Bacteriology-Focused Assistant Professor Position in Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Michigan Application deadline: August 15, 2026 Come be my colleague!
Ben Adler
@benadler.bsky.social
Postdoc @ Doudna Lab - UC-Berkeley | Bacteriophage engineering | CRISPR | Biotechnology | Microbiology | All Combinations Thereof | He/him. Opinions my own.
Happy to share the first preprint out of the Nomburg lab! Many aspects of cellular immunity are shared across the tree of life. Here, we show that some of these conserved aspects of cellular immunity are mirrored by conserved effectors of immune antagonism. Thread below! 1/15
bioRxiv Microbiology@biorxiv-microbiol.bsky.social · 2w agoConserved folds enable immune antagonism across the tree of life https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.07.21.739742v1
Out @cp-cellhostmicrobe.bsky.social, natural products meet bacterial immunity! We used genomics to identify lanthivirins: a family of >2,000 lanthipeptide BGCs that protect Actinobacteria against phages. Led by @hshomar.bsky.social & @mariegllm.bsky.social www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
A family of lanthipeptides with anti-phage function
Bacteria produce natural products to adapt to their environments, with phage interactions as major ecological and evolutionary drivers. While some nat…
sciencedirect.com
A major pillar of the system is paying its skilled employees below-market “subsistence stipends” and sharing their work for free. private industry knows it’s the biggest beneficiary. It doesn’t want the music to stop
Jason Rasgon@vectorgen.bsky.social · last mo.The NIH is an ENORMOUS bargain for the American people. Do folk think that private industry will do the background slog work for drug discovery for 250K direct costs?
The NIH is an ENORMOUS bargain for the American people. Do folk think that private industry will do the background slog work for drug discovery for 250K direct costs?
Jeremy Berg@jeremymberg.bsky.social · last mo.Scott Atlas, the champion of herd immunity as an Fox News commenter and the Trump Advisor during COVID, weighs in with a DEEPLY MININFORMED op-ed in the WaPo. www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202... 1/7
YprA-family helicases provide the missing link between diverse prokaryotic immune systems: Cell Host & Microbe https://www.cell.com/cell-host-microbe/fulltext/S1931-3128(26)00208-8
YprA-family helicases provide the missing link between diverse prokaryotic immune systems
YprA-family helicases represent a key hub in the prokaryotic defense network. Through phylogenetic analysis of YprA, Bell and colleagues identify a distinct class of defense systems, called ARMADA. ARMADA protects bacteria against diverse phages, synergizing with another defense system, Druantia III. ARMADA, Druantia III, and Zorya II co-occur in phage-like elements.
cell.com
i've built laboratories. i've built deep learning models. i've been evangelizing Big Data in Bio my whole career. give me money and i'll do it a lot more
Jase Gehring@skyjase.bsky.social · 2mo agoFounders coming out of big tech have deep connections to money and can raise quickly. but they struggle to build laboratories and especially at integrating computational and experimental teams. It’s frustrating!
NIAID (@niaidnews.bsky.social) has awarded $6M to launch a coordinated US phage therapy research network — 3 new centers! Excited our Stanford Center for Phage Pharmaceuticals (@stanfordmedicine.bsky.social) is one, & to work w/ @gladstoneinst.bsky.social & @pghphageprogram.bsky.social! 🧵 1/
This is so cool -- multifunctional-ization of biofilm eDNA with a single protein! Two ideas for anyone interested below:
Rémi Fronzes@fronzeslab.bsky.social · 2mo agoNew preprint. In S. sanguinis, a C5a peptidase-like protease (ScpH) polymerizes along eDNA, turning it into a catalytic biofilm scaffold. Great work from @robinanger.bsky.social in our lab, with Pelicic lab @lcbofficiel.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
New preprint! 🚨 Phage proteins don't act alone. Phages rely on homooligomerisation to assemble identical protein subunits into functional forms. But figuring out those exact configurations experimentally is tough. Learn about our approach in our new preprint! 👇 (1/n) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
Ancient wars between microbes gave us key immune defenses | @science.org | AAAS www.science.org/content/arti... #microsky #virosky #immunosky
Ancient wars between microbes gave us key immune defenses
A better understanding of battles between bacteria and viruses could inspire new medicines
science.org
Chemical inactivation of a bacterial immune system de-domesticates a temperate phage and promotes its spread bioRxiv from Joseph Gerdt at Indiana University with @annadragos.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... #PhageSky
biorxiv.org
🎊 New Preprint from phagefoundry.org ! Super excited to share our latest work on generating systematic phage-MDR P. aeruginosa interaction dataset & use of ML to predict phage susceptibility & phage cocktails from target genome sequences alone, w validations www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...
