The Milbrandt lab had a paper published recently in Current Biology. The paper, “TIR Domain Proteins Are an Ancient Family of NAD+-Consuming Enzymes,” shows that TIR domain proteins from both bacteria and archaea cleave NAD+ into nicotinamide and ADP-ribose (ADPR), with catalytic cleavage executed by a conserved glutamic acid. Kow Essuman, an M.D./Ph.D. student in the Milbrandt lab, is first author on the paper, with co-authors Dr. Daniel Summers, Dr. Yo Sasaki, Dr. Xianrong Mao, Aldrin Kay Yuen Yim, Dr. Jeff Milbrandt, the James S. McDonnell Professor of Genetics and head of the Department of Genetics, and Dr. Aaron DiAntonio, Alan A and Edith L Professor of Developmental Biology at Washington University in St. Louis. Read more about the paper here.