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Erez Yirmiya

@erezyirmiya.bsky.social
183 followers 113 following 51 posts

Postdoctoral Researcher at Yale School of Medicine | Schmidt Science Fellow & Rothschild Postdoctoral Fellow | Mougous Lab | Uncovering the molecular mechanisms underlying interactions and conflicts across the microbial world 🦠🛡⚔️

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Erez Yirmiya @erezyirmiya.bsky.social · 25/04/2026
TIR domains across diverse eukaryotes are enzymatically active. Especially interesting is the human TLR4 TIR, long thought to be enzymatically inactive, now shown to be catalytically active and to produce cADPR, a molecule involved in immunity across domains of life. Congrats, Bohdana!!
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Erez Yirmiya @erezyirmiya.bsky.social · 26/03/2026
Honored to be part of the 2026 cohort and looking forward to the journey ahead! @schmidtfellows.bsky.social
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Erez Yirmiya @erezyirmiya.bsky.social · 04/02/2026
The plot thickens! Exciting new discoveries in the NAD⁺ centric battlefield between bacteria and phages. Congrats, Ilya!
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François Rousset @francoisrousset.bsky.social · 04/12/2025
A massive expansion of Thoeris defense systems ! Congrats @erezyirmiya.bsky.social and @soreklab.bsky.social
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Osterman Ilya @ostermanilya.bsky.social · 04/12/2025
New Thoeris systems and new bacterial TIRs, this time also producing plant and human immune signals 2'cADPR and cADPR!!! Congratulations to @erezyirmiya.bsky.social and Azita Leavitt! It was a pleasure to be involved in this project.
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Bohdana Hurieva🇺🇦 @bhurieva.bsky.social · 04/12/2025
New Thoeris systems reveal a deep connection between bacterial TIR-produced immune signals to plant and human immunity🦠🌱🧍‍♀️ It was a great honor to contribute to this project! Congratulations to @erezyirmiya.bsky.social and Azita Leavitt!!🎉🥂
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Sorek Lab @soreklab.bsky.social · 04/12/2025
Preprint: Systematic discovery of TIR-based immune signaling systems in bacteria Conservation of TIR-derived signals accross the tree of life! We found bacterial TIR immune systems that signal via canonical cADPR (like in humans) and 2'cADPR (a plant immune signal). Documented 11 Thoeris types
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Romi Hadary @romihadary.bsky.social · 04/12/2025
Incredible to learn how far-reaching and diverse Thoeris really is! TIRs play key roles across kingdoms, and this work beautifully highlights their bacterial origins. Congrats @erezyirmiya.bsky.social & Azita! 👏🌟
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Gal Ofir @galofir.bsky.social · 04/12/2025
Thoeris - the gift that keeps on giving 🦠🎁! Congrats Erez, Azita et al.!
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Erez Yirmiya @erezyirmiya.bsky.social · 04/12/2025
I’m happy to share our new preprint! We uncovered the full diversity of bacterial TIR-based antiviral immune signaling, massively expanded the known diversity of Thoeris systems, and revealed conservation of TIR-derived immune signals across the tree of life. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
Systematic discovery of TIR-based immune signaling systems in bacteria
Toll/interleukin-1 receptor (TIR) domains are important for immune signaling across humans, plants and bacteria. These domains were recently found to produce immune signaling molecules in plant immuni...
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Erez Yirmiya @erezyirmiya.bsky.social · 06/11/2025
Such a beautiful and well-rounded discovery, yet another exciting strategy in bacterial immunity. Congrats, Ilya!
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Jeremy Garb @garbjeremy.bsky.social · 02/09/2025
📢 New preprint alert! We designed synthetic proteins that can block bacterial immune systems, allowing phages + plasmids to overcome natural defenses. This could transform phage therapy + genetic engineering. Here’s what we found 🧵 Preprint🔗: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
biorxiv.org
Synthetically designed anti-defense proteins overcome barriers to bacterial transformation and phage infection
Bacterial defense systems present considerable barriers to both phage infection and plasmid transformation. These systems target mobile genetic elements, limiting the efficacy of bacteriophage-based t...
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Sorek Lab @soreklab.bsky.social · 02/09/2025
Preprint: De-novo design of proteins that inhibit bacterial defenses Our approach allows silencing defense systems of choice. We show how this approach enables programming of “untransformable” bacteria, and how it can enhance phage therapy applications Congrats Jeremy Garb! tinyurl.com/Syttt 🧵
biorxiv.org
Synthetically designed anti-defense proteins overcome barriers to bacterial transformation and phage infection
Bacterial defense systems present considerable barriers to both phage infection and plasmid transformation. These systems target mobile genetic elements, limiting the efficacy of bacteriophage-based t...
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Erez Yirmiya @erezyirmiya.bsky.social · 25/08/2025
Congrats @romihadary.bsky.social and @reneechang.bsky.social for dissecting the functional diversity of ALL Sponges! 🧽
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Erez Yirmiya @erezyirmiya.bsky.social · 01/08/2025
An absolute masterpiece by the talented @dinahoch.bsky.social on nucleotide-based immunity
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Erez Yirmiya @erezyirmiya.bsky.social · 13/07/2025
Amazing work identifying novel immune inhibitors based on structural and genomic traits. Congrats Nitzan and everyone!
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Jason Nomburg @jnoms.bsky.social · 12/06/2025
Hello everyone! I am pleased to share information on the first ever Computational Structural Virology Symposium, conducted August 4th on zoom and highlighting work in this emerging field. You can register for this event here: forms.gle/CNiqskMwQEuV.... Please re-post!
