Aude Bernheim

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...

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.

Our story describing the Panoptes bacterial immune defense system is now finally peer-reviewed and published today! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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/...

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...

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…

Flagellar gliding in choanoflagellates Freire-Delgado and Brunet discover a new mode of cell motility in choanoflagellates, the closest relatives of animals. Under mild confinement, choanoflagellate move over surfaces without cell deformat...

New short paper from our lab @currentbiology.bsky.social, in which we discover of a new mode of cell motility for choanoflagellates: flagellar gliding. www.cell.com/current-biol... - A 🧵

Same ! I'll invite you to come give a seminar so we'll have time to chat :)

Come join the Nomburg Lab in lovely Vienna! As our first listing, we have a research technician position available to help support the research and operations of the lab. If you're passionate about virology and innate immunity, apply here!

aithyra.onlyfy.jobs/job/3njyn4ey

Congratulations! Welcome to Europe :)

Mapping the transcriptional landscape of algal resistance to viral infection reveals a core expression program Algal blooms and their demise by viruses drive global-scale ecological processes in the ocean. These blooms form the foundation of marine food webs, regulate microbial communities, and shape biogeoc...

📣 We are excited to share our latest paper, led by @taliashaler.bsky.social! We explore the transcriptional basis of #microalgae resistance to #viral_infection and identified a core group of resistance-related genes. >>
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#New_Phytologist #Marine_Biology #Viruses

Uridine as a potentiator of aminoglycosides through activation of carbohydrate transporters Uridine boosts aminoglycoside treatment efficiency against antibiotic-susceptible as well as antibiotic-resistant E. coli strains.

So excited our antibiotic potentiation story is out 🤩 Led by the extraordinary @manonlang.bsky.social with @fox-science.bsky.social & @amazeld.bsky.social +amazing collaborators @immunobladder.bsky.social @imaneelmeouche.bsky.social 🦠 We believe it can make a difference in #AMR infections!

Viral effectors trigger innate immunity across the tree of life | Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences Viruses are ubiquitous biological entities that exert immense selective pressures on their hosts, driving the evolution of diverse innate immune mechanisms across all domains of life. While innate imm...

Effector-triggered immunity (ETI) indirectly detects pathogen effector activity on the host cell.

Kevin Barthes,Tanita Wein and I examine how prokaryotic and eukaryotic viruses deploy similar effectors that activate ETI, underscoring its central role across the tree of life.

tinyurl.com/mr3a3xh2

YAYYYY, Immune systems of choano !!!!
Beautiful to see how knowledge about bacterial immune systems illuminate immunology in diverse organisms with the always incredible biochemistry and structural approaches of @kranzuschlab.bsky.social.
Wonderful work @yao-li.bsky.social 👏

Pioneer of bacterial genetics: the legacy of Esther Miriam Lederberg Abstract. Esther Miriam Lederberg's brilliant scientific lifework, from the discovery of phage lambda, bacterial conjugation, and replica plating, provided

Thanks to the authors of this piece. I love reading about the work of inspiring pioneers in bacterial genetics. Crazy amount of discoveries!

Pioneer of bacterial genetics: the legacy of Esther Miriam Lederberg
academic.oup.com/genetics/adv...

Synthetically designed anti-defense proteins overcome barriers to bacterial transformation and phage infection Bacterial defense systems present considerable barriers to both phage infection and plasmid transformation. These systems target mobile genetic elements, limiting the efficacy of bacteriophage-based t...

📢 New preprint alert!
We designed synthetic proteins that can block bacterial immune systems, allowing phages + plasmids to overcome natural defenses.
This could transform phage therapy + genetic engineering.
Here’s what we found 🧵
Preprint🔗: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Synthetically designed anti-defense proteins overcome barriers to bacterial transformation and phage infection Bacterial defense systems present considerable barriers to both phage infection and plasmid transformation. These systems target mobile genetic elements, limiting the efficacy of bacteriophage-based t...

Preprint: De-novo design of proteins that inhibit bacterial defenses

Our approach allows silencing defense systems of choice. We show how this approach enables programming of “untransformable” bacteria, and how it can enhance phage therapy applications

Congrats Jeremy Garb!
tinyurl.com/Syttt
🧵

👏 Huge congrats to @audeber.bsky.social, group leader and head of our Molecular Diversity of Microbes lab, on being named a 2025 Vallee Scholar! Her pioneering work on ancestral immunity opens new perspectives for biomedical innovation. 🔬🌍

@valleefoundation.bsky.social

#Science #Immunity

Super cool study revealing the diversity of viral sponges.

