Ooooh. Cool new paper on origins of life. A simple 45-nucleotide RNA molecule that can perfectly copy itself. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Junior RNA Scientists, tomorrow Feb 11th at 10AM ET is the first RNA Collaborative Seminar Series of 2026 hosted by the University of Rochester Center for RNA & the Bay Area RNA Club! Join us to hear about emerging RNA research. Sign up for zoom registration here: us02web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Lipids challenge ligands to control receptors The behaviour of a receptor protein can be influenced by the presence of certain lipids in the membrane it is embedded in. 🔗 buff.ly/G1Zl6cZ

I present the most interesting graph ever made. HUMAN ON BICYCLE beats every other living thing. www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-hu...

Thrilled to share our latest study, led by @reikatei.bsky.social, in @natchembio.nature.com! We began by asking a simple question—how do cells know if they have too much of a lipid in a particular membrane, and how do they respond to rectify this imbalance? www.nature.com/articles/s41... More info 👇

New paper out! Here's a puzzle: phototrophy, the ability to use light for energy, is one of life's great innovations. It evolved early and transformed the biosphere. But it evolved 2x. Why not just once, why not more? Our work suggests the answer is priority effects. www.nature.com/articles/s44...

reading about organisms that aren’t your specialty is like margins of the quorbus eplungulate, ploobular processes bent posteriorly towards the foobulum define term “eplungulate” - lacking plungae. synonym: thubulous

How do lipids shape life? I explore this question in my recent talk for the Build-a-Cell 🦠 seminar series. Thanks to @kateadamala.bsky.social for hosting! Watch it here: youtu.be/JnF7hPCiSbI?...

Science update from my postdoc Peiyuan Chai - his work “glycoRNA complexed with heparan sulfate regulates VEGF-A signaling” is now published @nature.com uncovering a new layer or glycoRNA-regulation of growth factor mediated control physiological processes rdcu.be/e1bBX

Excited to share a new story that transformed how we think about membrane domains in the ER! rdcu.be/eR7Cn ER exit sites mediated by the COPII adaptor sec24D selectively recruit lipid raft-preferencing proteins for rapid ER export Wondering what’s so new and exciting? Skytorial below! 1/9

How's AI affecting science productivity? AI is giving scientists "tunnel vision": lots of papers on fewer topics, and discovery gets stuck in local minima. I think q.e.d is the cure for that (link to q.e.d below) www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Beautiful wintry sunset seen from Hudson, Massachusetts!

If you are looking to integrate your latest genetic creation into the genome of your favourite bug, you might find our latest review now out in OUP Synthetic Biology useful. 🧬⚒️ Work led by Riesa Rohmat with input from Thea Irvine and Shivang Joshi. #genome #synbio doi.org/10.1093/synb...

Merry Christmas 🎄from Hamburg to Boston! 🛩️

Last letter in the post before the holidays 🎄📮 2026 is going to be a great year!

Our🥶COOLNESS paper to date is finally published! Ice cold and lithium dramatically delay forgetting (extend memory) in C. elegans. Why? read all about it! 👇 rdcu.be/eVhn2

Do viruses use RNA to rewire bacteria? Yes! In our paper in @cp-molcell.bsky.social RIL-seq reveals interkingdom RNA interactions during λ infection. Phages don’t just encode proteins, they use small RNAs to hijack bacterial replication and fine-tune infection. #RNA #Phage doi.org/10.1016/j.mo...

Organelles do NOT have a single uniform pH. And if you think they must, because “protons diffuse fast,” this paper is for you. A thread on why that assumption is wrong; and what we found instead. 🧵 1/n

A long standing goal in synthetic biology is ‘PURE makes PURE’ - effectively the start of self-replicating biology in a tube from just adding biochemicals and DNA instructions. This looks like a promising breakthrough from the Maerkl lab. 👀

🎉 Congratulations to @anh-nhn.bsky.social for submitting her PhD thesis, just in time for Christmas!! 🎄🦠

And as we discussed, #eierpunch is a well-balanced sport drink, with just enough ethanol to improve focus...

