🚨New preprint! We built a cell-free genomics platform (GATO-seq) to probe transcriptional regulation and discovered a “super pause” sequence that triggers a new Pol II active-site conformation. Huge shout-out to @robertovn.bsky.social for pulling off this monster of a project. tinyurl.com/superpause

It's (almost) a wrap. After a bit more than two weeks in highly photogenic Vietnam, it is time to head home and face the world again. #travelphotography #nikon

South Korea joins Brazil in knowing what to do with coup plotters and insurrectionists.

Elon posted this yesterday. Just for fun I did it with my before/after cancer PET scans that I had already posted online. In the "before" scan Grok missed the massive tumor lighting up my liver, and in both scans it flagged a non-existent "area of concern" in my chest. Other than that, works great!

Terrific piece by @rexhuppke.bsky.social on Elon Musk, White Nationalist

hello and welcome to the political genius exam. here is question one. which is a more compelling message: - the president is sending armies to occupy cities and kidnap and kill people and your town could be next - a meal at the cheesecake factory that previously cost $100 now costs $104.9

New paper from my group in @science.org : "A small polymerase ribozyme that can synthesise itself and its complementary strand" www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... Outstanding work by @edogia.bsky.social

President Zelensky presented Heraskevytch with a civil honor this evening in Munich. Immediate national hero.

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/...

I'm kind of depressed to see countries like Canada frame this as an opportunity. No one benefits from the collapse of US science. And you certainly don't benefit anyone by poaching a few big names while doing no other meaningful increased investment in your own research ecosystem.

Honored to be a finalist for the 2026 Blavanik Awards in the UK in Life Sciences. I’m grateful to past and present lab members, collaborators, colleagues and mentors, who made it possible. It’s even better to share this from Vietnam while celebrating the Tet holidays with family.

Worth watching this in full. The statement is more powerful than this quote alone. Here is is from USA Today, with alt text. Also! Rich Ruohonen is a personal injury lawyer and the oldest athlete to ever represent the United States in a Winter Games at 54 years old.

🙈

🧪🧬New preprint We present cryo-EM structures of reconstituted CTCF–nucleosome complexes, showing CTCF dimerization drives nucleosome oligomerization into defined higher-order assemblies. Disrupting CTCF–CTCF interfaces in mESCs reduces looping and impairs differentiation. tinyurl.com/CTCF-nucleos...

Anybody know what the threshold was for MSCA funding this time round? Results are coming out and it looks brutal.

More evidence also that the federal administration is NOT pursuing actual criminal activity- they have forced out the very prosecutors who were working on the social services fraud cases that had been the proclaimed casus belli for sending federal forces to MN.

ICE told nurses this Minneapolis man “purposefully ran headfirst into a brick wall.” What actually happened is that they pulled him from a car, beat him so viciously with a steel baton that he had 8 skull fractures, 5 life-threatening brain hemorrhages, and couldn’t remember he had a daughter.

We're launching a research lab at SMART. Shenzhen Medical Academy for Research and Translation is a newly established institute with long-term funding mechanisms for internal and external investigators. At full capacity SMART aims to support up to 400 labs. www.scmp.com/news/china/s...

Unquestionably the result of combined effort from all current and former lab members, support from colleagues @CSU and @CU, and support from @hhmi-science.bsky.social and NIH over decades. A heartfelt 🙏 to my nominators and of course @vilcekfoundation.bsky.social. vilcek.org/prizes/prize...

We're proud to join the Vilcek Foundation in recognizing HHMI Investigator Karolin Luger, whose dedication & groundbreaking nucleosome research has led to the development of innovative new drug treatments, including cancer medicines. hhmi.news/49VciEd @vilcekfoundation.bsky.social

Exactly this

I miss these pieces so much...sigh...

One of the best #TeamTomo studies of phase-separated condensates I’ve seen. I am reminded of Rubisco condensates (pyrenoids) for the ability to make such quantitative measurements of molecular organization. It really helps to have intrinsic ~500 kDa fiducials. Awesome mechanistic stuff!! 🧪 🧶🧬 🔬

We are excited to share our new preprint which is now available to read on biorXiv: doi.org/10.64898/202... 🎉🎉🎉

Both MRC and BBSRC responsive modes now withdrawn until further notice. Existing applications unlikely to succeed (late 2025 round expecting 1-5% success rate). Listen, I get that UKRI wants to pivot. But killing both at once is devastating. Let's hope at least one opens by summer... #AcademicSky

The leaders of four major physics infrastructure projects due to receive over £280m from UKRI were told in December they have “not been prioritised” for funding The projects include an upgrade to the LHC at Cern and a new US particle accelerator ...

