Nature Biotechnology - A new version of SignalP predicts all types of signal peptides.

Nature Metabolism - Coronavirus replication results in expenditure of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+), the central catalyst of cellular metabolism, in the innate response to infection....

Author summary Bacteria are commonly infected by viruses called bacteriophages (or phages, for short). To survive phage infection, bacteria employ multiple anti-phage defense systems, many of which...

The cyclic oligonucleotide-based anti-phage signaling system (CBASS) is a family of defense system in prokaryotes[1][1], [2][2]. Composed of a cyclic GMP-AMP synthase (cGAS) and CBASS-associated...

Retrons are bacterial genetic retroelements that encode reverse transcriptase capable of producing multicopy single-stranded DNA (msDNA) and function as antiphage defense systems. Phages employ...

Recent advances in AI-based protein structure modeling have yielded remarkable progress in predicting protein structures. Since structures are constrained by their biological function, their geometry...

The constant arms race between bacteria and their phages has resulted in a large diversity of bacterial defence systems[1][1],[2][2], with many bacteria carrying several systems[3][3],[4][4]. In...

Animals use a variety of cell-autonomous innate immune proteins to detect viral infections and prevent replication. Recent studies have discovered that a subset of mammalian antiviral proteins have...

Nature Communications - Bacteria can affect cellular processes in other bacteria and in eukaryotic cells by injecting effectors using a type VI secretion system (T6SS). Here, Sá-Pessoa et al....

Identifying and characterizing mobile genetic elements (MGEs) in sequencing data is essential for understanding their diversity, ecology, biotechnological applications, and impact on public health....

Toxic bacterial modules, in particular toxin-antitoxin (TA) systems, have been long sought-after for their antimicrobial potential, although with limited success[1][1]–[6][2]. Here we show that the...

Myriad bacterial anti-phage systems have been described and often the mechanism of programmed cell death is invoked for phage inhibition. However, there is little evidence of ‘suicide’ under physio...

The bacterial archetypal adaptive immune system, CRISPR-Cas, is thought to be repressed in the best-studied bacterium, Escherichia coli K-12. We show here that the E. coli CRISPR-Cas system is active...

Animals use a variety of cell-autonomous innate immune proteins to detect viral infections and prevent replication. Recent studies have discovered that a subset of mammalian antiviral proteins have...

A comprehensive census of McrBC systems, a major form of prokaryotic Type IV restriction-modification (RM), followed by phylogenetic analysis, reveals their enormous abundance in diverse bacteria and...

Bacteria use diverse immune systems to defend themselves from ubiquitous viruses termed bacteriophages (phages). Many anti-phage systems function by abortive infection to kill a phage-infected cell,...

Phages can be used to accelerate the evolution of proteins by developing selection systems based on the conditional gene complementation. The evolution is accelerated because of the mutation load...

Reverse transcriptases (RTs) are enzymes capable of synthesizing DNA using RNA as a template. Within the last few years, a burst of research has led to the discovery of novel prokaryotic RTs with...

Nucleotide second messenger signaling in bacteria.

In the DarTG toxin-antitoxin system, the DarG antitoxin reverses DarT toxin-mediated ssDNA ADP-ribosyl modifications via its N-terminal macrodomain. Deep et al. report the crystal structure of...

Argonaute (Ago) proteins are widespread nucleic acid-guided enzymes that recognize targets through complementary base pairing. While in eukaryotes Agos are involved in RNA silencing, the functions of...

Engineered plasmids have been workhorses of recombinant DNA technology for nearly half a century. Plasmids are used to clone DNA sequences encoding new genetic parts and to reprogram cells by...

A major challenge faced by bacteria is infection by bacteriophage (phage). Abortive infection is one strategy for combating phage in which an infected cell kills itself to limit phage replication,...

Phages and plasmids have key roles in bacterial evolution and are usually very different. Yet, they must recombine, since they sometimes carry nearly identical accessory genes. Phage-plasmids are...

CBASS is an anti-phage defense system that protects bacteria from phage infection and is evolutionarily related to human cGAS-STING immunity. cGAS-STING signaling is initiated by viral DNA but the...

Abstract. Second messengers transfer signals from changing intra- and extracellular conditions to a cellular response. Over the last few decades, several n

Bacterial temperate viruses (phages) have to decide between a quiescent (lysogenic) and virulent (lytic) lifestyle in the face of a variety of phage defense systems. Multiple Bacilli phage families...

Sterile alpha and TIR motif-containing 1 (SARM1) is a protein involved in programmed death of injured axons. Following axon injury or a drug-induced insult, the TIR domain of SARM1 degrades the...

Selfish genetic elements and their remnants comprise at least half of the human genome. Active transposons duplicate by inserting copies at new sites in a host genome. Following insertion, transpos...

This review aims to dissect the evolutionary processes that may lead to an enrichment of eukaryotic-like proteins in environmental intracellular bacteria t

Hayim Katsman was a dual U.S.-Israeli citizen and a peace activist with a Ph.D. In dying, he saved three lives.

A small RNA from a clinical isolate of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, PA14, induces learned avoidance and its transgenerational inheritance in C. elegans . However, it is not known if small RNAs from...

SMC and SMC-like complexes promote chromosome folding and genome maintenance in all domains of life. Recently, they were also recognized as factors in cellular immunity against foreign DNA. In...

Rapid and accurate pathogen identification is crucial in effectively combating infectious diseases. However, the current diagnostic tools for bacterial infections predominantly rely on century-old...

Nature Metabolism - The author discusses how metabolic engagements and reconfiguration of immune and non-immune cells following virus recognition modulate the natural course of viral infections,...

From studies of DIRL genes identification, primary structures, predictions of their secondary and tertiary structures, prediction of DIRL signals sequences, analysis of their gene organization and...

Abstract. RNA-binding proteins are key actors of post-transcriptional networks. Almost exclusively studied in the light of their interactions with RNA ligands and the associated functional events,...

UNRWA schools funded by US and EU indoctrinate Palestinian children to antisemitism, hate and violence CLICK FOR REPORT WASHINGTON, March 14, 2023 — Teachers and schools at the UN agency that...

Pattern recognition receptors (PRRs) of the innate immune system detect conserved bacterial molecules, termed pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs). Toll-like receptors (TLRs) are considered...

A notable signaling mechanism employed by mammalian innate immune signaling pathways uses nucleotide based second messengers such as 2′–3′-cGAMP and 2′–5′-oligoadenylates (2′–5′ OA), which bind and...

Nature Communications - Here, Johansen et al. develop an approach, Phages from Metagenomics Binning (PHAMB), that allows the binning of thousands of viral genomes directly from bulk metagenomics...