🔥The 9th Round of Easy Loan, Earn $40 Reward is in progress❗️ ⏰ Promotion Period: January 15th - Feburary 15th, 2025 👉 Register now and check more details at gate.io/campaigns/358

¿Do you want to know how we do conferences in Puerto Rico? 🇵🇷 Check this out #NDiSTEM2022 #SACNAS2022

2nd Day of the SACNAS Conference in PR 🇵🇷 We have been able to connect with other chapters, especially ones from the DFW area, and make plans for future collaborations 💪🏽 Some of our officers also got to present their research #2022NDiSTEM

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🎉It's Gilliam Day! 🎉 We're so excited to announce the 2024 #GilliamFellows! These 50 adviser-student pairs are being recognized for their outstanding research as well as their commitments to advancing equity and inclusion in science. hhmi.org/news/hhmi-name…

I am incredibly honored and excited to have received this award and become a Gilliam Fellow. Couldn’t have done it without the support, training and mentorship of Kevin Forsberg 🦠Aquí un jibarito🇵🇷 agradecido representando!Congrats to all the other #GilliamFellows UTSW Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences

Congratulations to Luis Rodríguez-Rodríguez, UTSW Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences student in Molecular Microbiology, and adviser Kevin Forsberg who were named among 50 pairs named to HHMI’ #GilliamFellows Program 2024 cohort! Learn more about the fellowship: bit.ly/4ePbf9j

Your dedication, hard work, & perseverance have paid off, and we’re celebrating this remarkable and well-deserved accomplishment with you. Congrats, ⁦Luis Rodríguez-Rodríguez⁩, on your selection as an ⁦HHMI⁩ Gilliam Fellow. We’re very proud of you. utsouthwestern.edu/ctplus/stories…

We are proud to see the accomplishments of Luis Rodríguez-Rodríguez, PhD candidate and #GilliamFellow in the Kevin Forsberg lab at UT Southwestern Medical Center, highlighted at HHMI. Once again, congratulations to you and Dr. Forsberg on this well-deserved recognition. #GilliamFellows UTSW Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences

Three of us got Puerto Rico 🇵🇷 on the map again at HHMI 🎉 We rocked it at this year’s Gilliam Meeting! #HHMIGilliamFellows #Diversity

Great science, engaging conversations, valuable networking, & a welcoming environment have defined our experience at #CellBio2024. If you haven't already done so, be sure to stop by the UT Southwestern Medical Center booth, #712. American Society for Cell Biology UTSW Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences

My lab’s first preprint! We used functional metagenomics to identify phage defenses in human and soil microbiomes. We scaled these selections while maintaining accuracy, enabling us to examine 9 habitats for defense elements against 7 phages. biorxiv.org/content/10.110… 1/10

And when I say ‘we’, outsized credit should go to Luis Rodriguez-Rodriguez (Luis Rodríguez-Rodríguez). Luis is the 1st grad student in my lab and 1st author on this paper. Congrats Luis! So, what did we find? 2/10

A lot! We found >200 defense inserts from 63 selections, from every habitat surveyed and against each phage tested. These DNA inserts come from 14 different phyla yet function in E. coli against its phages. Cross-compatibility across huge evolutionary distances! 3/10

Nucleases are particularly common – implying that these defenses cross phylogenetic boundaries exceptionally well. Many of these nucleases likely recognize covalent modifications on phage DNA to activate restriction. 4/10

Why do we say this? Because a mutant phage without these modifications is resistant to many of these nuclease defense systems. We purified a few nucleases and confirmed, yes, that’s what happening here! 5/10

Homologs of the nuclease PD-T4-3 were very common (first found by Vassallo and Michael Laub). These genes defended against T-even phages and phage Mu. This is surprising b/c T-even phages and phage Mu modify entirely different nucleotides with wildly different marks. 6/10

We cloned and purified one of these nucleases and – yep! – it could degrade genomic DNA from both Mu and T4. In fact, its nuclease activity against these DNA substrates in vitro correlated roughly with its phage defense activity in vivo. 7/10

We also find a whole slew of new phage defenses – outer membrane proteins, abortive infection, and genes without sequence or structural homology to any known protein. If you have the time (and mental energy), consider giving our preprint a look and telling us what you think! 8/10

I’d like to end with a note of gratitude. Science feels a bit more tenuous these days than usual. The fear of loss can make you treasure what you have. Our jobs are challenging, but the rewards are fantastic. 9/10

We get to use our curiosity, ingenuity, and drive to learn brand new things about a dizzyingly complex world. How cool is that? Along the way (if we do it right), we can launch careers for some amazing young scientists – how rewarding! 10/10