Chase Morgan

We have 50 years of data showing it's just placebo effect. We can stop wasting money on more studies now.

Bacteriophages are normally classified as either virulent or temperate. Reality is, of course, more complicated!
Here we show many bacterial isolates contain non-temperate phages that can persist through restreaking.
Thanks to all co-authors for such a great collaboration!

Research Technician - Reck-Peterson Lab Primary Work Address: 418 E 71st St #21, New York, NY, 10021 Current HHMI Employees, click here to apply via your Workday account. About the role: The Reck-Peterson lab studies the molecular mechanism...

Join the Reck-Peterson lab in NYC as a HHMI Research Technician! This role will support our new work on the cell biology of secondary metabolite production in filamentous fungi. Apply here: hhmi.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Extern...

@peterfineran.bsky.social and colleagues develop Tn-seq for phages by leveraging anti-CRISPR (Acr) as a positive
selectable marker in the presence of CRISPR-Cas counter-selection, and identify essential genes in phage from non model orgs
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Looking for a POSTDOC to work on jumbo phages (those with large genomes and fascinating cell biology), using our latest ASO technology (Gerovac M et al. 2025 Nature) to define RNA export mechanisms as well as to help to advance phage therapy. Here's the job ad.

Nucleus-Forming Phages: From Subcellular Organization and Viral–Host Interplay to Prospects for Phage Applications. Some new perspectives on chimalliviruses from our awesome longstanding Thai collaborators (and me). authors.elsevier.com/c/1mIJB4tPFp...

Powerful and important piece by an outstanding physician, scientist, and human being @kaminskimed.bsky.social

pdf:

jeremymberg.github.io/jeremyberg.g...

Super cool paper by @benadler.bsky.social @erinedoherty.bsky.social

#phage #phagesky

CURIOUS ABOUT PHAGE BIOLOGY!?
CPIC lab at @helmholtzhzi.bsky.social
is recruiting in the call
+++ CURIOSITY IS INFECTIOUS +++
helmholtz-hzi.de/en/career/jo...
Did you spot the phage? Please share!

Looking for a new approach to studying or eliminating phages? Check out our study introducing anti-phage ASOs (antisense oligos) out in @Nature today. nature.com/articles/s4158…

Please share my 1 min video on the importance of maintaining NIH funding of infectious diseases and drug discovery research vs rising antibiotic resistance

Drastic budget cuts harm our health and imperil the next generation of scientists

More @UCSanDiego “Behind Every Breakthrough” bit.ly/3FlXQs3

Part of the recently completed PhD thesis of outstanding UC San Diego Medical Scientist Training Program student Alex Stream exploring Strep A molecular pathogenesis and vaccinology

journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

Seems like precisely the kind of person that HHS should want giving advice on structural/cell/molecular biology and more. That would require a leadership group that values disciplinary competency and independent expertise.

villalab.ucsd.edu

This is why I always have to filter my BLAST results. Nice analysis and interesting questions about the persistence of lytic phages in host populations. I suspect for chimalliviruses it's a product of longer latent periods and low infection efficiencies in many hosts.

Telomere bacteriophages are widespread and equip their bacterial hosts with potent interbacterial weapons Klebsiella host strains infected with telomere phages can grow to be the dominant lineage in mixed populations.

"That telomere phages are so prevalent means that they are a selective force, one that we know little about. We now want to understand how the telomere-toxin is secreted and also understand how this ‘telocin’ wheedles its way into unsuspecting bacterial neighbors”

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Pleased to share our new paper out in 𝘑𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘯𝘢𝘭 𝘰𝘧 𝘊𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭 𝘐𝘯𝘷𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘨𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 led by Monika Kumaraswamy, MD, now Chief of Infectious Diseases UTexas-Tyler

Is minimimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) testing the gold standard for antibiotic-resistant superbugs? 🦠 🧫

🧵 1/6

www.jci.org/articles/vie...

illustration of a phage infecting a bacterium

We teamed up with our pals at @ucsandiego.bsky.social to show how jumbo #phages – huge viruses that prey on bacteria – use sneaky tricks to attack their victims! This knowledge could be used to leverage them as a tool to fight antibiotic resistance. Read more here: ow.ly/6VLa50Vucc5 🦠

Cryptic infection of a giant virus in a unicellular green alga Latency is a common strategy in a wide range of viral lineages, but its prevalence in giant viruses remains unknown. Here we describe a 617 kbp integrated giant viral element in the model green alga C...

