My first PhD student‘s, Kavan Gor, paper on 5-color single-molecule imaging of co-transcriptional RNA folding is out in @science.org Advances! He finds how RNA modification enzymes, antisense oligonucleotides and ribosomal proteins re-route nascent RNA folding. See more details in EMBL post below!

Ominous seating arrangements.

May 5th: if you are around London, please join the London #EvoDevo symposium at QMUL / Charterhouse campus, as usual we will have selected talks and post-event 🍻. A warm up for #EED2026 in Glasgow. Registration £0, more info here: londonevodevo.co.uk

It’s a pity other countries don’t adopt this idea. Maybe something to consider for our new funding agency @researchireland.ie ?

Some molecular machines, like ribosomes, can persist for long periods of time in cells. Could molecular aging of ribosomes shape how proteins are made? In our new preprint we track ribosomes as they age in cells and uncover unexpected effects on translation (1/10) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

there's so much bad in the world but there's also people who lift up and carry an elderly bat around every day so he can pretend he's flying again, and that's the part of the world I think is worth fighting for

Excited to share this preprint that describes my latest work on using GPUs to accelerate processing of RNA-seq data. The title says it all: "RNA-seq analysis in seconds using GPUs" now on biorxiv www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... and github github.com/pachterlab/k... Figure 1 shows they key result

Wow!

We're excited to announced that our 2nd Annual QMUL Centre for Epigenetics Conference is happening on June 18th, 2026 at Mile End! To find out more and book your ticket, please follow this link: www.qmul.ac.uk/epigenetics/... The deadline to book your tickets is Monday, June 8th 2026.

Excited to share our latest publication on interindividual variation of DNA methylation in human whole blood, spearheaded by the amazing Olivia Grant and co-led with @leo-schalkwyk.bsky.social and Meena Kumari. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

A jumbo cyanophage encodes the most complete ribosomal protein set in the known virosphere www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

“Subsequent evolution is construed as a ribosomal takeover, whereby the ribosome evolved to consume most of the cell’s resources, while other cellular componentry ensured the propagation of the ribosome. Under this perspective, the ribosome is the ultimate biological selfish element.” !! 💪🏽

Long in the making, but happy to present the Chlamydomonas chlororibosome! Cryo-ET🔬reveals a large new domain on the small subunit, built from multiple extensions in conserved ribosomal proteins. bioRxiv 📖: shorturl.at/q44tG This suggests greater chlororibosome diversity than expected! 1/n 🧵

🧬 A major data reanalysis in December's most-read Genetics paper uncovers thousands of previously hidden protein-coding regions in human and mouse genomes: buff.ly/Bxw7cKf

This is such a cool finding! Undergraduate GPA does not predict success in PhD programs for cohorts of MS students at two minority-serving institutions pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41628237/

Excited to share our new study: rRNA expansion segments are not passive structural elements — they mediate hibernating ribosome interfaces and reshape translation under stress. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

We're excited to announced that our 2nd Annual QMUL Centre for Epigenetics Conference is happening on June 18th, 2026 at Mile End! To find out more and book your ticket, please follow this link: www.qmul.ac.uk/epigenetics/... The deadline to book your tickets is Monday, June 8th 2026.

Wish they had stuck with this. At QMUL, we get paid on the 24th of every month.

Year of the horse indeed! Cool finding.

🔥🔥🔥💥💥💥🌶️🌶️🌶️ Hottest new lab in town, led by the exceptional @calumgabbutt.bsky.social, is recruiting it's first #PhD student. If you love #maths and somatic #evolution it could be your dream come true! 🌶️🌶️🌶️💥💥💥🔥🔥🔥

And hot on the heels of the Schuman lab’s rRNA ES paper.

Interesting!

Very cool! rRNA Expansion Segments are so interesting! All eukaryotic ribosomes contain them, but what they are doing is still not entirely clear. It looks like they could have multiple roles.

2026 basically

We are recruiting a computational scientist for a postdoc position to work on detecting RNA modifications using nanopore sequencing: tinyurl.com/RiboComp Deadline March 4th. Please share and repost! More on the group: www.bric.ku.dk/research-gro...

😂

Happy birthday to Charles Darwin, patron saint of tired scientists, grumpy fieldworkers, and hating your own manuscript.

✅ The UK Government has today granted access to half a million UK Biobank participants' coded GP data for health research. This change will dramatically increase the power of UK Biobank's dataset to advance the diagnosis, treatment and management of conditions handled by GPs.

The way UK govt funds science is in the midst of a major transition, with creation of a much more direct link between government priorities & UKRI research funding. My attempt to set in context the biggest upheaval in UK science funding policy since the 1980s: softmachines.org?p=3252

Interesting. Worth a read.

Time for a thread on our Christmas preprint “Origin and evolution of acrocentric chromosomes in human and great apes”. I had so much fun with this project and paper. It will be hard to summarize in a thread, but I’ll try www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... [1/21]

Looks like BBSRC pause will be for a few weeks after which applications will be accepted on a rolling basis. MRC pause apparently till early summer.

😃😃😃😃!!!!

Cool new work from @qmulepigenetics.bsky.social members @pradeepmadapura.bsky.social @manthan5277.bsky.social

Have a look at this fantastic meeting and save the date! The “RNA in Physiology and Disease” conference, hosted by @gensocuk.bsky.social, will take place 7–9 September 2026 in Newcastle, UK. genetics.org.uk/events/rna-i...

What a very cool paper!

At least the physicists are standing up for themselves. Still waiting for the senior leaders of biological sciences to say anything at all about MRC/BBSRC actions.

Woah! 👀👀 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Okaaayy….have just made one small edit to an abstract I am writing….😅

Most definitely took my mind off the grant app I am writing! 😅

Open postdoc position in our lab @icr.ac.uk to develop a cfDNA test for #early detection of colorectal #cancer in inflammatory bowel disease #IBD: jobs.icr.ac.uk/vacancies/14... It's bench-to-bedside research, translating biology of pre-cancer evolution. Funded by @bowelcanceruk.bsky.social

☠️ The world's most dangerous animals by annual deaths.

Keeping generative artificial intelligence reliable in omics biology www.cell.com/patterns/ful... 🧬🖥️🧪

Exciting work!

😅

OMG!!

Need a bit of escapism? Not exactly Lord of the Rings, but in similar vein: doi.org/10.1038/s443...

Couldn’t agree more.

If you’ve heard me talk in the past ~5 years, you will know I have developed an obsession with acrocentric chromosomes. This is all of that, condensed into one paper. I will do a full thread in the new year, but for those that want something to read over the holidays, have at it. Such a cool story!