The paper on my Ph.D. work is fully online! We used a ribozyme that barcodes 16S rRNA to track the transduction range of phage P1 in a synthetic community and real wastewater communities, while diving deeper into the unique range conferred by P1s two tail fibers. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Cross-order detection of bacteriophage transduction in microbial communities using RNA barcoding - Nature Communications
Bacteriophages are the most abundant life form on earth and can be applied to eliminate or engineer bacteria. Here, authors demonstrate RNA barcoding as a high throughput tool to measure bacteriophage...
nature.com
asymmetry of information permeates academic science. i'm talking: conferences campus visits grant review peer review the right people can put themselves 6 months ahead of the public record.
Oded Rechavi@odedrechavi.bsky.social · 3mo ago"Scientists studying the exact same topic would anonymously review each other’s papers and grants. And the fate of your career was just sitting there in their inbox"
Saying it because @kenjmloi.bsky.social didn't: This is really close to a RNA system that targets protein sequences because of wobble bases in codons. Truly amazing discovery!!
Kenneth Loi@kenjmloi.bsky.social · 3mo agoExcited to share our discovery of a new programmable RNA-guided DNA-targeting system hiding inside bacteriophages that predates CRISPR. We call it VIPR (Viral Interference Programmable Repeat), and it uses an entirely new logic to find its targets. Thread + link below.
The best thing since *before* sliced bread... VIPRs. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
Excited to share our discovery of a new programmable RNA-guided DNA-targeting system hiding inside bacteriophages that predates CRISPR. We call it VIPR (Viral Interference Programmable Repeat), and it uses an entirely new logic to find its targets. Thread + link below.
Excited to share our new findings in @science.org on how the DRT3 bacterial defense system uses a reverse transcriptase that builds DNA repeats without a nucleic acid template. Microbes never cease to amaze! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Science | AAAS
science.org
Excited to share the last installation of my PhD work. Worked with an all-star team on this one who really made this all come together beautifully. @ranidreamer.bsky.social @amardeeep.bsky.social @benadler.bsky.social and many others. www.cell.com/cell-reports...
The phage nucleus synergizes with an anti-defense protein to resist bacterial immunity
Morgan et al. show that a phage-encoded protein functions as an antitoxin to counter DarTG2-mediated phage defense. They further explore the interplay between this anti-defense protein, the phage nucleus replication compartment, which encloses chimallivirus genomes, and the DarTG2 phage defense system.
cell.com
10 years ago @vivekmutalik.bsky.social introduced me to the wild world of phages. Today, @lucasmoriniere.bsky.social presents a truly foundational scale bridging genomes, viruses, editing and function. Truly an amazing scale and vision for the future! Congrats to phage foundry 🌶️🌶️🌶️
Lucas Moriniere@lucasmoriniere.bsky.social · 4mo ago🔥Preprint fresh off the press🔥 Hello Bluesky! I'm delighted to share the story I have been working on for the past 3y in @vivekmutalik.bsky.social's lab at LBNL and Adam Arkin's lab @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social. It's a wild story about 255 phages & 1,000+ HT genetic screens, are you ready? 🧵
📣Huge preprint 🔔 Today we share something our group has been working toward for a long time, led by @lucasmoriniere.bsky.social We asked can we predict which receptor a phage targets from its genome sequence alone? For most phages, we couldn’t. So Lucas set out to do something I had only dreamed of.
Come join us at AITHYRA! I highly encourage anyone excited about the interplay between AI and life sciences to apply. It's been an amazing place to start a lab. Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions about our institute
AITHYRA Research Institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences@aithyra.bsky.social · 4mo agoAITHYRA is recruiting a LIFE SCIENCE PI We are interested in research questions related to one of our four core disease areas: cancer research, immunological disorders, infectious diseases, neurodevelopment disorders. Job Ad: aithyra.at/fileadmin/do... Apply by 30.4.2026 #StartingPI #LS #AITHYRA
I love this concept -- plasmid to Cryo structure in a day! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
biorxiv.org
New preprint: Cyclic tri-adenylate signalling by a Panoptes anti-phage guard system with a CARF-TM effector. Great work led by Sabine Grüschow www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
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...
Really phenomenal work from the Gerdt lab at Indiana University... I hope this becomes a major boon for phage therapy: "Chemical inhibition of a bacterial immune system" www.cell.com/cell-host-mi...
Chemical inhibition of a bacterial immune system
Bacteriophages are promising alternatives to antibiotics for treating bacterial infections. However, bacteria possess immune systems that neutralize bacteriophages. Zang et al. discover small molecule...
cell.com
Life science research is plagued with repetitive rote work. This system is designed to support, organize and execute tasks across the research stack. procurement, inventory management, equipment telemetry, safety, and regulatory can be managed with and by the system.
Jase Gehring@skyjase.bsky.social · 7mo agoI’ve jumped completely off the deep end and I’m building a stateful agentic environment for computational and experimental life science research. Inspired by some of the systems I’ve seen here, but different. It’s goal oriented and research focused