Malcolm White

Resistance mutation supply modulates the benefit of CRISPR immunity against virulent phages Only a fraction of bacterial genomes encode CRISPR-Cas systems but the selective causes of this variation are unexplained. How naturally virulent bacteriophages (phages) select for CRISPR immunity has...

New preprint!

Ever wondered why only a fraction of genomes encode CRISPR immunity? 🧬 🦠

Turns out CRISPR is rarely beneficial against virulent phages, being most beneficial against those for which resistance mutations are rare!

An epic effort by Rosanna Wright

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

My pleasure @erinedoherty.bsky.social and @benmorehouse.bsky.social - for me this was the stand-out discovery of the last year in the field

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...

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...

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/...

Cover page of the book chapter titled "Conceptual Foundations of Cell Mortality" by Pierre M. Durand and Grant Ramsey. The page includes a table of contents with sections: Introduction; Microbes, Cells, Death, and Mortality; Two Kinds of Microbial Cell Death: Endogenous and Exogenous (with subsections on distinguishing causes and endogenous microbial death); Conceptualizations of Programmed Cell Death; Endogenous Death, Programmed Cell Death, and Microbial Cell Fate (with a subsection on alternative terms for programmed cell death in microbes); and Toward an Overarching Framework of Cell Mortality, followed by References. Durand, P.M., Ramsey, G. (2025). Conceptual Foundations of Cell Mortality. In: Current Topics in Microbiology and Immunology. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/82_2025_328

Do notions like “programmed #cell death” (PCD) and the endogenous–exogenous death distinction apply to microbes? In our new chapter, we argue that an evolutionary concept of PCD extends across the tree of life, including microbial taxa 👇📃 link.springer.com/chapter/10.1... #evosky #HPbio #philsci 🦠 🔬

I can see I’m going to have to get a subscription to the National Observer

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…

AI could be used for REF, says Royal Society president - Research Professional News Research Excellence Framework is “not best use of human brainpower”, Adrian Smith tells Lords committee

AI could be used for REF, says Royal Society president.

The president of the Royal Society has suggested that artificial intelligence could ease the burden placed on academics by the Research Excellence Framework and peer review.

www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-c...

How long before:
AIs generate hypotheses, decide on priorities, carry out experiments, analyse data and disseminate results. Each of these is already happening to some extent.
Humans do the washing up and waste disposal.
If we are good at our jobs AIs may prioritise research on AMR...

The beginning of the end for PIs?

Some good stuff in here 😊

Congratulations Martin, smart decision by the ERC

This area is developing at breakneck speed - big advance here

Gabija restricts phages that antagonize a conserved host DNA repair complex Anti-bacteriophage systems like restriction-modification and CRISPR-Cas have DNA substrate specificity mechanisms that enable identification of invaders. How Gabija, a highly prevalent nuclease-helica...

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

#phagesky #phage

Meta banned the Epoch Times from advertising. Then it accepted $300k in new ads targeting Canadians In the past 12 months, The Epoch Times has spent over $300,000 on Facebook and Instagram ads promoting political surveys to collect the emails of Canadians using a series of anonymous pages.

New story out today. I traced three anonymous Facebook pages back to the Epoch Times, which is banned by Meta. The pages were branded as 'educational research centres' and advertised surveys to collect political opinions and contact data from Canadians. They were seen over 22 million times.

Type I CRISPR-Cas immunity primes type III spacer acquisition CRISPR-Cas systems are diverse, with microbes harboring multiple classes and subtypes. Type I DNA-targeting and type III RNA-targeting systems often c…

Ever wondered why some bacteria have multiple CRISPR-Cas systems? Our new study led by Leah Smith shows how type I CRISPR systems can promote the acquisition and retention of new spacers into a co-occuring type III system. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Ímar at the Edinburgh Festival last night 👌

Research position in Microbial Pharmacology and Population Biology (282139) | UiT The Arctic University of Norway Job title: Research position in Microbial Pharmacology and Population Biology (282139), Employer: UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Deadline: Wednesday, August 27, 2025

Feels surreal to say but: I'm hiring! If you are or know anyone interested in looking at the evolution of phage resistance using A. baumannii and natural transformation, then this might be for you
www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...

and not a hydrothermal vent in sight.

Giant bacteria!

Interesting papers just keep coming this summer!

A timely review - so many recent discoveries in this sphere!

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.

1/16 New pre-print from the Sternberg Lab!
We uncover how temperate phages can use RNA-guided transcription factors to remodel the flagellar composition of their bacterial host and enhance their fitness.
Find the preprint and full story here: tinyurl.com/mshwjd77

This work was led by Haotian Chi @haotianchi.bsky.social and Ville Hoikkala @villehoikkala.bsky.social at @uniofstandrews.bsky.social , funded by @erc.europa.eu

Next up from our lab - a ring nuclease with a novel fold which cleaves all cOA species involved in Type III CRISPR defence. It's also found in plasmid and phage genomes, where it presumably functions as an anti-CRISPR.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

New role for HTH DNA binding proteins - sequestering phage DNA!

The anti-DS proteins just keep coming. Bdi1/2 particularly intriguing given the broad specificity. TadIII-1 is more peptide than protein. Fascinating stuff.

📣 We're hiring! We have a 12-month vacancy for a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with skills in molecular microbiology. See the details and apply here: www.vacancies.st-andrews.ac.uk/Vacancies/W/...

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