Vikram Alva

This study identifies AHA, a conserved archaeal ribosome-associated factor involved in hibernation and energy sensing, linking prokaryotic translational silencing to eukaryotic energy sensing.

This study determines the structure of a large S-layer protein from Pyrobaculum arsenaticum using cryo-EM and AlphaFold, revealing its unique multidomain architecture and evolutionary conservation.

This study identifies PKN as a female-specific protein in brown algae that mediates species-specific fertilization by enabling male-female recognition.

This paper investigates AbpX, a microbial biomatrix protein that forms thermostable hydrogels through calcium ion-dependent self-assembly and provides an atomic model of its fibril lattice.

This study characterizes HLp, a bacterial histone that forms tetramers and wraps ~60 base pairs of DNA, revealing a new mode of histone-DNA interaction in bacteria.

This study shows that the archaeal histone HTkC forms highly compact DNA structures, doubling the compaction level of hypernucleosomes and highlighting its role in chromatin organization.

This study identifies donor strand complementation and calcium ion coordination as key drivers of chaperone-free cannulae polymerization in archaea.

The paper identifies ComFB as a new family of c-di-NMP receptors in bacteria, showing they bind c-di-GMP and c-di-AMP and regulate cellular processes like motility.

The paper shows that endogenous viral elements in brown algae can reactivate, replicate, and transmit viruses, challenging the view of EVEs as inert.

This study maps the ultrastructural topology of the corynebacterial cell surface using electron cryotomography and single particle cryomicroscopy, revealing the S-layer composition and its evolutionary uniqueness.

This study shows mechanical compression induces tissue-like multicellularity in haloarchaea, forming structures with distinct molecular and mechanical features similar to eukaryotic tissues.

This study identifies and characterizes two new families of archaeal bactofilins, HalA and HalB, showing their roles in shaping cell morphology and curvature in Haloferax volcanii.

This study investigates the DNA-binding properties of bacterial histone HBb in Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus, revealing its ability to bend DNA in a sequence-independent manner, similar to archaeal and eukaryotic histones.

This study elucidates the structural diversity of S-layers across prokaryotes using AlphaFold2multimer and electron cryomicroscopy, revealing evolutionary patterns and cell anchoring mechanisms.

pLM-BLAST detects distant homology by comparing sequence embeddings from ProtT5, achieving accuracy comparable to HHsearch while being faster and capable of local alignments.

The paper uses AlphaFold2 to classify prokaryotic histones into 17 groups and identifies a new histone superfamily that bridges DNA instead of wrapping it.