M. T. Laub

The paper identifies Rpn proteins as toxin-antitoxin systems that inhibit phage infection by blocking toxic full-length proteins with their smaller, variable C-terminal domains.

This study shows that bacterial signaling paralogs have marginal specificity, where many single mutations can cause cross-talk, constraining their evolution.

The paper identifies a de novo gene, ramF, that promotes E. coli survival by neutralizing the toxin MazF through chaperone interaction and proteolysis.

This paper introduces a method to design functional proteins using residue preferences derived from structural data, showing high accuracy in predicting combinatorial mutation effects.

This study identifies a bacterial immune system that directly senses a viral capsid protein through a toxin-antitoxin system, revealing a PAMP-like mechanism for innate immunity in bacteria.

The paper identifies 21 new conserved defense systems in E. coli strains, showing that prophages and mobile elements are key reservoirs of antiviral immunity.

This study experimentally evolves T4 phage to overcome E. coli's toxin-antitoxin system, revealing a trade-off where counter-defense mechanisms constrain host range.

This study reconstructs ancestral signaling proteins to show that three mutations in two duplicated proteins established specificity in bacterial two-component systems.

The paper identifies enabling mutations in a bacterial toxin that tolerate antitoxin mutations, showing non-specific tolerance despite covariation primarily between contacting residues.

This study identifies DarTG toxin-antitoxin systems in E. coli that defend against phage by ADP-ribosylating viral DNA, with phages evolving resistance through DNA polymerase or anti-DarT factors.

The paper characterizes the targets and specificities of 9 endoribonuclease toxins from E. coli using a new RNA-seq pipeline, revealing they cleave mRNAs but not tRNAs or rRNAs and disrupt ribosome biogenesis.

This study shows how DNA replication initiation in Caulobacter crescentus triggers the CtrA signaling pathway via chromosome translocation and ParA-mediated recruitment of ChpT.

This study shows that evolved variants of the fixLJ pathway in BCC species enhance virulence in host models but reduce survival in soil.

This study shows that mucin glycans activate RetS in Pseudomonas aeruginosa, inhibiting virulence traits by suppressing the GacS-GacA system and type VI secretion system.

The paper shows stress increases TA system transcription but does not release toxin, suggesting TA systems may not promote stress survival.

This paper develops a cost-effective method for rRNA depletion in RNA-seq by designing biotinylated oligonucleotides, achieving 75-80% mRNA reads and comparable results to the discontinued Ribo-Zero kit.

This study shows that constriction rate in C. crescentus affects cell size control and homeostasis by regulating elongation during division and compensating for pre-constriction variation.

This study shows that SMC aligns chromosomal arms in Caulobacter crescentus via ParB and that convergent transcription disrupts this alignment.