Published in Science Advances! Looking forward to discussing the implications of our results and their applications with many researchers. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

To probe gene-scale chromatin physics, we built 96-mer (20 kb) arrays with defined histone marks. Combining single-molecule tracking, AFM imaging, and developing in vitro Hi-C, we saw how specific modifications dictate chromatin structure and dynamics. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

I’ve released a tool to sketch and edit phylogenetic trees! yawak.jp/PhyloWeaver/ Load a Newick file and intuitively add/remove/resize branches. Useful for quick conceptual trees, extracting subtrees, or turning ideas into Newick.

Call for a research scientist position (indefinite-term) in our group. Deadline: October 15 www.riken.jp/en/careers/r...

Exciting new study from Iwasaki lab, led by Kotaro @ktomuro.bsky.social & Yuichi @u1-7no.bsky.social, that I was lucky to be part of! A new method reveals many mRNAs are locally translated. Too much for one tweet—check it out: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

We developed APEX-Ribo-Seq, a method to map subcellular translation with spatial resolution. Using it, we profiled local translation in over 20 conditions!

Call for RIKEN ECL Team / Unit Leaders. In my (biased) opinion, this is probably the best option if you are seeking an independent position in Japan. I will be happy to chat/answer questions via email. www.riken.jp/en/careers/p...

This is a bizarre discovery by Kyosuke. He introduces an active binary mixture model and finds bubbles, typically found in very large MIPS simulations, appearing in smaller setups. Then observes that even the mean-field deterministic ver. of the model also produces bubbles. arxiv.org/abs/2505.08637

Congrats to our colleague Takahiro Kanazawa, who graduated with honors from U Tokyo Physics! www.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/ja/info/10714/

RIKEN SPDR fellowship, Register basic information by 5 pm April 3, 2025 (Japan Time). Application deadline 5 pm April 10, 2025 (Japan Time). Feel free to contact regarding this, or about opportunities in RIKEN and Japan in general.

What is the multiscale structure of chromatin condensates? How does it shape thermodynamic and material properties? We address this at near-atomistic resolution🔥🔥🔥 using cryoET (Rosen & Villa labs, led by H Zhou), a new multiscale model (K Russell) and cryoET-guided sims (J Huertas & J Maristany)

Congratulations to Zihui, Sano-san, and the team on this interesting work! They found that +1 topological defects attract neural progenitors—an observation that seems at odds with expectations for an extensile active nematic. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

My @TEDAI2024 talk is out! www.ted.com/talks/surya_... I discuss our work, spanning AI, physics, math & neuroscience, to develop a deeper scientific understanding of intelligence, both to understand biological intelligence and make better artificial intelligence. I focus on 5 gaps:

Sequence Composition Dictates Condensate Miscibility https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.11.29.626135v1

I feel like this post is becoming even more relevant for our early-career researcher friends in the US—unless it’s already too late. It doesn’t have to be our lab or RIKEN; if you’re interested in coming to Japan, I’m always happy to chat!

Another of my favourite 2024 #NatRevMCB covers highlights our Review on #somitogenesis by Yuchuan Miao and Olivier Pourquie. We were inspired by the rows of forming somites that resemble rows of seat on a train or plane and their patterning by Hox genes! 🔗 go.nature.com/3Vx3psy

Happy to see this published! This work was led by Takahiro (a talented undergrad@UTokyo) and Kyosuke (a transdisciplinary theoretician@RIKEN). Dynamical phase transitions can occur even for an equilibrium Brownian motion if the dimension is larger than 4. journals.aps.org/prresearch/a...

Starting in April 2025, our RIKEN Hakubi Lab will transition to a Chief Scientist Lab, and we plan to move to Wako in 2026. My affiliation with the IPI, Department of Physics at The University of Tokyo, will continue as before.

Latest from the lab! I've been seeking the ultimate modulator that regulates the tempo of multiple developmental processes simultaneously, and metabolism has been an attractive candidate for such a global tempo modulator. However, I was wrong. 1/ www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The sympathetic nervous system may control selective organs, but how this specificity is achieved is unknown. Our new study @NatureComms www.nature.com/articles/s41...　uncovers a parallel labeled-line organization within the lower thoracic spinal cord. 1/

Thorough study comparing the vertebral formula of more than 388 tetrapod species. The relationship between Hox expression and vertebral identity is not trivial, specially in birds. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

We are seeking a motivated postdoc to join our lab!  Our research focuses on live-cell imaging/analysis to reveal how chromatin behaves in living cells and how its behavior contributes to cellular functions. www.nature.com/articles/s41... www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... Interested? Please DM me!

And our new preprint! "Gene-scale in vitro reconstitution reveals histone acetylation directly controls chromatin architecture", biorxiv (2024). Led by Yohsuke T Fukai, in collaboration with Kurumizaka lab (U Tokyo) and Umehara lab (RIKEN BDR). www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Recent collaboration: "A Percolation Model of Emergence: Analyzing Transformers Trained on a Formal Language", arXiv:2408.12578 (2024). With Ekdeep Lubana, Robert Dick, and Hidenori Tanaka. arxiv.org/abs/2408.12578

Recent work from our group: "Activity-induced ferromagnetism in one-dimensional quantum many-body systems", Phys. Rev. Research 6, 023096 (2024). With Kazuaki Takasan and Kyosuke Adachi. doi.org/10.1103/Phys...

Recent work from our group: "Dynamical phase transitions in single particle Brownian motion without drift", arXiv:2407.18282 (2014), with Takahiro Kanazawa and Kyosuke Adachi. arxiv.org/abs/2407.18282

Recent work from our group: "Predicting Heteropolymer Interactions: Demixing and Hypermixing of Disordered Protein Sequences", Physical Review X 14, 4902 (2024), with Kyosuke Adachi. doi.org/10.1103/Phys...

Work with Rory Cerbus and Ichiro Hiratani @RIKEN_BDR (no account yet?) out in @PNASNews (not yet?), regarding the new patterns we found in vertebral counts across tetrapods and their relation to Hox cluster sequences. Enjoy! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Dear fellow nonequilibrium beings a.k.a. vertebrates on Bluesky, We are a group of (mainly) physicists studying everything interesting in biology. Happy to seek this new platform!