Pantoea agglomerans T6SS effectors reside in hotspots with combinatorial offensive and defensive arsenals

Gram-negative bacteria deploy type VI secretion systems (T6SSs) to mediate interbacterial competition. Although numerous T6SS effectors have been identified, their pan-genomic repertoires and evolutio...

biorxiv.org

Phage terminase recognition by the bacterial immune sensors Avs2 and Upx - Nature Communications

Direct recognition of viral proteins is key to bacterial immunity. Here, Evans et al. uncover the mechanisms used by two distinct defense proteins to detect the phage DNA packaging motor mechanisms: b...

nature.com

Coordinated RNA- and protein-templated synthesis of double-stranded DNA by a dual reverse transcriptase immune system

Bacterial reverse transcriptases defend against viruses, yet how their DNA products stop infection remains unknown. Bacteriophage inhibition of a host recombination enzyme activates the DRT3 defense s...

cell.com

Diverse bacterial pattern recognition receptors sense the core phage proteome - Nature

Systematic analysis of prokaryotic STAND NTPases — relatives of animal and plant immune receptors — uncovers diverse antiviral sensors that detect most of the core structural and replicative proteins of bacteriophages.

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Animated E. coli Bacteria Drawing

Alt: Animated E. coli Bacteria Drawing

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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

Immune safeguarding as a conserved principle of antiviral defence - Nature Reviews Microbiology

All organisms defend against viral infections through active immunity mechanisms that clear the virus or population-level mechanisms that cause regulated cell death. Recent research increasingly shows...

nature.com

A family of lanthipeptides with anti-phage function

Shomar, Guillaume, et al. report the genomics-driven discovery of a family of more than 2,000 lanthipeptide biosynthetic gene clusters with anti-phage potential. They experimentally demonstrate anti-p...

cell.com

Nascent peptides emerge as regulators of mRNA stability

Mobile genetic elements and their hosts engage in continuous evolutionary conflict. Marino et al. recently uncovered an unusual anti-CRISPR mechanism: the phage protein AcrVA2 triggers translation-coupled mRNA degradation by recognizing nascent Cas12. The findings suggest that nascent peptides may signal an underappreciated layer of gene regulation across the kingdoms of life.

dlvr.it

Structural mechanism of the type IX Retron-Kva2 anti-phage defense system

Retrons are prokaryotic genetic elements that protect bacterial cells from invading phages. The type IX retron comprises a non-coding RNA, a reverse transcriptase (RT), and dual effectors: a putative ...

doi.org

Purine and pyrimidine-based bacterial cyclic dinucleotides egress the phagosome and activate the innate immune sensor STING

Innate immune recognition of bacteria is thought to center on cell-surface or endosomal pattern recognition receptors such as TLRs. Ragland et al. identify an intraphagosomal cyclic dinucleotide (CDN)...

cell.com

Admiral Ackbar: It's A Trap Meme

Alt: Admiral Ackbar: It's A Trap Meme

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New nucleases target modified DNA

Nature Microbiology, Published online: 13 July 2026; doi:10.1038/s41564-026-02418-zBacteriophages often use hypermodified DNA to protect themselves from host defences. The END nucleases found in bacteria represent a new class of modification-dependent endonucleases recognizing diverse DNA modifications, allowing a single system to protect the cell against multiple phage types.

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Research Technician (Osterman Group – Metabolism-driven immunity)

EMBL Hamburg / CSSB The European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) is Europe’s flagship life sciences organization, with more than 110 independent research groups across Heidelberg, Hamburg, Grenobl...

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FAMUS: A Few-Shot Learning Framework for Large-Scale Protein Annotation

Predicting gene function is a pivotal and challenging step in genomic and metagenomic data analysis. Current automatic annotation tools typically rely on the single most similar sequence from the quer...

doi.org

RdRpCATCH: a unified resource for RNA virus discovery using viral RNA-dependent RNA polymerase profile Hidden Markov models

Abstract. Recent advances in large-scale sequence mining have expanded our knowledge of RNA virus diversity. Most genome mining approaches for detecting RN

dx.doi.org

Perturbations shift the composition of bacterial DNA carried by virus-like particles in the murine gut microbiome

Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) is a driving force in microbial evolution that allows community members to rapidly evolve to cope with environmental stressors and competition. Despite the importance of...

biorxiv.org

Computational design of de novo integrated domains enables rational control of pathogen effector recognition in plant NLR immune receptors.

The rapid evolution of plant pathogens poses a persistent threat to global agricultural sustainability, often outpacing the discovery and deployment of natural disease resistance genes. While bioengin...

doi.org

Mechanism of tandem-repeat DNA synthesis by an antiviral reverse transcriptase

Defense-associated reverse transcriptases (DRTs) employ DNA synthesis to protect bacteria against phage infection[1][1],[2][2]. We previously showed that DRT10, a tripartite system comprising an RT, a...

biorxiv.org