I have lost focus in recent weeks of what is important in #life. Silly me. Not anymore. 🤠🚴‍♀️💕 Thanks James for this #winter #ride punctuated by a power #eierpunch

#Mastodon, the Command Center for Large-Scale Lineage-Tracing Microscopy Datasets, is finally heading for publication (well, let's see). To #cite or not to cite shall no longer be the question 🙃, because the #preprint. Software is available in every #Fiji near you. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

And let's not forget they're also glow in the dark (thanks @chemzymes.bsky.social)

Join us (again) for another fantastic BioMalPar meeting @embl.org and also a great pre-meeting @ciid-heidelberg.bsky.social

Good company on the 🚂 train back to #Dresden with @paveltomancak.bsky.social

Had an amazing first year at Center SynGen @zmbh.uni-heidelberg.de! Building a computational group in an experimental institute sparked more collaboration than I imagined. If you love comp bio and working with amazing scientists, this role is a huge chance. Curious? Reach out! t.ly/udiwJ

Great idea, here’s our December 🦠❄️ #MicrobeContaminationArt ❄️🦠, by @varvarakramkova.bsky.social Happy Holidays from the Saenz Lab ☃️

Congratulations former postdoc @jfhevler.bsky.social (in transit to Roche) and the team on their work using thermal proteome profiling along with glycosylation perturbagens to discover glycan-dependent protein functions at the proteome scale 👏 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

9 hours on the train 🚂 is still way more relaxing/productive than spending 3-5 hours dealing with security lines, crowded gates, and tiny seats.

Super exciting to be part of of this Research Training Group to train the next generation of material biologists :) We are already actively recruiting PhD students! Join our joint project with @jamessaenz.bsky.social !!!

Now properly published at @natcomms.nature.com with few additional experiments incl. demonstration of Daptomycin's ability to depolarise non-growing cells. See the original preprint-thread for a summary of our findings. www.nature.com/articles/s41... #microsky

What a beautiful evening sky over Dresden…after a bone chilling ride through the Heide 🥶

thinking about how i get anxious writing emails because i don't want to sound like a moron while larry summers is apparently typing emails like this: u kno she dint want to talk tomorrow. make me bad pheel.

Looking forward to participating in this conference!

Biology of bridge-like lipid transfer proteins continues to be uncovered at a rather brisk pace. These things are important... Cool paper, congratulations!

@jcv.bsky.social penned an obituary for Ham Smith in @nature.com. Since the early 90s, Ham has been a key figure at the Institute for his invaluable contributions and mentorship. "Ham was the best colleague that one could ever have in science and a great friend." www.nature.com/articles/d41...

It’s a tradition that I ask my “Physics III” class to create some memes about our class material. It’s *also* a tradition that they’re super good at this. Please enjoy, like and share! 🧪 (I promised my students extra game points if this goes nano-viral!) (Front pic is my own entry.) 1/17

Our latest paper is out! While the circadian photoentrainment circuit has been extensively studied, the mechanisms regulating its development remain poorly understood. Here we show that retinal Müller glia play a key role in this process. Check it out! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

#ACSChemBio and #Biochemistry invite submissions to a special issue on Lipids and Lipidation guest edited by @chembiobryan.bsky.social and me! Find details in the #CallforPapers and submit your exciting findings to one of these journals by May 31, 2026. axial.acs.org/chemical-bio... #lipidtime

Hilariously bad idea. In my subfield author lists are almost always alphabetical!

Proud to share a preprint of our paper on how bridge-like lipid transport protein VPS13C senses lysosomal membrane tension in anticipation of membrane lesions to initiate net ER-to-lysosome lipid transfer for efficient lysosomal repair www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Beautiful piece of work! Congratulations!

Prof. Hamilton Smith at J. Craig Venter Institute, a Nobel laureate for discovering type II restriction enzymes, passed away last night. @jcvi.org @nobelprize.bsky.social A huge loss in Science, but his legacy will be remembered. www.jcvi.org/about/hamilt...

An event honoring late Prof. Clyde Hutchison at J. Craig Venter Institute @jcvi.org

Happy birthday to Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, the "Father of Microbiology" and first person to observe bacteria with a microscope! 🔬 Learn how microscopes made microbiology possible, leading to innumerable insights for biology, medicine & technology. asm.org/articles/202...

The views were pretty spectacular! #Chur #Calanda

amazing #lipidtime story from Tontonoz lab! Lipid scrambling and cholesterol accessibility IN T-CELLS regulates nutrient uptake in small intestine 🤯🤯 Physiology is so weird! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

BIG ANNOUNCEMENT📣: I haven’t been this excited to be part of something new in 15 years… Thrilled to reveal the passion project I’ve been working on for the past year and a half!🙀🥳 (thread 👇)

“Treat questions as threats” 😅😅