Leighton Payne

🧵1/ Dive into the fascinating world of bacterial immunity with our latest forum article on immune supramolecular assemblies! w/ @SimonJacksonNZ @rafapinilla92 doi.org/10.1016/j.tim.…. 🦠🛡️ #microbiology #phage

Excited to share our latest collab with Wenyuan Han's Lab! 🚨 Bacteria use dITP as an immune signal to activate NAD+-depleting effectors. Phages counter immunity by destroying dAMP (dITP precursor)! 💥🧬 Preprint 🔗: biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

🧬🧬 𝙉𝙚𝙬 𝙋𝙧𝙚𝙥𝙧𝙞𝙣𝙩!!🧬🧬 Latest collab with the amazing Ming Li & Yue Feng labs! How do phages bypass multi-layered defenses in bacteria? Spoiler: with equally complex anti-defenses!! 🧵👇 biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

When experiments don’t work... build a phage costume! 🎃 Happy PHAGEOWEEN!!! 👻🧬#Teamwork

1/8. 𝐧𝐜𝐑𝐍𝐀𝐬 often fly under the radar... but they're vital in bacteria-phage conflicts & beyond. Curious 𝙬𝙝𝙮!? 🤔 Here, we dive into their immune roles, plasticity, and discuss their hidden potential! 🧬🚀 🔗:cell.com/trends/microbi…

Excited to share my first co-corresponding opinion piece written in collaboration with the wonderful @MojganRabiey …icro-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/17…. We cover our thoughts on advancements in phage biocontrol for agricultural pathogens and where the field might develop next.

RptR is a new addition to the growing collection of phage defence-associated transcriptional regulators. Congrats to @YugengZ @TangLabOxford @_MarionSchuller @IvanAhelLab and thank you, it was a pleasure to help out the study! @NEBiolabs. academic.oup.com/nar/article/53…

So happy to share my work @jrpenades lab 🤩 We investigated the efficiency of HGT mechanisms in S. aureus🧬, finding that LT is the most efficient one, and that strains defective in immune systems🛡️act as gateways for inter-clonal complex HGT🔀 biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

Please spread the word! We have an opening in the Atkinson lab for a post-doc with a focus on molecular mechanisms of microbial immune systems. Can be a fully computational or experimental or hybrid project. Read more & apply here: lu.varbi.com/en/what:job/jo… #phage #Bioinformatics

We are excited to report the discovery of TIGRs, a widely-occurring RNA-guided system found in bacteria and their viruses. TIGRs consist of a peculiar repeat region which is transcribed into RNA and processed into multiple guide RNAs to direct TIGR-associated proteins to their…

💛LoVis4u - a visualisation tool for comparative genomics and sequencing coverage profiles is now published! See our paper in NAR GB: doi.org/10.1093/nargab…

The lab is now up and running at New England Biolabs @NEBiolabs! I'm looking for a postdoc to study phage defence systems. If you'd like the academic freedom to publish but the resources of industry, then take a look 🤓😃 neb.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/NEB_Care…

🚨 🧬 Updated preprint on the completed BASEL collection - what's new? Some fun with bacterial immunity and a new P22 relative infecting E. coli K-12. A thread 🧵

Very happy our paper on Zorya anti-phage defense system is now published in @Nature! 🥳 Big congrats to first authors @HaidaiHu and @__jphilipp and all other authors! Wonderful collab with @Salmo_Lab and @SimonJacksonNZ #cryoEM @UCPH_CPR @koebenhavns_uni nature.com/articles/s4158…

Exciting times! Our latest preprint is now live 🤩! I truly believe this is one of the most significant contributions we've made. It offers fresh hypotheses about how pandemic Vibrio cholerae spreads globally. Let’s dive in!🧵..1/n biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

Phage vs. Bacteria: New findings! Phages use their own tRNAs to evade bacterial defenses like retrons and PrrC. Huge thanks to Azam for his hard work! in @NatureComms nature.com/articles/s4146…

New version of LoVis4u is released! 💛 Now it supports visualisation of non-coding features like tRNAs and includes a new module for hmmscan searches against DefenseFinder, PADLOC, VFDB, AMRFinder, dbAPIS (anti-defences), or your own databases. Homepage: art-egorov.github.io/lovis4u

See our preprint on systematic hotspot annotation! In addition to hotspot analysis, we provide precomputed iLund4u databases and two search modes: find if your query proteins are encoded in hotspots or map hotspots to a single phage/plasmid sequence. biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

Hot on the heels of Artyom's preprint on our locus visualisation tool LoVis4u comes a new preprint from him on systematic prediction of variable hotspots/islands in phage/plasmid/prokaryotic seqs. iLund4u is fast and can handle millions of seqs biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

Meet The Shielded Plasmid🛡️🧬 Our new @Nature paper reveals how plasmids outsmart bacterial defenses during conjugation. It's all about being in the right place at the right time! The positioning of anti-defense genes boosts transfer efficiency🧵(1/7) nature.com/articles/s4158…

Two years ago we published the discovery of hotspots of novel anti-phage defense systems in the genome of P4 phage satellites, including a mysterious Phage Anti-Restriction Induced System (PARIS). We have now published the mechanism in @Nature nature.com/articles/s4158…