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! 🤗

Structural modeling reveals phage proteins that manipulate bacterial immune signaling

Immune systems in animals, plants, and bacteria often rely on intracellular nucleotide signaling, which viruses can block by sequestering or degrading these signals. We identified structural and bioph...

science.org

Sorek Lab@soreklab.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Out today: We discovered new viral proteins that target immune signaling molecules, solely based on their AlphaFold-predicted shapes www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... Congrats Nitzan Tal and coauthors! Thank you Kranzusch lab for the fun collaboration! Linking below previous thread on our findings

@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/...

📢Preprint out! Excited to share my final work from the @soreklab.bsky.social! We mined phage dark matter using structural features shared by anti-defense proteins (viral tools that help phages bypass bacterial immunity) to guide discovery. Found 3 new families targeting immune signaling!