Michael T. Laub

Unmasking Pathogen Traits for Chronic Colonization in Neurogenic Bladder Patients

The paper studies microbial colonization in neurogenic bladder patients, identifying patterns of bacterial persistence and mutations linked to immune evasion and phage resistance.

DefensePredictor: A Machine Learning Model to Discover Novel Prokaryotic Immune Systems

DefensePredictor combines ESM2 protein language model embeddings with genomic context features in a gradient boosting classifier to identify prokaryotic anti-phage defense genes, validating 45 previously unknown Escherichia coli systems.

A membrane-bound nuclease directly cleaves phage DNA during genome injection

This study identifies SNIPE as a bacterial membrane-bound nuclease that directly cleaves phage DNA during genome injection, providing a novel mechanism for distinguishing self from non-self.

Viral SSB-bound ssDNA activates the bacterial anti-phage defense system DARNA

This study shows that viral SSB-bound ssDNA activates the bacterial anti-phage defense system DARNA by recognizing a signal promoted by viral proteins, enabling broad virus detection without auto-immunity.

A versatile bacterial innate immunity protein directly senses two disparate phage proteins

This study shows that the bacterial immunity protein CapRelSJ46 can sense two distinct phage proteins using the same domain, highlighting its versatility in anti-phage defense.

Robust and tunable signal processing in mammalian cells via engineered covalent modification cycles

This paper develops synthetic phosphorylation-based signaling networks in mammalian cells that are tunable, precise, and robust to perturbations.

High-resolution, genome-wide mapping of positive supercoiling in chromosomes

The paper introduces GapR-seq, a method to map positive supercoiling in genomes, and finds it widespread, associated with transcription and specific genomic features in E. coli and yeast.

Characterizing the portability of RecT-mediated oligonucleotide recombination

This study investigates the portability of RecT-mediated homologous recombination across bacterial species, finding that compatibility with the host's single-stranded DNA-binding protein determines functionality.

Unsupervised extraction of stable expression signatures from public compendia with eADAGE

The paper introduces eADAGE, an ensemble method to extract stable expression signatures from public data, revealing a phosphate starvation response in Pseudomonas aeruginosa controlled by PhoB and requiring KinB.