I love the scale of the work with great experimental assays underlying a systematic approach!

Congrats to @romihadary.bsky.social and @reneechang.bsky.social for this beautiful piece of science.

Great study indeed, demonstrating how functional amyloid mediate antiphage defense.

Probably many more systems out there working that way!

Amyloids in bacterial antiphage defence Nature Microbiology - Bacterial prions form amyloids in response to phage infection and induce cell death to prevent viral replication, similar to the processes in fungi and across the tree of life.

Very interesting work from Ibarlosa and colleagues regarding functional amyloid forming proteins in prokaryotic immunity.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Check out our News & Views summary of the work as well!
rdcu.be/eBHxh

Awesome, congratulations!!!

Exciting times ahead!

Today marks the first day of the Loeff Lab at Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands 🇳🇱. I’m thrilled to begin this new adventure and continue exploring microbial defense mechanisms and their applications through an integrative structural biology approach.

Characterization of an amyloid-based antiphage defence system in Escherichia coli - Nature Microbiology Prion-like proteins in Escherichia coli trigger an abortive infection mechanism in response to phage infection—a process similar to amyloid-mediated immune signalling in fungi and animals.

#NewResearch

Prion-like proteins in Escherichia coli trigger an abortive infection mechanism in response to phage infection—a process similar to amyloid-mediated immune signalling in fungi and animals.

#MicroSky 🦠

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

A human homolog of SIR2 antiphage proteins mediates immunity via the Toll-like receptor pathway Key actors of mammalian immunity originated from bacterial antiphage systems. The full extent of immune system conservation between bacteria and eukaryotes is unknown. Here, we show that the silent in...

#NatMicroPicks

Ancient Proteins, Modern Immune Insights! 🦠

A conserved protein family member activates inflammation via the Toll-like receptor pathway in mammals highlighting new aspects of human immunity.

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

Manipulation of the nucleotide pool in human, bacterial and plant immunity - Nature Reviews Immunology Modification of the nucleotide pool is emerging as key to innate immunity in animals, plants and bacteria. This Review explains how immune pathways conserved from bacteria to humans manipulate the nuc...

We wrote a review on the free nucleotide pool as a central playground in human, bacterial, and plant immunity – now out in Nature Reviews in Immunology

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

Was fun to write this piece with Dina Hochhauser!

Here is a thread to explain the premises

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Expression level of anti-phage defence systems controls a trade-off between protection range and autoimmunity - Nature Microbiology The authors examine several defense systems and find that increased expression enhances their protection range, albeit at a cost of autoimmunity.

Expression level of anti-phage defence systems controls a trade-off between protection range and autoimmunity
By Nitzan Aframian and Avigdor Eldar.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Kiwa is a membrane-embedded defense supercomplex activated at phage attachment sites Zhang, Todeschini, and Wu et al. show that the bacterial defense system Kiwa senses phage attachment at the membrane and assembles a transmembrane complex that halts infection by blocking phage DNA re...

Thrilled to see our Kiwa story out today! A membrane-associated supercomplex that senses infection and blocks replication and transcription.

www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Huge congratulations to Yi and Zhiying for bringing it home, to Thomas for starting us off, and to all the collaborators.

Very proud to have our lab’s first work published in @cp-cellhostmicrobe.bsky.social!

In this work, we use functional metagenomics to find phage defenses from human and soil microbiomes!

Congrats to first author @luis840alberto.bsky.social !

www.cell.com/cell-host-mi...

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Recurrent acquisition of nuclease-protease pairs in antiviral immunity Antiviral immune systems diversify by integrating new genes into existing pathways, creating new mechanisms of viral resistance. We identified genes encoding a predicted nuclease paired with a trypsin...

Excited to finally share this work!
We noticed a pair of genes - a nuclease and a protease - shuffles between antiviral systems. We show how proteolysis activates the nuclease, triggering defense in known and unknown immune contexts.
tinyurl.com/2uwwy4ty

Manipulation of the nucleotide pool in human, bacterial and plant immunity - Nature Reviews Immunology Modification of the nucleotide pool is emerging as key to innate immunity in animals, plants and bacteria. This Review explains how immune pathways conserved from bacteria to humans manipulate the nuc...

NEW Review from @soreklab.bsky.social @dinahoch.bsky.social explains how immune pathways manipulate the availability of nucleotides, chemically modify nucleotides to generate immune signalling molecules, and produce altered nucleotides that poison viral replication
#immunosky #microsky #phagesky