Luuk Loeff

Happy to share our latest pre-print on the Druantia defense system. We find that Type III Druantia uses a cooperative helicase-nuclease mechanism to sense and degrade replication-associated forked DNA structures. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... A🧵

Interested in the story behind our recordanelle? Check out our Research Briefing: ➡️ nature.com/articles/s41... For the full paper: ➡️ www.nature.com/articles/s41... Thanks to @natbiotech.nature.com for the editorial summary and a huge thanks to @boeynaemssteven.bsky.social for the expert view.

Thrilled to be among this year’s NWO Vidi laureates! Really excited to expand our work on how coronaviruses control spike opening during cell entry, using #cryoEM and more. Keep an eye out for postdoc positions in the not-too-distant future. www.nwo.nl/en/news/109-...

Thrilled to announce that I have received the Vidi grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO). This will enable my young lab to grow! For a period of five year, we will investigate how actin filaments interact with proteins at the membrane to drive cell adhesion. www.nwo.nl/en/news/109-...

Very happy to share that I've been awarded an NWO Vidi grant! Excited for the opportunity to expand our lab and continue investigating the molecular arms race between bacteria and their viruses! 🔬❄️ www.nwo.nl/nieuws/109-v... Congratulations to all the other awardees!

Ever wondered what a cell has experienced in the past? This is in general hard to measure. Here we introduce the recordanelle, to equip cells with a tool that lets them record their own history. www.nature.com/articles/s41... @natbiotech.nature.com @ethz.ch @bsse.ethz.ch

14 years ago, the revolutionary genetic tool CRISPR/Cas9 was published in Science, work that Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna won a Nobel Prize for in 2020. On #WorldCRISPRDay, read the landmark paper that describes the discovery: https://scim.ag/4oot170

Excited to share this one, led by Theo and my postdoc Bel! We uncover how RNase E generates pAgo guide RNAs and how SPARMA turns that recognition into defense. We solved the cryo-EM structures in the Bravo lab. Great collaboration with Swarts & Zaremba! 🧬 www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-1...

🔥Preprint alert!🔥 RNase E-dependent guide generation and activation of the SPARMA defense system Read the thread by Theo on how the short pAgo system SPARMA works, how pAgo guide RNAs are generated, and how pAgo autoimmunity is prevented. Preprint here: www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-1...

New preprint from my Post-Doc in the Swarts lab How are the guide RNAs generated that direct prokaryotic Argonautes to invading DNA? This has been an open question for >10 years. Our new study reveals that the host housekeeping enzyme RNase E is responsible! A 🧵: 1/14

Exciting times for cryo-EM in NL 🇳🇱! As part of EMPower, two new Titan Krios G5 microscopes have been installed at NeCEN in Leiden and Utrecht. First benchmarks with ApoF reached 1.12 Å resolution 🤯. Looking forward to seeing all the exciting science these microscopes will enable! 🔬

LoL-align is out in @natmethods.nature.com! It aligns protein structures without superposition. More sensitive than TM-align and DALI, producing better alignments 5–20× faster. Now available in Foldseek! 📄 www.nature.com/articles/s41... 💾 github.com/steineggerlab/foldseek 🌐 search.foldseek.com

A new plant-bacteria immunological connection in the first preprint of our group at @mpi-bio-fml.bsky.social @plantevolution.bsky.social! Straight from the top of Mt. Olympus ⛰️🦅 Led by Eirik @eiriklag.bsky.social, in collaboration with @geminiteamlab.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

New online! How bacterial immune systems sense phage infection

Very excited to share the first preprint from my PhD with the community! This is also the first paper from the Plant Immunogenomics group with @galofir.bsky.social, so stay tuned for more! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 1/n 🧵

Our lab's first preprint! The antiphage protein Tiamat is an ATPase and DNase with homologs across the tree of life. What started as undergrad Shirley Yuan's summer project grew into a paper and a collaboration with @jpkbravo.bsky.social's group. Link: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Nicely executed study on phage anti-defence rdcu.be/M7mrq41uU7Ma

1/13 — New pre-print from the Sternberg Lab in collaboration with Leifu Chang's Lab! TnpB nucleases have repeatedly given rise to TldRs, nuclease-dead RNA-guided transcription factors. Here we define the biological role of one TldR clade in its native host. Story: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

The final version of our manuscript on TnSeq in bacteriophages (“HIDEN-SEQ”) is out today – if you have an interesting phage phenotype and want to know the underlying genetic basis, this one is for you! 1/4

Today, the Toll-like Receptors reveal a new mechanism of signal transduction: Receptor-Free Signal Transduction. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

New paper from the lab, out in Nature Microbiology. We ran CRISPRi screens to ask what genes E. coli needs in order to live in a gut and what this can tell us about the gut environment itself. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41564-026-02471-8

New preprint from PhD student Yu Sun. TSR1 is a TIR effector specialised for CRISPR defence. It is an obligate dimer activated by cA3 and degrades its own activator using a ring nuclease domain. Perhaps the first confirmed dimeric TIR effector? www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Out now in Science: Two papers from our lab reveal VIPR, an RNA-guided DNA-targeting system in bacteriophages, providing clues to the origins of CRISPR www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... Congrats to Peter Yoon, @kenjmloi.bsky.social @terryzzy.bsky.social, T.Docter & team

ʙɪɴᴅᴄʀᴀꜰᴛ2 is out, and we're not waiting for the paper. The full code drops today, free for academic and industry use. We're releasing it early so you can start designing right now, and bring its full power to the current Adaptyv competition. github.com/PacesaLab/Bi...

