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250 🇺🇸🎉

30 years of the Ukrainian Constitution 🇺🇦! Ukraine is a sovereign, independent, democratic, social, rule-of-law state. Ukraine’s territory is indivisible and inviolable. Every individual’s life, health, honor, dignity, personal inviolability, and security is recognized as the highest social value.

Our paper is out! Hiding in plain sight among Cas12a nucleases, Cas12a3 cleaves not its RNA target but the 3′ ends of tRNA. Huge thanks to all who made this possible, especially the Beisel lab, Biao & Dirk for the structure, & @sebastianglatt.bsky.social for all things tRNA. doi.org/10.1038/s415...

RNA-triggered Cas12a3 cleaves tRNA tails to execute bacterial immunity - NatureCas12a3 nucleases constitute a distinct clade of type V CRISPR–Cas bacterial immune systems that preferentially cleave the 3′ tails of tRNAs after recognition of target RNA to induce growth arres...www.nature.com

Preprint alert: Putative phages with dsRNA genomes. Intriguing what bacteria they may infect. Nature’s diversity continues to astonish! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

“Paraxenoviridae”, a putative family of ubiquitous marine bacteriophages with double-stranded RNA genomesFragmented and primer Ligated DsRNA Sequencing (FLDS) was used to reconstruct five complete, bisegmented RNA genomes of paraxenoviruses, a group of viruses that was previously identified in the ocean ...www.biorxiv.org

I’m very fortunate to be at the 2025 CRISPR Meeting in Christchurch to share our latest work on the quirky Cas12a diversity. What an amazing crowd and location! @crisprmeeting.bsky.social

The diversity of microbial defenses is amazing! Type IV Thoeris system shows an ancient innate immunity mechanism which uses a TIR protein to make N7-cADPR, activating a caspase-like protease to block phages. Learn more: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

TIR signaling activates caspase-like immunity in bacteriaCaspase family proteases and Toll/interleukin-1 receptor (TIR)-domain proteins have central roles in innate immunity and regulated cell death in humans. We describe a bacterial immune system comprisin...www.science.org

Das Ende einer Ära: Heute fand die allerletzte Klasse in meinem geliebten Yogastudio statt, das mir in den letzten sechs Jahren ein Zufluchtsort war. Danke, Clau, für all die Posen und erholsamen Savasanas.

This is just wild: using AI-driven structural predictions, this study discovered how a phage-encoded “Cas12 hacker” hijacks the bacterial host’s thioredoxin enzyme to supercharge its DNA-cleaving ability. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

AI-driven discovery of host thioredoxin as a CRISPR enhancer of phage-encoded miniature Cas12 hacker nucleaseThe evolutionary arms race between bacteriophages and their bacterial hosts has driven the evolution of sophisticated adaptive immune systems, such as CRISPR-Cas, as a crucial defense mechanism. While...www.biorxiv.org

An excellent review on direct Nanopore sequencing of RNA for detecting epigenetic modifications. We are clearly just at the beginning of this journey, with many exciting discoveries to come. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Charting the epitranscriptomic landscape across RNA biotypes using native RNA nanopore sequencingRNA modifications are conserved chemical features found in all domains of life and across diverse RNA biotypes, shaping gene expression profiles and e…www.sciencedirect.com

An excellent review on nucleic acid recognition in microbial immunity! www.cell.com/molecular-ce...

Nucleic acid recognition during prokaryotic immunityProkaryotes sense viral and plasmid nucleic acids to start defense pathways against these invaders. This review examines the different mechanisms of DNA and RNA recognition and how these distinguish s...www.cell.com

Happy 🦃 day, everyone!

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