Exciting breakthrough technology from the lab, now live in @cellcellpress.bsky.social ! Instead of cutting the genome where proteins bind (e.g., Cut&Tag), D&D-seq scars the DNA with a deaminase, allowing single cell genome mapping of TFs and chromatin remodellers!

Out today - structure of the human HIRA histone chaperone complex bound to nucleosomes. Ever wondered how nucleosomes are assembled in the wake of transcription? It takes a 'hulk of a protein complex'. Work by the amazing Wei Tian weetian558.bsky.social. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 🧵

If you're reading this, my cat and I have boarded a one-way flight out of the United States. The Trump administration wrongfully denied my work permit renewal; after months of demanding that they follow the law, we have run out of legal recourse, and I have no choice but to leave the country. (🧵)

Why can't we explain enhancer action despite 2 decades of chromosome conformation technologies? 😬 Our new study spearheaded by Leonid Mirny's group points to a flaw in our assumptions, and to a solution from physical principles By @timothyfoldes.bsky.social 💻& @karissalhansen.bsky.social 🧪 🧵👇

Cohesin bridging as a physical principle of enhancer-promoter communication https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.07.723561v1

Excited to share our first story led by @martinacapriati.bsky.social! How do cells control the expression of viability genes? We find that single transcription factors can drive both chromatin opening and gene activation from densely co-bound CpG island promoters, including at essential genes

New preprint out!🧬 How do cells keep replicated sister chromatids linked for DNA repair while folding 3D loops for gene expression? Extrusion folds DNA but separates sisters, while cohesion connects them, risking mutual interference. How do they coexist?🧵👇 🔗 doi.org/10.64898/2026.05.02.722390 1/6

Excited to share our new study on CpG islands (CGIs) regulation by transcription factors (TFs)! CGIs drive most transcription initiation with unclear regulation. We find that chromatin-opening TFs are key players—following a surprisingly simple rule. 🧵 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 1/9

Nucleosome remodeling by a CHD enzyme promotes H3K9 methylation establishment and spreading via remodeler-writer feedback https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.03.722496v1

Delighted to share our lab's latest (w/ inimitable @genophoria.bsky.social) in final form at @nature.com. Enormous lift by Sean Wang, @palindromephd.bsky.social & @martyyang.bsky.social to address extensive & constructive reviewer comments & see this through. (1/n) www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Happy to share our new review! Chromatin mechanics and regulatory protein function: insights from single-molecule force spectroscopy www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

(1/n) Super excited to share that our preprint is out today in @natsmb.nature.com with a new name "Integrated MINFLUX tracking reveals two distinct chromatin dynamics classes across cell types" and more than 2x more data: www.nature.com/articles/s41... See also MIT News news.mit.edu/2026/how-chr...

Our new preprint! 🧬✨ www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/... @ynagata.bsky.social et al. combined single-nucleosome imaging with Fucci probes to follow local chromatin behavior during interphase. Local nucleosome motion stays nearly constant from G1 to G2, except in early G1. Thanks to all coauthors!

But wait! There’s more! So you thought you knew nucleosome structure? Think again! @vram142.bsky.social @gladstoneinst.bsky.social and @genophoria.bsky.social @arcinstitute.org show that there is plenty of distortion largely due to TFs butting in www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Excited to share our latest work in Molecular Cell: www.cell.com/molecular-ce... We show that PRC1 condensates exclude SWI/SNF from chromatin, revealing a physical mechanism for how opposing regulators compete to control gene expression. Huge thanks to all collaborators and mentors!

Delaying? Destroying. Let’s call a spade a spade ffs.

📖 The final version of our paper is out in press Cohesin cofactor dosage sets the rate of loop extrusion, rendering genome folding tunable yet vulnerable to genetic disruption authors.elsevier.com/a/1m%7EU03vV... or www.cell.com/molecular-ce...

Join us for the 3rd EMBO:EMBL Symposium on 'DNA replication and Genome Maintenance - from basic biology to human health' @embl.org Heidelberg, Oct 20-23 2026. Fantastic speaker lineup 🤩 on chromosome replication, stability and organization 👉 abstract by July 28: s.embl.org/ees26-13-li

Very pleased that after a rigorous (and lengthy) review process, our paper visualizing how myosin generated forces modulate actin filament structure for mechanosensitive recogntion by α-catenin has appeared in @nature.com : www.nature.com/articles/s41...

ngl, did not have table tennis robots on my bingo card for 2026: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

My first, first author paper is now on #ScienceAdvances ! Linker histone H1 is a liquid-like "glue" condensing chromatin, which revises textbooks! 📖✨ science.org/doi/10.1126/sc… Huge thanks to @kazu-maeshima.bsky.social , for supervision. Amazing collab with @rcollepardo.bsky.social ’s group! 1/

*POSTDOC Positions* Multiple positions open in my group at @biohub.org & @feinberg.northwestern.edu / @nitmb.bsky.social We welcome PhDs from diverse disciplines interested in QBio & BioE job-boards.greenhouse.io/biohub/jobs/... job-boards.greenhouse.io/biohub/jobs/... www.goyallab.org/positions

Meiosis faces a fundamental problem: It must repair hundreds of DNA double-strand breaks while executing a transcriptional programme essential for gamete development. But many of these breaks occur in genes. So how are these two processes reconciled? www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