Our paper on type II Panoptes is now published at PLOS Biology with new data on phage escapers - quite a step up in microbiology for our lab, led by Sabine Gruschow. Thanks to @erc.europa.eu for funding dx.plos.org/10.1371/jour...

Discovery of chimeric RNAs and thousands of new proteins in mammalian cells – including a new regulator of inflammasome signaling! www.nature.com/articles/s41... www.jacksonimmunology.com

🎉 Our first paper from the Querques lab is out! We uncover the molecular checkpoints controlling cut-and-paste transposition by CRISPR-associated transposons. Congrats to Mateusz & the whole team! 🧬 www.nature.com/articles/s41... @univie.ac.at @meduniwien.ac.at

Out now in @science.org Virome-wide ubiquitin ligase discovery reveals diverse mechanisms of immune evasion | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

1/5 How much phosphorylation can a single kinase deposit? In our new study with @typaslab.bsky.social out in @nature.com, phage T7's kinase (T7K) modifies almost all the E. coli proteome + more densely than all ~500 kinases do our own proteomes 🤯 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Excited to share our story on diadenylate cyclases in bacterial immunity! Building on the discovery of Panoptes, we present Panoptoo: a DAC operon that uses cUA to guard against phage infection. Grateful to @daniellehaley.bsky.social and @kranzuschlab.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

The shared principles of human and bacterial antiviral immunity An honor to highlight remarkable discoveries from many labs over the past 12 years that unite previously disparate fields of how animal cells and prokaryotes defend against viruses. www.nature.com/articles/s41... rdcu.be/fzwyB

We’re so excited to share our new paper, where we tackle the wealth of structural and functional diversity of anti-phage sensors across bacteria (1/6)

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 new PAMP, a new innate immunity principle and a new preclinical application. I am so pleased to share our study on STING activation mechanisms in health and disease. Led by the fantastic Stephanie Ragland, follow the link below for a summary of all we learned. www.cell.com/immunity/ful...

🧬 Thrilled to share our latest @biorxiv-microbiol.bsky.social preprint! Here we find that Retron-IX build crazy supramolecular rings scaffolded by DNA molecules that sense phage infection! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Read more below🧵! (1/X)

1/10 🚨Preprint! One RING to rule them all (phages)👑💍⚔️ Bacteria build giant DNA-scaffolded RNase rings (larger than the ribosome!) to shut down viral infection🧬🧵👇 biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

🚨 We're hiring! My new lab at EMBL Hamburg is looking for a Research Technician. I'm looking for someone excited by phages, metabolism, enzymes, structural biology and bacterial immunity—if you know the right person, please share this post!🧵⬇️ Apply here: embl.wd103.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/EMBL/j...

1/11 New preprint from the Sternberg lab in collaboration with the Fernández lab! We are excited to share our structure-function study of DRT10, a bacterial defense-associated reverse transcriptase that synthesizes long tandem-repeat DNA.🧵 Read the full story here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Our paper out in Science today: The Metis defense system senses molecular byproducts released when a phage degrades the bacterial genome, and then prevents replication of the phage in the infected cell Congratulations @ostermanilya.bsky.social and co-authors!

Humans and bacteria share strategies to defend against viruses. We wondered: could they use each other's genes? Yes, both can! Bacteria can use human immune genes to defend against phages AND Human cells can use bacterial genes for viral defense. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

The mutational landscape of STING-induced immunity www.nature.com/articles/s41... @nature.com

Join us! Postdoc position (2-3 years) in our lab @molbiolau.bsky.social Looking for candidates with experience in cell culture, genome editing, biochemistry, and/or structural biology. Application opens in August via AU's system but informal enquiries by email are welcome from now. (1/2)

The DdmDE defense system eradicates plasmids by target-centered bidirectional ssDNA loop extrusion and site-specific cleavage

How do pathogens disarm plant immunity? We discovered a widespread strategy used by plant bacterial pathogens: they directly cleave a conserved immune signaling molecule produced by plant immune receptors. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

How do human cells defend against viruses? @sgfern.bsky.social discovers that human immune proteins named ISGs target ancient features of replication shared between animal and bacterial viruses – opening analysis of human immunity to the power of bacterial genetics www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Phages invented sgRNAs before humans!! 🧬 Obviously, for mischief… 😈 Loved seeing this story unfold!

@romihadary.bsky.social and @soreklab.bsky.social 's discovery that sponge proteins constitute enormous families of viral immune evasion factors is now out in @natmicrobiol.nature.com @reneechang.bsky.social and our lab were happy to help with this story! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Our aRES story is finally out 😀 Beyond what was reported in the preprint, we found that aRES is activated by direct binding of the phage DNA polymerase. Another NAD-degrading defense system — and multiple phage strategies to overcome it. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

(1/6) Thrilled to share this story! In our preprint from my PhD in the @kranzuschlab.bsky.social, with help from the Hatfull lab and @soreklab.bsky.social, we discover RyDEP, a phage-encoded RyR-domain glycosidase that allows phages to evade Thoeris defense. Highlights below! doi.org/10.64898/202...

Amazing piece from @science.org and @richardastone.bsky.social on our field and the growing connection between human and bacterial immunity! #microsky #virosky #immunosky www.science.org/content/arti...