Thrilled to share a new preprint from the lab! We investigated how m6A regulates the transcriptome in chemoresistant glioblastoma through unexpected mechanisms, and the potential therapeutic applications of this discovery. Check out the preprint here ⬇️ www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

@science.org🧬🔬Functional maps of a #genomic locus reveal confinement of an enhancer by its target #gene | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Out First Release in @science.org this week: A large scale analysis of the epigenetics of transposable elements in Arabidopsis shows transgenerational stability www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... #PlantScience

Scientists crafted glow-in-the-dark #succulents that recharge in sunlight. Injected with light-emitting phosphor, the plants can shine as bright as a small night light. cell.com/matter/fullt...#succulents @cp-matter.bsky.social #SCAU Shuting Liu & colleagues

Why are some species widespread while others are found only in small, isolated areas? A study in Nature Communications shows that species with narrow ranges, and thus higher extinction risk, are often island-restricted, poor dispersers, and have evolved relatively recently. #evosky 🧪

New method from my former lab - combining targeted RNA-seq and DNA-seq from the same cell on the @missionbio.bsky.social platform. Congrats! It can also be combined with targeted methylation profiling and clonal tracing. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The paper "N-glycans conceal the hypermodified uracil base acp3U, which we identified as immunostimulatory when exposed in RNA. Consistent with this, genetic deletion of an enzyme (DTWD2) that synthesizes acp3U abrogated innate immune activation by de-N-glycosylated small RNAs and apoptotic cells"

Really excited to share our latest paper led by @simonaube.bsky.social. Fascinating results examining whether regulatory mutations can lead to adaptation as fast as coding mutations do. #mevosky #evobio #evoSky www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

“These results highlight how adaptive phenotypes may be more mutationally accessible in coding sequences than promoters, especially when large effects are beneficial.” Ha, take that Cis-Regulatory Paradigm! #DevoEvo #EvoDevo 🧪

forgot to include link to our looooooooong miRNA hairpin saga. pls share with your miRNA geek friends and let us know what you think! in the meantime, here's a picture of stretch armstrong i pulled from the interweb. www.cell.com/cell-reports...

New #miRNA paper from Lai lab!! 🧬🔥 some think this field, despite recent Nobel to Ambros and Ruvkun, doesn't have much surprises left. but, do we EVEN KNOW WHAT a miRNA precursor LOOKS LIKE? we found some conserved miRNA hairpins up to 10x longer than suspected. this is mir-12, just bonkers! 1/n

I am excited to share my graduate work in the Sabatini and @bartellab.bsky.social labs. Since their discovery, we have known lysosomes possess RNase activity; however, their substrates were not known. Surprisingly we find specific RNAs are targeted for degradation! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

If you have missed our work on how U6 m6A modification helps select different splice sites in humans and worms, you can still read it here 🙄 academic.oup.com/nar/article/...

New preprint: We isolate peptide–RNA photo-crosslinks with tunable RNA chains from living cells for mass spec. This maps over 4,700 crosslinking sites across 744 proteins and offers the first glimpse into the RNA sequences in crosslinks by MS. Read here: doi.org/10.1101/2025...

New and simple chemical modifications to poly(A) tails extend protein expression -- a really easy one-pot method Great work by Linglan Fang and Wenrui Zhong in our lab! doi.org/10.1021/jacs.5c11900

Why do speciation rates vary across the tree of life? Some of the best yet most underappreciated places for this investigation are natural hybrid zones. This preprint takes you to the hybrid zones in the origin of species to find a clue. 👉 shorturl.at/N7FXE #Speciation #Evolution #hybridization

Happy to see our latest work out in @molbioevol.bsky.social. We revisit the evolution of 5-methylcytosine across neglected eukaryotic supergroups, establishing an ancestral repressive role silencing genome invaders, both transposons and viral elements👾: academic.oup.com/mbe/advance-... 🧵 1/7

🌟📢 The September 1st issue of RNA Modifications Digest is here 🧬 From frameshift-preventing tRNA mods to aa-tRNA-seq breakthroughs and hidden damage by Tgt, and check also the preprints. 🦠💫 #microsku #rnasky open.substack.com/pub/rnamodif...

Neuronal diversity is written in transcriptional codes 🧬. But what is the logic of these codes that define cell types and wiring patterns? To find out we built a #scRNAseq developmental atlas of the Drosophila nerve cord and linked it to the #connectome 🪰🧠 #preprint thread ⬇️1/8

Germline defence from TEs largely relies on piRNAs. Yet, @divyaselvaraju.bsky.social and I monitored a P-element invasion in Drosophila that was stopped by an internally deleted copy, no host intervention required! doi.org/10.1371/jour... Many thanks to @rpianezza.bsky.social & @rokofler.bsky.social

Excited / nervous to share the “magnum opus” of my postdoc in Andreas Wagner’s lab! "De-novo promoters emerge more readily from random DNA than from genomic DNA" This project is the accumulation of 4 years of work, and lays the foundation for my future group. In short, we… (1/4)

New study led by Joanna Baker shows bigger brains and relatively longer thumbs coevolved in primates. Humans have huge thumbs, but only what our brain size (esp. neocortex) would predict. It’s NOT driven by tool use. A fantastic paper with a huge amount of work, and superb data presentation 🧪🏺👍🧠💀🐒🦧

Presence of DNA transposons in the breakpoints of the inverted genotype in Atlantic cod - perhaps also the case for many other species? Great to see this finally out academic.oup.com/gbe/article/...