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Marcin J. Suskiewicz @msuskiewicz.eurosky.social · 14/04/2025
This was our latest journal-club paper. Nice use of large-scale AlphaFold modelling & various experiments. Phage proteins’ ability to recognise eukaryotic homologues of their bacterial targets is striking - suggests these proteins evolved to recognise their targets in a fairly mutation-resistnt way.
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Dor Salomon @drdorsalomon.bsky.social · 27/01/2025
A fun collaboration with the Whitney, Prehna, and Bosis labs, in which we reveal the role of DUF2169 proteins: assisting PAAR-like domains in forming spike complexes and #T6SS assembly. 🦠 search.app/jDxaUi5yJK9B...
search.app
A conserved chaperone protein is required for the formation of a non-canonical type VI secretion system spike tip complex
Type VI secretion systems (T6SS) are dynamic protein nanomachines found in Gram-negative bacteria that deliver toxic effector proteins into target cells in a contact-dependent manner. Prior to secreti...
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Dina Hochhauser @dinahoch.bsky.social · 24/01/2025
Check out our latest paper using protein structures to uncover immune inhibitors hidden among millions of phage genes! These inhibitors block immune proteins from bacteria, plants and even humans, highlighting how immunity and counter-immunity mechanisms are conserved across the tree of life! 🦠🌿🧍‍♀️
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Aude Bernheim @audeber.bsky.social · 24/01/2025
Incredbile work from @soreklab.bsky.social demonstrating how to mine viral genomes to identify immune-modulatory proteins that work across bacteria, plants and animals 😱. Bacteria have been amazing ressources of molecular diversity for biotech and medicine, now viral diversity can be explored too!
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Nonia Pariente @npariente.bsky.social · 24/01/2025
Really cool! Remarkable that phage proteins can inhibit human and plant TIR proteins and human cGAS. Conservation of function across such long evolutionary distances identifies new immunomodulators Congrats to @soreklab.bsky.social and Kranzusch labs! What a great collaboration that is 😍 🧪
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Sadie Antine @sadieantine.bsky.social · 23/01/2025
Viral immune evasion proteins are widespread and block both bacterial and human immune proteins! Go check out Erez’s paper using AlphaFold-multimer to screen for new anti-defense proteins!!🤩🤩
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Ben Adler @benadler.bsky.social · 23/01/2025
Been waiting a long time to see this in print - phage proteins are capable of inhibiting immune systems across host-domain boundaries 🤯 Big congrats @erezyirmiya.bsky.social et al!!
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Avigail Stokar-Avihail @aavihail.bsky.social · 23/01/2025
I'm excited to see the published version of this amazing work. @erezyirmiya et al identified viral proteins that inhibit host immunity using structural predictions of protein-protein interactions. Congrats to you all @soreklab & Kranzusch lab! 🥂
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François Rousset @francoisrousset.bsky.social · 23/01/2025
A high-throughput AlphaFold screen reveals phage proteins that bind and inhibit bacterial immune proteins 🤯 Some of them even bind and inhibit eukaryotic immune proteins as well ! Congrats @erezyirmiya.bsky.social @soreklab.bsky.social et al for these beautiful discoveries 👌
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Sorek Lab @soreklab.bsky.social · 23/01/2025
Our paper out @CellCellPress: Structure guided discovery of viral proteins that inhibit host immunity Congrats Erez Yirmiya, Azita Leavitt, Gil Amitai, our collaborators at the Kranzusch lab, and coauthors A 🧵 1/10 www.cell.com/cell/abstrac...
cell.com
Structure-guided discovery of viral proteins that inhibit host immunity
Large-scale, structure-guided computational pipeline sifts through millions of phage proteins to identify those that bind and antagonize host immune proteins. Detected proteins are shown to inhibit no...
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Erez Yirmiya @erezyirmiya.bsky.social · 23/01/2025
I'm thrilled to announce our latest work is now published in Cell! Viruses encode numerous proteins that inhibit host defenses, but identifying immune-modulatory proteins among millions of viral sequences has been nearly impossible - until now! www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...
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Osterman Ilya @ostermanilya.bsky.social · 21/11/2024
Finally moved to #Bluesky and happy to share our recent work about a new phage anti-defense system, based on NAD reconstitution by new enzymatic reactions. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
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François Rousset @francoisrousset.bsky.social · 11/11/2024
Seems like a good time to finally move here ! Taking the opportunity to share our most recent work : www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
biorxiv.org
TIR signaling activates caspase-like immunity in bacteria
Proteases of the caspase family, as well as Toll/Interleukin-1 Receptor (TIR)-domain proteins, have central roles in innate immunity and regulated cell death in humans. In this study we describe a bac...
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Sorek Lab @soreklab.bsky.social · 14/11/2024
Happy to see our paper out @ Nat Comm We discovered a bacterial NLR-like pattern recognition receptor that can sense 3 different viral proteins as a signature for infection. This explains its broad defense against different phage families Congrats Nathalie Béchon! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Diversification of molecular pattern recognition in bacterial NLR-like proteins - Nature Communications
Avs proteins are bacterial anti-phage pattern recognition receptors evolutionarily related to eukaryotic NLRs. Here, Béchon et al show that a single bacterial Avs can recognize different phage protein...
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