Are you interested in studying RNA phages? We are looking for a PhD student and a postdoc to join the lab! For more information and how to apply, see below 👇 Please RT! helmholtz-hiri.de/en/jobs-talent…

New work from Stephen Tang et al. that describes a fascinating set of reverse transcriptases involved in antiviral immunity. They synthesize tandem-repeat cDNAs that resemble telomeres, revealing an unexpected bacterial evolutionary origin of telomerase. Check out the thread!

Antiviral reverse transcriptases reveal the evolutionary origin of telomerase

✨New paper from José R Penadés and the San Millan labs. We found that non-conjugative plasmids 🧬 tend to have low mobility to promote functional diversity ⚔️💊 in bacterial communities🦠🦠. Brilliant work by Akshay, Alfonso Santos-López and others cell.com/cell-reports/f…

Reverse transcribed ssDNA derepresses translation of a retron antiviral protein biorxiv.org/content/10.110… #biorxiv_micrbio

Happy to share that our paper on the PlPVC1 eCIS is out in Nature Communications 🥳 Congratulations to first author Leyre Marín-Arraiza and all co-authors! #cryoEM cryoEM Papers CPRatUCPH nature.com/articles/s4146…

Out Now! Bacterial TIR-based immune systems sense phage capsids to initiate defense bit.ly/4oGhL6l #Microbiology #Bacteria #Immunology

Antiviral Defence is a Conserved Function of Diverse DNA Glycosylases biorxiv.org/content/10.110… #biorxiv_micrbio

New online! Mechanistic basis for protein conjugation in a diverged bacterial ubiquitination pathway bit.ly/495euZP

A membrane-bound nuclease directly cleaves phage DNA during genome injection biorxiv.org/content/10.110… #biorxiv_micrbio

Looking for great PhD candidates! Excited to collab with Prof Mark Szczelkun at Bristol UK, studying MADS phage defence. This will be a CASE studentship including research visits to New England Biolabs HQ in MA, USA 🤓 New England Biolabs shorturl.at/KZGup deadline 3rd Dec

IT'S HAPPENING! 💥 I'm psyched to launch the collaboration between q.e.d Science & openrxiv bioRxiv! Let's go back to concentrating on making discoveries, and not on “getting published”, because it’s not going to matter soon, when feedback & evaluation are detached from

Out Now! An updated evolutionary classification of CRISPR–Cas systems including rare variants bit.ly/4oUjsNx #CRISPR #Genetics #Biotechnology

Phages isolated during the 2023 edition of the Fundamentals of Basic and Applied Phage Biology Doctoral Program in Infections and Antimicrobials course at Lund University are out! Phages from the 2025 edition of the Fundamentals are already sequenced and will be reported in 2026. journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/sp…

Out Now! A phage-encoded anti-CRISPR protein co-opts host enolase to prevent type III CRISPR immunity bit.ly/43rWXHA #CRISPR #Microbiology #PhageResearch

Most recent paper out now at science advances. We investigated a BASEL phage belonging to the felixounavirus genus and discovered evolutionary relationships with distantly related phages. Collaborative work between Wolf Lab and Bostina Lab science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…

Very excited to share our latest work in Science on metagenomic editing (MetaEdit) of the gut microbiome in vivo & directly modifying unculturable immune-modulatory SFB bug in the small intestine. 🦠🧬🛠️science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…

Surviving phage attack dynamically regulates bacterial immunity to defeat counterdefenses biorxiv.org/content/10.110… #biorxiv_micrbio