JOB ALERT: Operations Director (DCI–Lausanne). The DCI, a joint initiative of EPFL, UNIL, UNIGE and UNIBE, is recruiting an Operations Director to lead the cryo-EM facility in Lausanne. 📩 Questions: CEO of the DCI: @chgenoud.bsky.social 🔗 Apply here: careers.epfl.ch/job/Lausanne...

@science.org Chromatin buffers torsional stress during transcription | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Verspätungen 2025 an über 100 europäischen Bahnhöfen: Sogar italienische Züge sind pünktlicher als deutsche... 🙈 Quelle: chuuchuu.com/2025wrapped

Coupled to the general budget cuts by both the canton and federal government to our University (and it's happening at most institutes in Switzerland), this would be really bad. The project funding scheme is really the best thing about Swiss science, so please don't touch this!

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Agrees to Pay $15 Million to Settle Fraud Allegations Related to Scientific Research Grants. The relator [Sholto David] will receive $2,625,000 under today’s settlement. www.justice.gov/usao-ma/pr/d...

Online Now: The Ppl protein senses 3′-hydroxyl DNA overhangs and NTP depletion to halt phage infection Online now:

New online: DNA topoisomerase I acts as supercoiling sensor for bacterial transcription elongation

Really looking forward to hosting Elisabeth on Monday Dec 1 at @fbm-unil.bsky.social @unil.bsky.social for our BIG seminar: 12.15 in Genopode C (note change of room). Open to everyone.

The hinge bypass gate paper is finally out! doi.org/10.1038/s414... We show how loop-extruding SMC complexes can maintain DNA entrapment while bypassing obstacles on DNA — including transcription machinery & potentially other SMCs. A lucky convergence of 3 projects lead to the initial discovery!

Glad to see this out after a rather interesting review/publication process! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Prashant Singh in the lab of Tina Iverson at Vanderbilt published this image of the bacterial 🦠flagellar motor, a detailed molecular model made possibly by CryoEM 🔬. The similarity to mechanical motors are strong enough we can use terms like stator, rotor, rod & gearing to describe it.

🌍Open call: Junior Group Leader positions! Join a world-class biomedical research institute at the heart of the Vienna BioCenter, where curiosity drives discovery. Lead your own lab, pursue bold ideas, and shape the future of science at the IMP: www.imp.ac.at/career/open-...

What Rosalind Franklin truly contributed to the discovery of DNA’s structure. A really informative article, perfect for a weekend coffee read. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

This paper was retracted (by the authors) a long time ago: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15178751/ However, I cannot find a retraction notice on the DOI page: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... Is this standard practice, or an oversight? @science.org

Very nice Preview by @bramkamplab.bsky.social on the SMC DNA loading paper by our @roisnehamelinf.bsky.social "Weaving the loops of life: DNA loading by loop-extrusion machines in plasmid defense and genome organization" Molecular Cell www.cell.com/molecular-ce...

#microsky #phagesky Mycobacterium #phage review by Graham Hatfull covering the state of the art www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

📢 Open Call! The Max Perutz Labs invite applications for a Full Professorship in Integrative Structure Biology with a focus on in situ structural biology using cryo-electron tomography (cryo-ET) and related methods. More details ➡️ tinyurl.com/brswbymu

Really cool! But Bluesky has flipped your picture over - it now shows positively supercoiled left-handed DNA :-(.

who would have thought! phage N15 TelN telomerase has more than one job! (and no, it's not 'moonlighting') great work from the gruber lab 👏 #MicroSky + #PhageSky

E. coli bacteriophage N15 suppresses Mre11-Rad50-mediated end degradation of its linear genome via a telomere-resolution-independent function of its telomere resolvase TelN #RefereedPreprint c/o @reviewcommons.org by @gruberlab.bsky.social www.embopress.org/doi/full/10....

This was a fun collaboration between Ophélie & the @seegerlab.bsky.social using sybody libraries to target the SMC complex in living bacteria. With a suprising finding: the 14 isolated sybodies bind to the middle of the SMC coiled coil rather than the more conserved ATPase heads.

Single Domain Antibody Inhibitors Target the Coiled Coil Arms of the Bacillus subtilis SMC complex https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.16.682983v1

Online Now: Mechanism of DNA entrapment by a loop-extruding Wadjet SMC motor Online now:

New online: Structure and activation mechanism of a Lamassu phage and plasmid defense system

🚨Our paper is out! 🥳 Hijacking a bacterial ABC transporter for efficient genetic code expansion. Many congrats to everyone involved - a multi-year effort led by @taruniype.bsky.social @maxfottner.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41... it all started years ago with a failed experiment 🧵👇 1/9

And also the bacterial telomere protection paper by Maya, Nicolas, & Ania is out: doi.org/10.1038/s443... Great experience with @reviewcommons.org & @embojournal.org Feels just right to have the manuscript reviewed without having to target a specific journal from the start.

