November magic in Graubünden

Among the anti-recombinases, FIGNL1 rules them all. So much that inactivating it brings BRCA2-deficient cells to life. Who is responsible for RAD51 loading without BRCA2/FIGNL1, check out the paper to find out! Great collaboration with @raychaudhurilab.bsky.social www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

See our paper “Mechanism of trinucleotide repeat expansion by MutSβ-MutLγ and contraction by FAN1”. Using biochemistry, we show how DNA incisions by the MutLγ nuclease can lead to expansions, and how expansion is prevented by FAN1. Well done Issam and Valentina! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Lake Como with plenty of fall sunshine today

Golden October in its glory. Mountains in Ticino today.

Trip to Greina plateau, northern Ticino

Last hike in August with first snow

JOB ALERT 🚨 We are hiring TWO principal investigators in cell, molecular, systems, or chemical biology in Toronto, Canada at @sinaihealth.bsky.social. We provide a generous startup, fully funded salary and academic appointment at U of Toronto. www.nature.com/naturecareer... Please repost!

Hiking in Switzerland today, Val Poschiavo

Please see our latest paper on the role of EXO1 in meiosis: "EXO1 promotes the meiotic MLH1-MLH3 endonuclease through conserved interactions with MLH1, MSH4 and DNA". Congratulations to both first authors, Megha Roy and Aurore Sanchez and thanks to all our collaborators!

Southern Alps today

🧬 New research discovers sequential phosphorylation of MRE11 by ATM and ATR prevents extensive DNA degradation at stalled replication forks www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...

Nice weekend everyone from sunny Bellinzona

Great news, thank you

New preprint from the lab, revealing new roles for IFI16 during replication stress. Great collab with @unterholznerlab.bsky.social and @cejkalab.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Spring is here. Valleys and lakesides are green, and snow is melting fast in the mountains.

ICYMI - New #Review on #DNARepair In this Review, Raphael Ceccaldi and @cejkalab.bsky.social discuss the mechanisms and regulation of DNA-end resection, which is crucial for the repair of DNA double-strand breaks by most repair pathways. 🔗 go.nature.com/4iSKphQ

An interesting collaboration with the @vindignilab.bsky.social on the mechanism of resection at gaps. Spoiler alert: the MRE11 complex acts very differently at gaps vs. at DNA breaks genesdev.cshlp.org/content/earl...

Check out our review on DNA end resection! With Raphael Ceccaldi, www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Exciting seminar series from Genome integrity italian Network (GiiN), chaired by myself and Raffaella Di Micco! Short talks (2x30’), at convenient time for EU/USA attendees. Big shots and raising stars in an expanding field. See flyers + link to receive email alerts. Please repost to your network!👇

Happy to share our latest pre-print! We solved the cryoEM structures of human DNA repair factor MRN bound to DNA and to TRF2. Main work of Yilan, Filiz @filizkuybu.bsky.social and Hengjun. Great collab within the @sfb1361.bsky.social and @genecenter-lmu.bsky.social 🧬🔨 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

If you are interested in mitochondria, Nashville is the place to be June 1-5. Check out this FASEB meeting. Please RT. events.faseb.org/event/mitoch...

Very sad to read about the science funding situation in the US at the moment. I am waiting for some funding decisions in the coming weeks, but I will likely have opening(s) in my lab in Switzerland in the coming weeks (PhD student/postdoc). As a PhD candidate, you need to have a Master's degree.

New #preprint from the lab! Do you want to see the invisible? So did we! When DNA genomes get broken, cells somehow find related sequences to fix the break. But how do they find it? We developed a way to look at sequence *search*, not just sequence usage. doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Como Lake in winter

Looking forward to visiting my colleagues at Columbia, Rockefeller and MSK. Last time when i landed in the US, it was July in Phoenix with a temperature of 46C. It will be -17C in the night in New York. On average, perfect temperature, but this is why we need to plot individual data points!

I was great to host Alessandro Vindigni @vindignilab.bsky.social in Bellinzona. We are excited about our collaborations!

A new research building coming to Bellinzona! www.laregione.ch/cantone/bell...

The Cejka lab holiday dinner yesterday

Interesting!

Amazing weather in the mountains of Ticino continues!

All seems to work well here, except that the confirmation e-mail from bsky was filtered away and never arrived to my institute e-mail. I used Gmail instead ...

My first post here, completely non-scientific, photos from a hike last weekend. I hope to reconnect with as as many of you as possible! Anyone wants to move to Switzerland these days?