Bohdana Hurieva🇺🇦

Ubercool.
Toxin-antitoxin systems were discovered 40 years ago in E. coli, and later on in many genomes including in euks.
Now the 1st TA system is reported in the mouse genome!
It affects embryo killing. Amazing distribution of a simple yet efficient genetic system
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Deltaviruses spread through a viral Trojan Horse Hepatitis D-like satellite viruses, known as deltaviruses, have been recently discovered in a wide range of animals. These viruses are thought to expr…

We found a viral Trojan Horse: a virus can hide inside another virus.This one surprised us: deltaviruses don’t just borrow a helper virus. They can travel inside it.
A literal Trojan Horse “virus-in-a-virus” route into cells. 🤯 Kudos to 1st author @viroscope.bsky.social and co-authors !

After >10 years of our lab studying bacterial cGAS-like enzymes, @hobbslabutah.bsky.social finally reconstitutes viral sensing in vitro and discovers how these ancient receptors sense phage protease enzymes to detect virion assembly and activate antiviral immunity

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

CBASS is a cyclic nucleotide-based antiviral system in bacteria that is related to cGAS-STING signaling in animals. One of the big questions is how CBASS is activated during phage infection? We made some progress on this during my final year in the Kranzusch lab.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Very excited to see this work out today!

Discovering viral immune antagonists directly from predicted protein structures. 🤩 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Huge thanks to the amazing collaborators! 🤗

@nitzantal.bsky.social @romihadary.bsky.social @soreklab.bsky.social use structure prediction and in silico binding site analysis to discover viral immune evasion proteins! Exciting for our lab @reneechang.bsky.social @riveralopz.bsky.social to help with this project.
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Structure-based discovery of three new protein families in phages, all to evade bacterial immunity.

Congratulations Nitzan and coauthors!👏

Out now! In collaboration with Leifu Chang, we uncover the molecular and structural underpinnings of CRISPR-Cas12f-like RNA-guided transcription systems!

Links to the published articles:
tinyurl.com/55kpavet
tinyurl.com/sk6djwx3

Previous thread for the preprint:
bsky.app/profile/did:...

The selfish ribosome The ribosome is responsible for protein synthesis in all cells, and is the largest energy consumer in the cell. We propose that the ribosome originated as a mutualistic symbiont of an RNA-dependent RN...

Ribosome centric perspective on the evolution of life. @mkrupovic.bsky.social and Eugene Koonin arxiv.org/abs/2602.23268

Cell death is a fundamental mechanism of antiviral immunity across diverse organisms, including bacteria. As my final PhD project with @jbdsf.bsky.social, I was curious whether cell death is required for successful immunity with the ancient cGAS pathway known as ‘CBASS.’

Spoiler – the answer is no!

The 2026 symposium on the immune system of bacteria, New York, May 5-7

A fantastic lineup of speakers, looking forward to seeing top unpublished discoveries on bacterial immunity

RNA splicing generates a functionally specialized Rep protein isoform in geminiviruses — enabling timely control of the viral cycle. Strikingly, similar strategies might have evolved in DNA viruses infecting different kingdoms: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Spearheaded by @delphinem-p.bsky.social!

Congratulations to Sonomi Yamaguchi for her paper at @nature.com. Sonomi discovered Clover defense and explained how nucleotide signals control each step of viral sensing, immune regulation, and viral restriction – named for her beautiful "four-leaf" structures 🍀

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

It’s not me, it’s you: Anti-phage nuclease specificity inside a bacterium

Very timely review; thank Alex Hong and @jbdsf.bsky.social for putting this together
journals.plos.org/plospathogen...

Koonin's lab in NIH is looking for postdocs. If you know someone who is interested, please spread the word. The details about the position are below: www.training.nih.gov/jobs/pdf-ecb...