RNA is far more than a messenger. Its structures regulate, evolve, and catalyze — carrying out functions DNA alone cannot. But predicting #RNA structure from sequence is still extremely difficult. In our recently published paper in @narjournal.bsky.social we present a way forward. 🧵 ⤵️

- Different RNA isoforms from the same gene can have different modification rates at the same m6A site. Distance to a splice site, transcript 3' end, and the CDS versus UTR status of a nucleotide all exert influence.

Our paper using Oxford #Nanopore direct RNA sequencing to identify m6A modifications on RNA isoforms in human brain is now out in Science Advances. 🧪 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Now online! Composite transposons with bivalent histone marks function as RNA-dependent enhancers in cell fate regulation

🦠 Launching a bimonthly digest on RNA modifications and related topics in bacteria!🤩 First issue: Summer 2025. Shared here + by email, future ones will be quicker reads! 😅 #rnasky #microsky #ribosome Subscribe and share if you are interested! rnamodifupdates.substack.com/p/rna-modifi...

Relaxed Purifying Selection is Associated with an Accumulation of Transposable Elements in Flies academic.oup.com/mbe/article/...

(1/5)For over a century, the hunt for new antibiotics has focused almost exclusively on bacteria and fungi. Today, that paradigm shifts. By coupling state-of-the-art AI with the vast, largely uncharted diversity of Archaea, we open a new frontier for molecular discovery.

These exciting new results therefore have important implications for recoding of the genetic code for synthetic biology purposes and in the use of suppressor tRNAs for premature stop codon readthrough in human diseases. Congrats everyone! rdcu.be/eAcLz

Finally reading this paper from @gs2747.bsky.social 's lab for journal club this week and it's helping me understand lots of results that previously seemed paradoxical to me. Highly recommend! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

This preprint from Helen Sakharova is one of the coolest things to come out of my lab: “Protein language models reveal evolutionary constraints on synonymous codon choice.” Codon choice is a big puzzle in how information is encoded in genomes, and we have a new angle. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

RNA N-glycosylation enables immune evasion and homeostatic efferocytosis by chemically caging acp3U. Excited to report this work lead by Vinnie @vinnieviruses.bsky.social and in collaboration with @vijayrathinam.bsky.social in @nature.com www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Passiflora suberosa exhibits heteroblasty (different-shaped leaves on the same plant). The 2nd photo shows leaves from a single plant. It’s part of the evolutionary arms race with butterflies. It may prevent gravid female butterflies from forming a search image. #Passifloraceae #Botany 🌾🧪🌱

Are Bacterial Processes Dependent on Global Ribosome Pausing Affected by tRNA Modification Defects? 🦠 =>processes evolutionarily tuned to be sensitive to translation speed eg: motility, iron homeostasis, leader peptide attenuation (ex: trp). #rnasky #microsky www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

If this one holds up, it's a huge discovery. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I nice little story from the lab: dx.plos.org/10.1371/jour...

A novel mobile genetic element with virus-like characteristics is widespread in the world's oceans www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

How predictably does complex trait adaptation proceed over space and time in wild populations? doi.org/10.1093/evle... Now in @evolletters.bsky.social by @skylerberardi.bsky.social, @paulrschmidt.bsky.social et al. 📷: Dr. Rush Dhillon

Happy to share our new paper out today in @cp-cellreports.bsky.social in collaboration with @tobiaswarnecke.bsky.social @akihisaosakabe.bsky.social about how evolution can do big things with small changes. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Paper led by @movillome.bsky.social on unbiased detection of (somatic) #TE insertions in #Arabidopsis with @pacbio.bsky.social long reads out after peer review. Thanks to academic editor Leandro Quadrana for shepherding it through the review process. #plantscience link.springer.com/article/10.1...?

I am so incredibly excited to share our latest work, on the exploration of #RNA secondary structure ensembles and discovery of RNA regulatory structural switches in bacteria and human cells, just out in @natbiotech.nature.com: nature.com/articles/s41.... A short tread! (1/n)

🍹Sharma, Jiao et al. report glycosylation of small RNAs within #exosomes and propose a glycosylation-dependent mechanism for #RNA targeting into exosomes, which may influence intercellular communication and RNA stability in the extracellular environment. 👉https://rdcu.be/eykKY bit.ly/455vyuP

Adaptive P-element insertions in a long non-coding RNA are associated with unique silencing properties www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

tRNA modification profiling reveals epitranscriptome regulatory networks in Pseudomonas aeruginosa 🦠👏High-throughput tRNA epitranscriptome profiling using mass spec on P. aeruginosa transposon insertion library and links with metabolic networks #microsky #rnasky doi.org/10.1093/nar/...

#rnasky #microsky

Excited to share one of the first papers to link #lncRNA #structure to its function in #cancer! We mapped the structure of a tumor-suppressive DRAIC lncRNA and identified a 36-nucleotide hairpin as necessary and sufficient for its #anti-oncogenic function. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Very excited that our most significant work, a collaboration w/ Dr. Can Cenik at UT Austin on translational gene regulation, was finally published in Nature Biotechnology in a dual set of studies: Paper 1 -- an AI model trained to predict translation rates from mRNA sequences: rdcu.be/exN1l