Oh dear. Our favourite Fellow of the @royalsociety.org is in the news again

Am I the only one increasingly annoyed by cryo-EM papers not showing *any* experimental density in figures? Sometimes not even in the supplementary material??

Is there any freely accessible info (I do not have a subscription to “Research Professional News”, which is the article being shared in this context) on what will happen to project grants submitted in 2025?

A 300 kV low-base Titan is an “entry-level TEM”? Reading that, I expected to read about tweaking something like an F20 or similar.

The two that first showed us how FACT engages nucleosomes now have their own lab and show us how the remodeler ATRX engages nucleosomes! Incredible resolution with a lot of biochemistry, congrats @codyz.bsky.social @yangliu9.bsky.social and team!

"I didn’t realize, in the hours before his name was released to the public, that the man millions of people had seen lying facedown on the pavement from multiple angles of eyewitness video was my childhood best friend." Read more from @kristenradtke.bsky.social: www.theverge.com/policy/86856...

This horrific, and it contains the graphic original video. But if you can stomach it, you should watch it. edition.cnn.com/2026/01/27/u...

Our paper on the structural and functional basis of the human dimeric OS9–SEL1L–HRD1 ERAD complex, together with @qilabuva.bsky.social, is now out! Huge congratulations to Leo, Emir, and Elina! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

"For The Homeland is not 'The State' or even 'The Country.' The Homeland is not defined by simple geography." www.vanityfair.com/news/story/t...

This "conflicting accounts" narrative of the BBC's is a much bigger problem than they seem to think. The huge issue is not false balance - it's that they're NOT reporting the biggest story of today: the fact the US Government is lying about its own forces killing a US citizen.

A reminder to the news media: “conflicting accounts” is what you say BEFORE the incontrovertible video evidence appears. After that, your job is to ask why one side is lying, not to repeat the lie and pretend no one knows the truth.

What happens when the taps run dry? England is about to find out | Aditya Chakrabortty

A prominent Royal Society fellow helped out with this

'“As regards the Nobel Peace Prize, I have on several occasions clearly explained to Trump what is well known, namely that it is an independent Nobel Committee, and not the Norwegian government, that awards the prize,” [Norwegian Prime Minister] Mr. Store said.'

To remove any doubt, Norwegian PM Jonas Gahr Støre has confirmed to VG that this indeed is real. It was received yesterday, as a response to a letter to Trump from Støre and Finnish President Stubb. www.vg.no/nyheter/i/q6...

We saw it with big tobacco, we saw it with the fossil fuels industry. When their own internal research showed the harm from their product, the defunded the research and attacked independent researchers coming to the very same conclusions. #ScienceUnderSiege

Pew Research Institute (2023): • Red State Texas has about 2.1 million undocumented immigrants • Red State Florida has 1.6 M undocumented immigrants • Blue State Minnesota has 130,000. And yet only Minnesota is being occupied by masked thugs over "immigration." It's *not* about immigration.

Photo by Pierre Lavie. Yes this is me. And I threw my Leica. It landed on the bass plate with hardly a scratch. Another Photographer grabbed it along with my phone and I was able to track him later. I was held face down tear gas deployed right in front of me and pepper sprayed directly into the eye.

Congrats JP, Mike and Jess and colleagues on the paper. Very interesting work.

Here's the data:

The final version of our article on XPF-ERCC1-SLX4 complexes has now been published (the link below still works). I am happy to report that the rendering of our DNA gels has now been corrected. 😉

Excited to share our new Nature study! 🧬 We (sidrituruci.bsky.social et al) discovered that CFAP20 helps clear stalled RNAPII, preventing harmful clashes with DNA replication machinery. This protects cells from R-loops and genome instability. Full paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

"“They specifically asked me if I knew where the Hmong families lived on my street & in the neighborhood.” Lugert-Thom responded, “I don’t know anything about that” & she said they then asked, “Well, what about the Asian families?”" "“I was a bit shaken & a bit shocked of what I was asked to do.”"