

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...

We discovered a new horizontal gene transfer mechanism: tail-less cf-PICIs hijack free phage tails extracellularly, forming infectious chimeric virions that drive both intra- and inter-species transfer among bacteria. @jonaszpatkowski.bsky.social @tcostalab.bsky.social @jrpenades.bsky.social

Join EMBL as a research group leader in AI in biology. EMBL AI is our new initiative aiming to exploit the full potential of ML/AI-based approaches to advance our understanding of the most complex system in the known universe - life on Earth.
embl.wd103.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/EMBL/j...
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Some good stuff in here 😊

Exciting work! Well done @zeynepbaharoglu.bsky.social @amazeld.bsky.social @manonlang.bsky.social

🌎👩‍🔬 For 15+ years biology has accumulated petabytes (million gigabytes) of🧬DNA sequencing data🧬 from the far reaches of our planet.🦠🍄🌵

Logan now democratizes efficient access to the world’s most comprehensive genetics dataset. Free and open.

doi.org/10.1101/2024...