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.
New online! The paradox of immune systems conservation between prokaryotes and eukaryotes
The paradox of immune systems conservation between prokaryotes and eukaryotes
Nature Reviews Microbiology, Published online: 05 February 2026; doi:10.1038/s41579-026-01284-0The 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 Argonautes and antiviral STAND NTPases, became central to eukaryotic innate immunity. In this Comment, we hypothesize that the cause of this paradox is the drastic reduction of horizontal gene transfer rate in eukaryotes.
dlvr.it
The #CRISPR “gene scissors” have become an important basis for genome-editing technologies in many fields. 🧬✂️ A team from the #HIRI in Würzburg has now demonstrated that these CRISPR-Cas systems are even more versatile than previously thought. Read more: www.helmholtz-hiri.de/en/newsroom/...
Beyond gene scissors: New CRISPR mechanism discovered
Team from Würzburg, Braunschweig, and the US identifies Cas12a3 nuclease showing precise activity | Study just published in Nature
helmholtz-hiri.de
#CRISPR kann mehr als gedacht: Ein Team des @helmholtz-hiri.bsky.social hat mit Forschenden des HZI & aus den USA eine neue Nuklease entschlüsselt: In @nature.com zeigen sie, dass Cas12a3 Transfer-Ribonukleinsäuren schneidet, um infizierte Zellen lahmzulegen. www.helmholtz-hzi.de/media-center...
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 - Nature
Cas12a3 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...
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 genomes
Fragmented 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 ...
biorxiv.org
The Russian spelling and pronunciation of Kyiv throughout the ages was no accident. While the name gets its origin from an empire that predates Russia, a series of policies by the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union that sought to Russify Ukraine and the Ukrainian language distorted its roots.
Kyiv, not Kiev — How Ukrainians reclaimed their capital
For decades, if not more, English speakers the world over referred to Ukraine’s capital as Kiev, pronouncing it kee-yev. Few people knew they were using the Russian name for the city. The city is pro...
kyivindependent.com
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 bacteria
Caspase 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...
science.org
Our paper out @Nature: CARD domains mediate anti-phage defense in bacterial gasdermin systems CARDs are essential for caspase recruitment during human inflammasome activation. We now find them in bacterial immune systems Congrats Tana Wein! Thank you Kranzusch lab! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
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 nuclease
The 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...
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 sequencing
RNA modifications are conserved chemical features found in all domains of life and across diverse RNA biotypes, shaping gene expression profiles and e…
sciencedirect.com
🧬 Save the date! The EMBO Workshop "The Immune System of Bacteria" will uncover groundbreaking insights into bacterial defense systems. Join us April 8-10, 2025, at Institut Pasteur, Paris. Submit your abstracts by Feb. 28 👉 https://www.sisb2025.conferences-pasteur.org/home
An excellent review on nucleic acid recognition in microbial immunity! www.cell.com/molecular-ce...
Nucleic acid recognition during prokaryotic immunity
Prokaryotes 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...
cell.com
Registration now open for the EMBO Workshop: Immune System of Bacteria !!!! www.sisb2025.conferences-pasteur.org/home Joins us in Institut Pasteur, Paris, April 8-10th.
