Brianna is an incredible scientist and mentor. See below for a great opportunity for anyone seeking an immersive science experience before starting graduate school.
Our work on bacterial Schlafens in phage defense is out today @natmicrobiol.nature.com!
Check out the final version here:
rdcu.be/e7Bmz
We are looking for postdocs and students to expand our team! Official postings are coming soon.
Please reach out if you're interested!
#phage #phagesky #microsky
🚨Preprint! Happy to share the research from my PhD “Genome delivery of a contractile tailed phage and its superinfection exclusion mechanism”. We use cryoEM to study the genome ejection of the phage T4, revealing how the tape measure protein regulates the process.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
We found a viral Trojan Horse: a virus can hide inside another virus.This one surprised us: deltaviruses don’t just borrow a helper virus. They can travel inside it.
A literal Trojan Horse “virus-in-a-virus” route into cells. 🤯 Kudos to 1st author @viroscope.bsky.social and co-authors !
Check out this new preprint discovering a cool mechanism for activation of the CBASS antiphage system-- proteolytic cleavage by the phage protease! Explains why I couldn't isolate any spontaneous phage mutants that escape CBASS.
Super cool. Can't wait to read in depth 🤓 Congrats Sam & Philip! 🥂
A must-read if you’re interested in bacterial immune system activation
See full details and thread from @hobbslabutah.bsky.social here:
Sam's results build on beautiful findings from many labs including @aaronwhiteley.bsky.social @kevincorbett.bsky.social @soreklab.bsky.social @jbdsf.bsky.social @mfwhite2.bsky.social Chen and Marraffini explaining viral escape mutations and CBASS recognition of late replication and virion assembly
Protease recognition is a dominant trigger of bacterial cGAS (CD-NTase) immune sensing that explains activation of thousands of CBASS defense operons across diverse bacteria (>24% of all known sequences) including major models of immunity like Vibrio DncV, Enterobacter CdnD, and E. coli CdnG
After >10 years of our lab studying bacterial cGAS-like enzymes, @hobbslabutah.bsky.social finally reconstitutes viral sensing in vitro and discovers how these ancient receptors sense phage protease enzymes to detect virion assembly and activate antiviral immunity
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
@nitzantal.bsky.social @romihadary.bsky.social @soreklab.bsky.social use structure prediction and in silico binding site analysis to discover viral immune evasion proteins! Exciting for our lab @reneechang.bsky.social @riveralopz.bsky.social to help with this project.
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Out today: We discovered new viral proteins that target immune signaling molecules, solely based on their AlphaFold-predicted shapes
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Congrats Nitzan Tal and coauthors! Thank you Kranzusch lab for the fun collaboration!
Linking below previous thread on our findings
Congratulations @benmorehouse.bsky.social !
Stunning new structural analysis and mechanism for Tmn anti-phage defense by @fnobrega.bsky.social
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Excited to share this short video about our lab's work! Thank you Harvard Medicine News Team! @harvardmicro.bsky.social @hhmi-science.bsky.social @harvard.edu
❤️🎥😃https://www.youtube.com/shorts/GFM3KLZCDps
➡️ preprint from the lab! Bacteria have loads of antiviral defences in their mobile genetic elements (MGEs). So when MGEs move between bacteria, the defences move with them, generating a fast turnover of defences in bacteria. But what about the antiviral defence turnover in the MGEs themselves? 🤔
🧵👇
Cell death is a fundamental mechanism of antiviral immunity across diverse organisms, including bacteria. As my final PhD project with @jbdsf.bsky.social, I was curious whether cell death is required for successful immunity with the ancient cGAS pathway known as ‘CBASS.’
Spoiler – the answer is no!
Elegant study from @erinhuiting.bsky.social @jbdsf.bsky.social on CBASS phage inhibition without loss of cell viability. Especially interesting to see this phenotype with a CapV membrane-targeting effector and evidence for 3'3'-cGAMP transport!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
CBASS limits bacteriophage production while maintaining cell viability in Pseudomonas aeruginosa https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.24.707611v1
A 5-hydroxymethylcytosine DNA glycosylase provides defense against T-even bacteriophages https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.25.707755v1
SNIPE is a widespread bacterial defence system that exploits the spatial organization of phage genome injection to specifically target viral DNA, distinguishing self from non-self in prokaryotic immune systems @nature.com @mitpress.bsky.social
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Tomorrow at the #SystemsVirologyJournalClub, Joel Tan (@joelmjtan.bsky.social) will present his work with Philip Kranzusch (@kranzuschlab.bsky.social) on a DNA-gated molecular guard that control bacterial anti-phage defence.
Paper: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40306316/
1/5
Happy by a recent biorxiv pre-print about DARNA (PD-T7-3) anti-phage defense system. This system is activated by binding to ssDNA, presented by phage SSB, to cleave tRNA in the anti-codon loop.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Check out largest scale analysis of bacterial DNA polymerases! Diversity and distribution of bacterial DNA polymerases url: academic.oup.com/nar/article/...
Next one in a storm of preprints from our lab's amazing scientists.. Recent-ex-postdoc, #newPI @cathyhernandez.bsky.social studied thermal ecology of marine bacteria isolated near New Haven. Turns out, response of this bacterium to temperatures is shaped by prophages!
#phagesky #microsky
New research by @danafarbernews.bsky.social’s Amy Lee, PhD, and @mfels.bsky.social in @cp-cell.bsky.social reveals that giant DNA viruses encode a distinct & functional IF4F translation-initiation complex to drive protein synthesis, blurring the line between living cells and viruses. bit.ly/4rS3Uew
New research featured in @nature.com from Sonomi Yamaguchi of @danafarbernews.bsky.social’s @kranzuschlab.bsky.social discovers “p3diT” as a nucleotide immune signal in bacteria and suggests similar signals may function as negative regulators in human immunity.
Read more: bit.ly/3MTjLL6
Congratulations to Ben Morehouse @benmorehouse.bsky.social and the other 2026 Michelson Prize Awardees. All five newly funded projects are incredibly exciting areas of immunology!
www.michelsonmedicalresearch.org/news/michels...
Free readcube link to her paper: rdcu.be/e4A7X
Congratulations to Sonomi Yamaguchi for her paper at @nature.com. Sonomi discovered Clover defense and explained how nucleotide signals control each step of viral sensing, immune regulation, and viral restriction – named for her beautiful "four-leaf" structures 🍀
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
