🚨 BIG NEWS! 🚨 The Patrick and Watson labs are moving to Vanderbilt University Medical Center (@VUMCMolecPath and @VUMC_ID) at the end of the summer! Pictured here, some excitement for the new beginnings that await all of us in Nashville.

Move over STING, TRIF and MAVS. IRSp53 and GMIP join the club of pLxIS proteins that stimulate interferons. So pleased to share our new study, which used synthetic biology to reveal multiple mechanisms that lead to anti-viral immunity. With a surprising link to metabolism.

#asv2024 Great meeting and thanks for hosting The Ohio State. Till Montreal!

Check out our recent work Nature Immunology highlighting how every pain condition is different, and immune cells might hold the key to these differences. As a cherry on top, our DRG image was chosen as the cover art 😃 P.C. Sara Hakim nature.com/articles/s4159…

🔥 Check out this new work from @EmilyHemann and Co. 🔥

Less is more sings the songbird: extensive loss of inflammasome components incl. ASC in birds. NLRP3 & CARD8 survive the purge. Great collab. with Ed Miao Ed Miao and Zach Billman Duke University DukeMGM UT Southwestern Medical Center GBE (Genome Biology and Evolution) academic.oup.com/gbe/article/16…

Tanapox Virus and Yaba Monkey Tumor Virus K3 Orthologs Inhibit Primate Protein Kinase R in a Species-Specific Fashion mdpi.com/2861656 #mdpiviruses via Viruses MDPI

Unanticipated Loss of Inflammasomes in Birds buff.ly/46zL5DF #science #evolution #biology #genome

🚨🚨I’m excited to present our lab’s new paper where we tried to provide a mechanistic explanation for the link between antibiotic use and risk of developing inflammatory bowel diseases (#IBD). A 🧵/1 science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…

Not one but TWO faculty searches in our department Cornell MBG 1️⃣ Cell & Mol Biol Weill Institute for Cell & Molecular Biology academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/28336 2️⃣ Human Genetics/Genomics academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/28554 Outstanding science, supportive community, beautiful environment. We have it all! Spread the word 🙏

De novo creation of an innate immune LPS receptor. Anh Cao identified the principles of LPS detection by caspase-11, revealing the CARD as a bipartite lipid binding module. This knowledge allowed us to convert an ancient CARD-like protein into a functional LPS receptor.

Our newest: My grad students & their "sweet" project ..."In principle, such cellular circuitry could rapidly adapt immune responses by sensing changing metabolite levels consumed during viral replication and cell proliferation." biorxiv.org/content/10.110… #mitochondria #virologs

Are you a recently or soon-to-graduate PhD student?🧑🏽‍🔬👨🏻‍🔬👩🏿‍🔬 Are you interested in the host-pathogen interface? 🦠🧬🧫 Come join us in Nashville! 🎶 🍗🏙️ The Watson lab is looking for a postdoc! vanderbilt.edu/postdoc/prospe…

(1/6) Our new paper is out (OA): Host species-specific activity of the poxvirus PKR inhibitors E3 and K3 mediate host range function | Journal of Virology journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/jv… It took 15 years from our initial discovery that human and mouse PKR were sensitive, whereas ...

Happy to share our latest preprint from 1st author & Penn IGG PhD student Víctor R. Vázquez Marrero on how GM-CSF potentiates cytokine production in human monocytes during bacterial infection! Congrats to Victor, his undergrad mentees Allyson Lu & Madison Dresler, & postdoc Mikel Haggadone, PhD!

From PLOS Pathogens - Viral piracy of host RNA phosphatase DUSP11 by avipoxviruses buff.ly/lAnagqk #bwfpath

Newest: Virologs mark #RNA metabolism as an evolutionary battleground during infection - Collaboration w/Chris Sullivan & Kayla Szymanik PLOS Pathogens journals.plos.org/plospathogens/…

A great line-up of speakers for Cell Symposia Multifaceted Mitochondria June 2026 in Glasglow! Check it out and register early: cell-symposia.com/mitochondria-2… Kivanc Birsoy Rutter Lab Alexis A. Jourdain and more! #mitochondria Cell Press

Why do some genetic mutations devastate specific tissues while sparing others? We explore this question in GGC repeat disorders, revealing a mechanism linking protein aggregation to tRNA splicing failure in the brain. 🧵 on our new paper in Science: 🔗 science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…