Are you an early-stage graduate student (2nd or 3rd year) or early-stage postdoc based in the US or Canada, working primarily in Drosophila? Would you like to help improve the experience of all trainees working in Drosophila research? If so, read on. (Please repost to reach a broad audience.)

Chromatin fatigue: DNA repair alters the chromatin environment and introduces heritable variation in gene expression in a larger region around the lesion! Amazing achievement by @sbantele.bsky.social and Jiri Lukas published in @science.org 🙌 Happy we could contribute. See 👇

FastGA -> ALNview; step into the centromeric matrix! github.com/thegenemyers Probably the best dot plot software on the planet...

New paper from the lab: we’re using long-read sequencing to disentangle isoform complexity at allele-specific loci 🧬💡 Here, we combine the PacBio Iso-Seq workflow with the established WhatsHap phasing approach to assign long reads to the correct allele in polymorphic F1 mouse hybrids.

I feel like I'm going crazy. Is reviewing grants and papers time-consuming and painful, but a vitally important part of our job and the scientific enterprise? Or is it drudge work we're supposed to outsource to AI?

Delighted to share Array Assembler — a web tool for designing oligos for generating crRNA arrays for #Cas12 and #Cas13 systems. Input spacers and key plasmid details to generate an order-ready XLSX of oligos, streamlining array creation while minimising cost, time, and errors. Happy CRISPRing!

new Lai lab paper @natsmb.nature.com! Dicer is specifically mutated in cancer, but we don't fully understand its molecular/reg impacts. with @danweihuangfu.bsky.social, we characterized the first knockin Dicer hotspot in hESCs, and found unexpected defects in miRNA biogenesis! 🧬 1/4 rdcu.be/eOc0q

Excited to share our new preprint on BioRxiv! A collaborative effort spanning many years and several labs to uncover what the germline chromosomes of Paramecium really look like. 🔗 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 1/5

It's weird. A hundred years ago, only rich people owned cars while everyone else owned horses. Now only rich people own horses while everyone else owns cars. How the stables have turned.

And we have another open position, this time with a focus on Genome Biology! Join a great community in Vienna to bring your research to the next level!

great to be at the #EMBOMobileGenome meeting in Heidelberg with a wonderful bunch of colleagues, speakers and attendees. this meeting is a good reflection of the excitement and collegiality in the transposon field. kindly sponsored by @embo.org

What's the ultimate 45-minute introduction to RNAi? Updating a lecture made me start from scratch to make it... ✨ ultimate ✨ Main focus: anti-viral and genome defense functions in plants+fungi+invertebrates If you have input (or even better *slides*), please reply here or DM me Thanks!

My awesome grad student Shashank and I wrote this paper trying to look at broader patterns of HT in TEs. HT is happening everywhere! DNA transposons jump further than other classes! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

🚨Our collaboration with @centriolelab.bsky.social & @gautamdey.bsky.social is out today in @cp-cell.bsky.social We show that #Expansion #Microscopy is a broad-spectrum modality for Euks, enabling 3D phenotypic maps rooted to phylogeny. #ProtistsOnSky #SciComm #SciSky www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Lab’s first paper is out!! We show the first structures of #Asgard #chromatin by #cryo-EM 🧬❄️ Asgard histones form closed and open hypernucleosomes. Closed are conserved across #Archaea, while open resemble eukaryotic H3–H4 octasomes and are Asgard-specific. More here: www.cell.com/molecular-ce...

I’m a fair-weather poster on here to say the least. However, I'm pleased to present our latest paper. A great effort from all authors and an interesting insight into transcriptional regulation (we think!). www.cell.com/molecular-ce...

We (@sobuelow.bsky.social) developed AF-CALVADOS to integrate AlphaFold and CALVADOS to simulate flexible multidomain proteins at scale See preprint for: — Ensembles of >12000 full-length human proteins — Analysis of IDRs in >1500 TFs 📜 doi.org/10.1101/2025... 💾 github.com/KULL-Centre/...

Today @anthropic.com released PubMed integration for Claude. No hallucinations. Just real science, real data. As a beta tester, this has been game changing— a supercharged research tool. Here are 6 prompts that will transform how you search the literature. A 🧵 www.anthropic.com/news/claude-...

Excited to share our new @narjournal.bsky.social paper! Using ReLo and AlphaFold, we described a network of interactions between Drosophila piRNA pathway factors suggesting new links how they coordinate to ensure transposon silencing and genome integrity. academic.oup.com/nar/article/...

Our latest paper on a histone methyltransferase-independent function of PRC2 controlling small RNA dynamics during programmed DNA elimination in Paramecium is now published in #NAR. #RNAbiology #TEsky #smallRNAs #PRC2 #DNAelimination 1/5 academic.oup.com/nar/article-...

1/10 Genome maintenance by telomerase is a fundamental process in nearly all eukaryotes. But where does it come from? Today, we report the discovery of telomerase homologs in a family of antiviral RTs, revealing an unexpected evolutionary origin in bacteria. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

I think people adjacent to science (but who now find themselves deciding the fate of US science somehow) undervalue humility, valuing braggadocios hubris instead. Yes it’s true that some scientific discoveries are complete paradigm changers, and we celebrate these. 1/

When transposons jump, genomes diverge - even in cultured cells. I am happy to share our new preprint: a chromosome-scale genome assembly for Drosophila OSC cells, one of the key model systems in the piRNA field, especially for nuclear piRNA biology. 🧬🧵 (1/12)

We still can’t predict much of anything in biology blog.genesmindsmachines.com/p/we-still-c...

