My postdoc Joseph Matheson and I were sending off my former undergraduate student Minkyu Kim to graduate school at USC and giving him some advice over a beer. I thought it might be useful to share.

The LeRoux lab (leroux-lab.org) is looking for a postdoc! Interested in discovering and understanding mechanisms of phage/bacterial interactions in the opportunistic pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa? Apply here: wustl.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/External/job/W…. Please retweet!

Got a chance to share our story on a podcast with Matt Daugherty! Also my first time speaking on a podcast 🥳 Check it out here - open.spotify.com/episode/1NLk2i…

Happy to have played a small part in this exciting story! We looked hard for transposons but found NONE! Instead the Toxoplasma genome is littered with sequences derived from its organelles. Much like TEs, these elements can be coopted to regulate genes. Evolution finds a way!

Our paper on CARD8-mediated sensing of infection by SARS-CoV-2 (and other coronaviruses and picornaviruses) is now out in PLOS Biology ! journals.plos.org/plosbiology/ar……Huge congratulations to all involved! More info and thanks to our many collaborators are in the thread below:

Very proud of Sofia Delgado-Rodriguez's first first-author paper (with a lot of help from Andy Ryan)! And it made the cover! This is part of a fantastic special issue on ADP-ribosylation organized by Anthony Leung and The Fehr Lab.

🤔 What is the relationship between bacterial & animal immunity? In our new manuscript, we look across diverse eukaryotes, uncovering the evolutionary origins of three families of antiviral proteins: CD-NTases (including cGAS), STINGs, and Viperins. 1/ biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

Three of the more costly and frequently used reagents in molecular biology are rolling circle amplification (RCA) mix, chemically competent MachOne (or other E. coli) cells, and Gibson assembly mix. Postdoc Julian Willis—who is starting his own lab in the UK soon—developed

A lifelong dream! 🏆💚 You always have to believe! I'm only 20 years old, everything is happening too fast, but I'm very proud of how we work every day. Thank you everyone for your support, from the bottom of my heart! 🙌🏻😍 Wimbledon 📸 Getty

Like knights of old, Toxoplasma wears a suit of armoured plates. But both share a problem, how to release internal payloads when it’s time? Toxo secretes dense granules as post-invasion weapons that control their hosts. But how do they get out? (1/6) biorxiv.org/cgi/content/sh…

UC San Diego BioSci alum Brandon Güell was recognized for “Treefrog Pool Party,” a stunning photo that showcases his mastery of capturing rare moments in nature. See a slideshow of his photos and learn more about his journey: go.ucsd.edu/3rVQGUE

A conserved complex of microneme proteins mediates rhoptry discharge in #Toxoplasma: Sebastian Lourido Whitehead Institute MIT Biology show that three #apicomplexan-specific #microneme proteins form a complex essential for #rhoptry discharge and invasion embopress.org/doi/full/10.15…

Our newest paper was published today, a capstone to our work on gain-of-function evolution, phage-bacterial interaction network formation, and microbial diversification.

New work from our lab! Awesome Wellcome ECA fellow Megan Sloan found iron-mediated post-transcriptional regulation in Toxoplasma, potentially mediated by the moonlighting-metabolic enzyme aconitase. Any comments would be very welcome!

Thrilled to share my recently published work describing another curious case of inter-domain horizontal gene transfer (HGT), this time involving nematodes! HGT is just 😍🤯🔥 Many thanks to Matt Daugherty and a wonderful collaboration with Dengke Ma! embopress.org/doi/full/10.15…

A champion for basic science research, our institute director Ruth Lehmann

Check out our recent piece talking about the 'execution gap' between genAI modeling and real-world applications in chemistry and materials science. We also provide thoughts on paths forward to balance development with risk and mitigation strategies.

OUT NOW 👉 CRISPR-based functional profiling of the Toxoplasma gondii genome during acute murine infection🐁 Chris Giuliano Sebastian Lourido Whitehead Institute nature.com/articles/s4156…

Stay tuned for MPM XXXV!