ChromSMF preprint is out!🚀 tinyurl.com/ChromSMF We often piece together chromatin regulation layer by layer from separate assays. But this can be limiting! In @arnaudkr.bsky.social's lab, we developed a method to directly study multiple layers on the same DNA molecule! 🧬 What does this unlock? ⬇️

These captchas just keep getting harder #rstats

Have you ever wanted to do single-molecule biophysics in high-throughput? @matt-dejong.bsky.social (amazing joint grad student with @dunnlab.bsky.social) invented a way & measured >100,000 single molecules across 241 different sequences. (1/3) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Happy to share our Current Opinion review on the key challenges in accurately predicting 3D distances between chromatin segments and computing their dynamics. Thanks to @djost-physbiol.bsky.social @lucagiorgetti.bsky.social for the invitation to write this review! @shuvadipdutta.bsky.social

I argued in a piece I wrote in 2013 called ‘the frustrated gene’ that caps are an antiviral defense. Hence some viruses steal caps, other have their own capping enzymes, while others evolved IRESs. Here’s a virus that captured the entire cap recognition machinery. Conflicts begets comlexity.

Our paper is now out in Nature: “Ancient co-option of LTR retrotransposons as yeast centromeres” www.nature.com/articles/s41... A short thread on how retrotransposons helped give rise to yeast point centromeres. 1/14

🚨 Requesting help: I am looking for an agent who can facilitate more speaking gigs, podcast appearances, and interviews with journalists I want to more widely share my story and expertise as a trans geneticist who understands the reality and complexity of "biological sex" 🏳️‍⚧️🧬 Please signal boost?

No justice, no science. Fuck ICE.

If you are a scientist funded by NIH and agree that if the HHS/NIH bill is held hostage by linkage for funding to DHS/ICE, we need to shutdown both and save lives, its time to speak up. Right now, with a few exceptions, the silence is deafening

Pregnancy loss is common in humans, and chromosomal abnormalities are the leading cause. Using genetic data from ~140,000 IVF embryos, we show that maternal variation in meiosis genes influences recombination and aneuploidy risk. First authors: @saracarioscia.bsky.social & @aabiddanda.github.io

Congratulations to @groth-anja.bsky.social on receiving the Novo Nordisk Foundation Jacobæus Prize 🏆 we’re proud to see Anja's mentorship, leadership, & pioneering work in epigenetic cell memory getting top recognition 👏 celebrating the contributions of past & present lab members to this work too 🥳

Stress controls epigenetic inheritance! A histone ubiquitylation-based regulatory hub links stress/environmental signaling to heterochromatin self-propagation and epigenetic inheritance-reshaping how we think about development, drug resistance, and cancer 👉 nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09899-8

Is arginine the new cysteine?! Check out our lab's latest in collaboration with @ianseiple.bsky.social's team where we introduce ninhydrin as a selective covalent warhead and probe targeting reactive arginines. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Intrigued by a long-standing conundrum in small RNA biology—how nuclear Argonaute proteins silence transposons when they *need* target transcription for their own recruitment—we studied the piRNA pathway. And found a hidden RNA-decay axis from Piwi to the RNA exosome.

Ladies and gentlemen... the weekend. (also: you are important and are not alone 🧡)

Known for decades: DNA sequence drives nucleosome "rotational positioning" (which face of DNA contacts histones) But: How does this persist when remodelers & transcription constantly mobilize nucleosomes? Our new preprint 1/ : www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Very happy to share our paper rdcu.be/eUImj out today in @natcellbio.nature.com 🎉🎉🎉 We uncover an unexpected role for endogenous Xist RNA in regulating X-linked genes that escape X-inactivation.

@science.org🧬Cohesin guides homology search during DNA repair using loops and sister chromatid linkages | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... @fedeteloni.bsky.social @danielgerlich.bsky.social et al.

Oh hey, looks like I can upload longer videos here now! Here’s my most recent one covering the latest findings on ecDNA retention mechanisms from the Chang & Mischel labs.

Oxidative phosphorylation complexes contain subunits encoded by both the nuclear and mitochondrial genomes. How do cells coordinate the synthesis and assembly of these complexes at the inner membrane? We teamed up with Martin Ott (@mitolab.bsky.social) to address this in two recent papers.

We just released IRIS (7+yrs project), a tech we believe will transform cell biology by pairing high-resolution cell images with matched #scRNAseq, letting us interpret cellular form by its molecular ground truth. Huge tx to @JohannesBues, @JoernPezoldt, @CamilleLambert et al. shorturl.at/zgY8Z

Here is a copy of last year's Twitter thread explaining our preprint - jump to (21) for the new stuff 👀 Synergy between cis-regulatory elements can render cohesin dispensable for distal enhancer function now revised and journal accepted at www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... 🧵👇

Man it would be so cool if, in the year 2025 of our lord, we could all just be chill and celebratory about nice professional things being announced for our colleagues in molecular biology. Unrelated, anyone reading absolute Batman? Bc it slaps.

We are looking for a postdoctoral fellow to work on induced proximity 🤜🤛 and functional genomics! Join our team in Toronto 🇨🇦 to tackle major challenges in oncology and neurodegeneration. www.nature.com/naturecareer...

Unpause! I'm super happy to now be able to share the published version of our paper at Science Advances showing that: 1) active histone mods occur independently of transcription 2) transcription coordinates histone deacetylation at active promoters www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Read my full story here! Psychedelics and immortality: Nature went to a health summit starring RFK and JD Vance www.nature.com/articles/d41...