How does a “universal” transcription factor evolve to do species-specific jobs? Our new preprint reveals how divergence in TBP’s domains shapes transcriptional specialization across eukaryotes. Read it here 👉 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #MolecularEvolution #Transcription

There's an update on the state of FlyBase on the FlyBase.org front page. You can contribute to FlyBase at this link wiki.flybase.org/wiki/FlyBase... We express enormous gratitude to the people, labs, groups, and foundations who have already helped us. #FlyBase #Drosophila

The Vienna BioCenter PhD Program application deadline is approaching: October 10! Join one of Europe’s premier life science campuses, home to cutting-edge research across all areas of biology. Apply and start your scientific journey in Vienna! training.vbc.ac.at/phd-program/ #PhD #LifeSciences

My entry for today’s #FluorescenceFriday: a pupal #Drosophila testis with muscles expressing 🔵 lifeact & 🔴 RFP-nls Honored & grateful to receive an honorable mention at @healthcare.nikon.com Nikon Small World 🌍🔬✨ 🔗 www.nikonsmallworld.com/galleries/20... #NikonSmallWorld #Microscopy #ScienceArt

We discovered an endogenous retrovirus that's still spreading in natural D. melanogaster populations! It was horizontally transferred from D. erecta in Central Africa, so we named it "Kuruka", which means "jump" in Swahili. Read its cool story here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

We have an open post-doc position in my group to study mRNA cleavage and polyadenylation using biochemical reconstitution and cryoEM. Please get in touch if you are interested in joining this amazing team! 🔬🧬🤩 #RNA #cryoEM

Now this is Content

How are RNAs sorted for export vs. degradation in the nucleus? In collaboration with @heick.bsky.social’s lab we (@clemensplaschka.bsky.social and @juliusbrennecke.bsky.social labs) discovered a direct mechanistic link between the export and decay machineries: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... (1/x)

Check out our new collaborative preprint about Affinity-ligand purification of native human low-abundance multi-protein complexes doi.org/10.1101/2025...

🚀 Our new paper is out @natmethods.nature.com! Kuffer & Marzilli engineered conditionally stable MS2 & PP7 coat proteins (dMCP & dPCP) that degrade unless bound to RNA, enabling ultra–low-background, single-mRNA imaging in live cells. 🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧬 www.addgene.org/John_Ngo/

I am excited to announce that I will be moving to IMB Mainz next year! The Winter call for the IPP PhD program is now open; if you are interested in maternal #mRNA regulation and #translation in early vertebrate development, please apply! Deadline: 16 October. More info: www.imb.de/students-pos...

It is my pleasure to share with you the latest from @jsvejstrup.bsky.social lab, where we look at how the reduction of RNAPII levels has a severe, yet organized transcriptional response in the cell.

Love RNA biology? Join us to explore the piRNA pathway with structural and genetic approaches (see 👇👇). PhD student/postdoc position co-supervised by Clemens Plaschka & myself. DM or email us if you’d like to know more! @vbcscitraining.bsky.social @imbavienna.bsky.social @impvienna.bsky.social

Genes are not On/Off switches. In a new preprint we show that HDAC3 is key to establish correct transcriptional dose in development. Gr8 work from N. Stamidis @ucph.bsky.social and collab. @jamiehackett.bsky.social @gregersenlab.bsky.social . Huge thx to all authors! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

My first first-author paper is out!🎉 Here we propose a model where a silencing complex, PIWI*, assembles on target RNAs to recruit effectors and shut down transposon activity. Huge thanks to the Brennecke and Plaschka labs, especially Julius and Clemens, and all co-authors!

Anyone interested in small RNA biology and gene regulation should put this paper on their reading list* (and follow Júlia) Very elegant work and important mechanistic findings *especially if your reading list (unlike mine) mostly consists of papers that you will actually manage to read

www.cell.com/cell/abstrac... A host organelle (in sea slugs) integrates stolen chloroplasts for animal photosynthesis

On my way to Paris and am so(!) looking forward to this visit.. … and to the crepe I will have tonight. And tomorrow night. And..

Dream collaboration with the groups of Torben Heick Jensen (@heick.bsky.social; @au.dk) and Clemens Plaschka (@impvienna.bsky.social). Building in part on the incredible work from Ulrich Hohmann on human mRNA export. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Another preprint from @pankajd.bsky.social ! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Liquid-liquid phase separation of HP1? Not in our mouse fibroblasts… This paper by the Fabian Erdel group offers a fresh perspective on how this can be reconciled with seemingly conflicting reports: The phase separation propensity of HP1 decreases from yeast → fly → mouse. doi.org/10.1038/s414...

Solar panels now cost peanuts (under 10 cents per W) in most of the world. Carbon dioxide emissions in high-income countries are now falling, and there's reason to believe other countries will be able to develop much more sustainably than those did. ourworldindata.org/grapher/annu...

Interested in structural biology, membrane proteins, biophysics and working to understand hormone transport in plants?☘️🔬👩‍🔬🧪 We have an open PhD position: - 3 years fully funded. - Details and application link: www.linkedin.com/posts/plant-... Please repost 💚

Very excited to share an excellent review from @teresa-urli.bsky.social, published one week before her PhD defense! We did a deep dive into the fascinating biology of the variant Polycomb complex, PRC1.6 (1/5) journals.plos.org/plosgenetics...

Had the pleasure of teaching a workshop on #Shiny today. The {shiny} package can be used to make a web-app that uses R (or Python) under the hood. Ideal for interactive #dataViz

📣 Our department @molbiolau.bsky.social 🇩🇰 is recruiting a permanent group leader (TT-assistant prof / assoc prof) in the area of proteomics and/or mass spectrometry-driven biology - please help share 🫶 Feel free to reach out with any questions mbg.au.dk/en/news-and-...