Our work on cryptic infection of giant viruses was published today in
@ScienceMagazine
. We discovered a large virus hiding within a green algal genome producing virions.

Collaborative effort spearheaded by Virginia Tech, University of Miami
& NIOZ scientists.
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Sequential membrane- and protein-bound organelles compartmentalize genomes during phage infection The pre-nuclear stage of Chimalliviridae infection and whether the phage nucleus is essential have remained mysterious. Armbruster and Rani et al. demonstrate that the phage nucleus is required for ph...

Interrupting your regularly scheduled doom scrolling for some cool science by my awesome colleagues www.cell.com/cell-host-mi...

Anyone who puts a reddit AMA on their CV should be immediately disqualified from holding a policy position.

Flashy words like "revolutionize" are thrown around quite liberally in our field. In this case though, I can't think of a more appropriate word. This stuff is 🔥🔥🔥.

𝐓𝐨𝐩 𝐂𝐚𝐮𝐬𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐃𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡 𝐢𝐧 𝐔𝐒𝐀

𝟏𝟖𝟓𝟎𝐬

Tuberculosis
Dysentery
Cholera
Malaria
Typhoid
Pneumonia/Flu
Diphtheria
Scarlet fever
Meningitis
Whooping cough

𝙎𝙖𝙣𝙞𝙩𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣/𝙑𝙖𝙘𝙘𝙞𝙣𝙚𝙨/𝘼𝙣𝙩𝙞𝙗𝙞𝙤𝙩𝙞𝙘𝙨

𝐓𝐎𝐃𝐀𝐘

Heart disease
Cancer
Accidents
COPD
Stroke
Alzheimer’s
Diabetes
Pneumonia/Flu
Kidney disease
Suicide

I love this.

Multi-interface licensing of protein import into a phage nucleus - Nature This study uncovers a highly conserved jumbo phage protein, Imp1, that possesses multiple interfaces to license protein import into a proteinaceous nucleus-like compartment, using a genetic selection ...

When I started my PhD, we knew exactly zero about the phage nucleus protein import pathway. Out today in Nature, parallel work by Claire Kokontis picking apart this pathway. PicA vs. Imp1, let the games begin. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Compassionate-use therapies for a deadly infection save the life of cancer patient - CHOC Pediatrica CHOC infectious disease expert Dr. Erlinda “Chulie” Ulloa makes history nationally with investigational medication.

Amazing story of a young cancer patient's resilience, a scary infection with MDR 𝘗𝘴𝘦𝘶𝘥𝘰𝘮𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘴 𝘢𝘦𝘳𝘶𝘨𝘪𝘯𝘰𝘴𝘢 expressing NDM-1, and successful application of phage therapy

Care coordinated by Peds ID specialist and UCI Asst Prof Chulie Ulloa, MD—friend and former PSDP, K08, and UCPPFP mentee in the lab

Me: If this experiment works the first time, I'm throwing a party. Experiment: Did somebody say party?

Sure but the Juk in PA14 prevents KZ replication. Other juks probably protect against different phage. For example KZ and it's close relative PA3 share a replication mechanism but PA3 is insensitive to PA14 Juk.

Kimberly Cooper and Elizabeth Villa Named Pew Innovation Fund Investigators UC San Diego School of Biological Sciences Professors Kimberly Cooper and Elizabeth Villa have been selected by the Pew Charitable Trusts as members of its 2024 class of Innovation Fund Investigators.

I prefer shameful self-promotion by re-posting, but Pew and UCSD Biosciences have not migrated to this new utopia, so... Exciting news! I get to play with one of my besties @thevillalab.bsky.social

today.ucsd.edu/story/kimber...

A family of novel immune systems targets early infection of nucleus-forming jumbo phages Jumbo bacteriophages of the ⌽KZ-like family are characterized by large genomes (>200 kb) and the remarkable ability to assemble a proteinaceous nucleus-like structure. The nucleus protects the phage g...

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Discovery of Juk system in PA14 providing resistance to both PhiKZ and OMKO1 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Knockdown of Juk restores PA14 PhiKZ sensitivity pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38963841/ and here we use PA14 to select out PhiKZ for quantification