Tanner Wiegand

The paper identifies Arc as a transcriptional repressor in IS605-family transposons, showing it binds promoters to regulate TnpA and TnpB expression.

The paper identifies a TldR repressor in Enterococcus faecalis that directly represses OppA, revealing its role in regulating bacterial peptide import and uncovering a conserved structural mechanism inherited from TnpB ancestors.

The paper shows how two reverse transcriptases with different templating strategies work together to produce complementary DNA for antiviral defense.

The paper investigates the mechanism of tandem-repeat DNA synthesis by DRT10, revealing a 2:1 RT-ncRNA architecture and how repeat length is controlled by template distance.

The paper profiles RNA modifications in MS2 bacteriophage using LC-MS/MS and Nanopore DRS, finding {Psi} as the predominant modification.

This study shows that temperate phages enhance bacterial fitness by remodeling flagella via RNA-guided transcription factors, improving motility and immune evasion.

The paper identifies a novel RNA-guided transcription mechanism using dCas12f and σE factors in E. coli, enabling gene activation without traditional promoter motifs.

This study determines cryo-EM structures of the dCas12f-σE-RNAP complex to reveal a novel RNA-guided transcription mechanism in bacteria.

The paper identifies DRT10, an antiviral reverse transcriptase, and shows its structural and mechanistic similarities to telomerase, suggesting a bacterial origin for telomerase.

The paper reveals a novel DNA homopolymer synthesis mechanism by DRT9, triggered by viral infection to induce abortive infection and population-level immunity.

The paper demonstrates that bacterial reverse transcriptases synthesize extrachromosomal genes via rolling-circle amplification to confer antiviral immunity.

The paper investigates the molecular mechanisms of transposition and RNA-guided DNA cleavage in IS607-family elements, revealing how transposon-encoded RNAs balance splicing and guide RNA functions.

The paper identifies TnpB-like nuclease-dead repressors (TldR) as RNA-guided transcription factors that emerged through domestication of transposon-encoded TnpB nucleases, pre-dating CRISPR-Cas systems.

This study identifies two mobilization pathways in type V-K CASTs and shows how manipulating TnsC availability can increase their specificity to 98.1%.