Happy that the final version of our Lamassu work @yli18smc.bsky.social is now out: www.nature.com/articles/s41... Thanks again to our awesome collaborators @mblokesch.bsky.social and David and co and Mark Szczelkun and @steven-shaw.bsky.social and the DCI Lausanne @fbm-unil.bsky.social

We are pleased to highlight this article published by @gruberlab.bsky.social. At DCI, F. Roisne Hamelin and collaborators used electron microscopy — and in particular our streptavidin affinity grids — to reveal the mechanism by which Wadjet binds to the plasmid to initiate loop extrusion.

As always, bacteria light the path of discovery.

How do SMC complexes load onto DNA to get ready for loop extrusion? @roisnehamelinf.bsky.social & co discovered that Wadjet, an SMC complex involved in bacterial DNA immunity, performs some impressive molecular gymnastics 🤸‍♂️🤸‍♂️🤸‍♂️. Check out the new paper: www.cell.com/molecular-ce...

Please RT: We have an opening for a junior group leader position in „Phage Biology & Biotechnology“. www.fz-juelich.de/de/karriere/... Interested candidates are encouraged to contact me via email for further details. @spp2330.bsky.social; @mibinet.bsky.social

Really excited to share our latest work led by @mattiaubertini.bsky.social and @nesslfy.bsky.social: we report that cohesin loop extrusion creates rare but long-lived encounters between genomic sequences which underlie efficient enhancer-promoter communication. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... A🧵👇

Apply now for FBM #PhD #Fellowships in #Life #Sciences – join one of the Faculty’s leading laboratories. 🚨 Application deadline for fellowships: October 6, 2025. ➡️ www.unil.ch/news/en/1756... @unil.bsky.social @dmf-unil.bsky.social @dee-unil.bsky.social @dib-unil.bsky.social #fbm #unil

Hey hey hey! Tomorrow, September 16th at 16:00 UTC, don’t miss the next ISPB virtual seminar! This session will focus on plasmid elimination with great speakers lined up. #Plasmid #ISPB #MGEs

Springboard for an international scientific career! 🧬🧪🔭⚛️🧠🌱 Call for #MaxPlanckResearchGroups launched; applications are possible until October 14, 2025 www.mpg.de/max-planck-r... #ScienceCareer

We are hiring-join us!

Our Wadjet-II paper by @roisnehamelinf.bsky.social is out in polished form: www.cell.com/structure/fu... With a great preview by @kevincorbett.bsky.social & @amardeeep.bsky.social highlighting the potential of Wadjets: Wadjet—Keeping a watchful eye on circular DNA. www.cell.com/structure/fu...

Congratulations Rotem Sorek @soreklab.bsky.social on receiving the Gruber prize today in Stockholm

#phagesky I am looking for phages infecting Streptococcus pneumoniae to test a phenotype - does anyone have some and willing to share ? Repost appreciated :)

Recurrent acquisition of nuclease-protease pairs in antiviral immunity https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.28.667249v1

🧬 Ever wonder how metres of #DNA 🧬 fit into a single cell? @gruberlab.bsky.social, working at @unil.bsky.social uncovered how protein machines fold DNA into loops – key for cell division & genome stability. Learn more 👉 buff.ly/PrfdXnr #BioTech #Chromosomes #Crystallography #GeneEditing 🧪

Excited to share a new preprint from the lab with @ryandhindsa.bsky.social ! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Led by @sherrynyeo.bsky.social, @erinmayc.bsky.social, and friends, we continue our journey to find viral DNA in our favorite place-- the overlooked and discarded reads in existing data! 1/

🔔Paper alert! Extremely excited to share a preprint from our lab! Spearheaded by @axel-schmidt.bsky.social, a super talented medical & computational geneticist, we studied latent Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) infection at population-scale. Interested in how this works & what we found? Read along! 👇

BPS is in San Francisco next year! www.biophysics.org/2026meeting

AI just cracked de novo antibody design with a 100x leap! 🧪 Chai-2, a next-gen multimodal generative model, is shaking up protein design. With a 16% hit rate in fully de novo antibody design—over 100 times better than previous methods—it’s making drug discovery faster and more precise than ever.

🚨New preprint🚨We developed a transverse flow imaging approach to directly visualize bacterial replisomes challenged by topological barriers and discovered a fast rotational mode of replisome operation. Fantastic work by thomasmretzer.bsky.social and Hamdan Lab! tinyurl.com/replisomerot...

Structural insights into type I and type II Lamassu anti-phage systems https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.23.660979v1

Dear Mobile DNA Researchers, The 8th Woods Hole Mobile Genetic Elements meeting will be held Aug 28 to Aug 30, 2025, at the MBL in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Info, registration, and abstract submission: www.eventsquid.com/event/28372 #MobileDNA #MobileGeneticElements