Excited to share our new paper led by a wonderful Jing Liu on designing de novo IDRs🧪🖥️

Abstract submission is now OPEN for the 2026 Symposium on the Immune System of Bacteria!

sisb2026.rockefeller.edu
🗓 May 5–7, 2026
📍 Rockefeller University, New York City
⏰ Abstract deadline: March 16, 2026

Attendance will be capped, be sure to register early and secure your spot.

See you in NYC!

I invite you to check our paper entitled “Rebuilding Ukraine’s capacity for fundamental research in evolutionary biology” doi.org/10.1038/s415... in @natecoevo.nature.com about the Ukrainian School in Evolutionary Biology #USEB we organized in 2025.
#biology #evolution #school #science #Ukraine

Introducing The Structural History of Eukarya (SHE): The first proteome-scale phylogeny constructed entirely from 3D structure.
We computed 300 trillion alignments across 1,542 species to map the tree of life. 🧵👇 (1/5)

The paradox of immune systems conservation between prokaryotes and eukaryotes - Nature Reviews Microbiology The widespread prokaryotic immune systems, in particular restriction–modification, CRISPR–Cas and defensive toxin–antitoxin systems, are absent in eukaryotes, whereas relatively rare ones, such as Arg...

Aude Bernheim @audeber.bsky.social and Eugene Koonin discuss one of most interesting questions in the field connecting bacterial and animal immunity!

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

Amazing findings in geometry-based immune activation! Two bacterial defence systems detect phage-encoded ring oligomers, assemble high-order molecular complexes, and trigger abortive infection.

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

Incredible tool for structure-guided MSAs - happy to see it’s out!

Multiple protein structure alignment at scale with FoldMason Protein structure is conserved beyond sequence, making multiple structural alignment (MSTA) essential for analyzing distantly related proteins. Computational prediction methods have vastly extended ou...

FoldMason is out now in @science.org. It generates accurate multiple structure alignments for thousands of protein structures in seconds. Great work by Cameron L. M. Gilchrist and @milot.bsky.social.
📄 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
🌐 search.foldseek.com/foldmason
💾 github.com/steineggerla...

We found a new mode by which bacteria deplete NAD+ to protect from phages. And then we found how phages overcome this defense

Discovered by talented biochemist Dr Ilya Osterman, read the preprint: tinyurl.com/Narp-ap

A thread 🧵

🧬 Metabolic arms race continues!
We discovered a new NAD⁺-depleting bacterial immune system aRES and phage enzymes that overcome it.
Our preprint is out: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

New layers to the NAD+ immune arms race - it’s a never ending fight!🦠🧪

I was very happy to contribute to this story. Congratulations Ilya for an amazing discovery!!🎉

Mirdita Lab - Laboratory for Computational Biology & Molecular Machine Learning Mirdita Lab builds scalable bioinformatics methods.

My time in @martinsteinegger.bsky.social's group is ending, but I’m staying in Korea to build a lab at Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine. If you or someone you know is interested in molecular machine learning and open-source bioinformatics, please reach out. I am hiring!
mirdita.org

A phage protein screen identifies triggers of the bacterial innate immune system - Nature Microbiology A library of 400 phage protein-coding genes is used to find a trove of antiphage systems, revealing systems that target tail fibre and major capsid proteins.

I’m thrilled to share our work on phage triggers of the bacterial immune system in its final form @natmicrobiol.nature.com www.nature.com/articles/s41...

N1-Methylpseudouridine directly modulates translation dynamics Nature - N1-Methylpseudouridine enhances the translation of synthetic mRNAs, independently of innate immunity.

Our new paper is out in Nature 🎉. We show that m1Ψ in mRNA vaccines doesn’t just quiet immunity, it also directly enhance translation by reshaping ribosome dynamics in a sequence-dependent way 🧬
Full paper : rdcu.be/eY5gx

The (Yoav) Voichek lab has opened its gates at the Weizmann Institute, and is actively recruiting students and researchers at all levels - come explore gene regulation and computational genomics in a fun, friendly sprouting lab 🤗🥼⚗️🧪
www.weizmann.ac.il/plants/voichek