Structural basis of antiphage defence by an ATPase-associated reverse transcriptase

@jerrintgeorge.bsky.social

I am happy to share our work on the mechanism of prokaryotic immunity by a reverse transcriptase associated with an SMC-family ATPase, now published in @natcomms.nature.com
🔗 nature.com/articles/s4146…
(🧵 on the bioRxiv version ⬇️)

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...

New from our lab in @narjournal.bsky.social:
We dissect the folding dynamics of a fundamental element of RNA secondary structure—a stem-loop—at single-molecule and microsecond resolution.
doi.org/10.1093/nar/... 1/5

Words cannot describe how excited I am to share the findings from the second half of my postdoc in @aaronwhiteley.bsky.social's lab where we discover that bacteria use functional amyloids to defend themselves from predatory bacteria. rdcu.be/euu5Y. See thread for details on this epic adventure 1/.

We wrote a review on Transposable Elements (TEs) and almost all aspects of TE silencing and their roles in biological processes & disease.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

New Preprint!! Alejandro González-Delgado accomplished a major feat on this one: ported retron recombineering, which we love so much in E. coli, into 14 new bacterial species via a massive collaborative effort involving 9 labs!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Exciting work from the Guarné lab indicating how the elusive TnsE pathway of prototypic Tn7 recognizes DNA replication features using an asymmetric dimer to integrate multiple signals at DNA replication forks linking target recognition to transposase recruitment doi.org/10.1093/nar/...

1/10 New pre-print(s) from the Sternberg Lab in collaboration with Leifu Chang's Lab! We uncover the unprecedented molecular mechanism of CRISPR-Cas12f-like proteins, which drive RNA-guided transcription independently of canonical promoter motifs.
Full story here:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

We're thrilled to share the published version of our DRT9 story, online today @nature.com! Congratulations to all authors!

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

@science.org 🧫🧬❄️🔬 Molecular basis of influenza ribonucleoprotein complex assembly and processive RNA synthesis | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
@yiweichang.bsky.social www.yiweichanglab.org @jiwasa.bsky.social #virology #Influenza #Cryo-EM #StructuralBiology #RNA #polymerase

A beautiful discovery by Joel Tan and Philip Kranzusch, out today in Nature:

A DNA-gated molecular guard controls bacterial Hailong anti-phage defence

Congrats Joel and Philip! Was a pleasure to contribute to this discovery together with Sarah Melamed

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

I am thrilled to share the first manuscript from the Wiles lab! We present "Phollow", an in vivo phage-tagging approach that enables direct observation of phage outbreaks with single-virion resolution by live imaging. Here some highlights 👇 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Check out our new story led by @aesully98.bsky.social describing how bacteria turn immune evasion against phage! In collaboration with @benmorehouse.bsky.social lab, we discover that bacteria guard their nucleotide second messenger pool using a nucleotidyltransferase related to Cas10/CRISPR enzymes

Interested in phage defenses that natively block lytic phage used in therapies?

Or do you want to figure out if a phage has a modified genome?

Meet the END-nucleases, an enzyme family that can broadly restrict phages with many diverse modifications. From talented post-doc Wearn-Xin Yee!

I am super excited to share our work uncovering the structure and mechanism of an ATPase-associated reverse transcriptase (RT) involved in prokaryotic antiviral defense, now available as a preprint on bioRxiv!🧬🦠🔬
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
🧵👇

1/ Transposable elements are often called "jumping genes" because they mobilize within genomes. 🧬
But did you know they can also jump 𝘣𝘦𝘵𝘸𝘦𝘦𝘯 cells? 🤯
Our new study reveals how retrotransposons invade the germline directly from somatic cells.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
A short thread 🧵👇