We are hiring!🥼
Long-term post-doc w/ #ukriflf funding @uclcancer

Help us detect&target preinvasive disease via the immune system

Bespoke T cell omics assays
World-leading multi-disciplinary collaborators
Unique multi-cancer cohorts
@UKRI_News

jobs.ac.uk/job/CRC970/res…

Thrilled to share our lab’s first paper out now in @CellCellPress. We identify how a conserved family of Shigella virulence factors inhibits interferon by blocking calcium signalling, promoting virulence
cell.com/cell/fulltext/…

The @castello_lab is seeking for a motivated postdoc at Research associate or assistant level . Our work aims to understand how cellular RNA-binding proteins regulate virus infection. Application here: gla.ac.uk/explore/jobs/ Ref 074888. Closing date 12th Jan.

Our new paper on KHNYN antiviral activity is available as a preprint. This was another excellent collaboration with @stuartjdneil and Ian Taylor's lab. Great work by @MariaJoseLista2 and all of the team. 1/7
biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

We hypothesized that KHNYN co-evolved with ZAP and analyzed the nuclear export signal sequence in a variety of species. In bony fish, which do not have ZAP orthologs, KHNYN does not contain two of the five residues required for the nuclear export signal. 6/7

When ZAP emerged in tetrapods, KHNYN acquired the final two residues of the nuclear export signal. Therefore, we speculate that KHNYN co-evolved with ZAP to allow their interaction in the cytoplasm to restrict viral replication. 7/7

I am grateful to @The_MRC for suporting @stuartjdneil and my lab's research for 3 more years. Also thank you to Irati, Helin, @MattiaFicarelli, @DorotaKmiec, @MariaJoseLista2, Clement, Harry and Rui for their great work, without them there would be no grant!

Thank you to all of the authors for their great work on our paper showing that, despite lentiviral vectors containing a much higher CpG abundance than HIV-1, the CpGs do not appear to sensitise the core lentiviral vector platform to restriction by ZAP.
cell.com/molecular-ther…

This supports our idea that high CpG dinucleotide abundance is not sufficient for ZAP to target an RNA. One of our goals is to figure out the design principles for ZAP-response elements to either enrich or supress them in specific RNAs, but we still don't know the rules.

This was another great collaboration with @GSK!

zippity-ZAP⚡️! Our new paper is out @PLOSBiology! I might be biased, but so is the dinucleotide composition of the mammalian interferome 😁, thanks in part to ZAP!
journals.plos.org/plosbiology/ar…
Congrats fellow co-first authors @VirusMuser & @NardusMollentze & members of @WilsonLabCVR!

We hypothesise that ZAP must associate with cytoplasmic membranes to assemble a complex with cofactors for optimal antiviral activity against viruses with diverse replication sites and strategies, including CpG-enriched HIV-1 and SARS-CoV-2.

1/2 Our review article about genome composition biases in RNA viruses is now online: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wr….
TL:DR (it is long): 1. Composition biases occur at mono- and di- nucleotide level and beyond, at amino acid level and codon pairs.

Congratulations @caro_goujon, Hélène Bauby, Chris Ward, Rupert Hugh-White, etc on the great work!