This went under the radar but answers a fundamental question in Epigenetics... From many hundreds of olfactory receptor genes, each neuron selects expression of only single one (near-randomly). How? Outstanding work from Mathieu Boulard and colleagues www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Really encouraging to see siRNA therapies enter the mainstream. A sobering reminder of how long this stuff takes to get to the clinic, though - here's me writing about their promise (and what you'd need to deliver them) in 2005 softmachines.org?p=143

Exciting new paper out! @allanaschooley.bsky.social and Sergey Venev led this project that let to the discovery of two chromosome folding programs: one inherited via mitotic chromosomes and one mitotic inherited through the cytoplasm! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

1/ 🎄 We got our Christmas present today: "Two distinct chromatin modules regulate proinflammatory gene expression" is now published @natcellbio.nature.com doi.org/10.1038/s415.... Our study introduces a scATAC-seq-based framework for genome-wide analysis of gene regulation features.

As the year ends, let me thank public school teachers who, under difficult circumstances, are doing their best to educate our kids. If this country is to flourish, we need the best education system in the world. Let’s fight for a nation where teachers are well-paid & respected.

Not that long ago, in vivo mouse enhancer design was a dream. Today, it's a reality! Using transfer deep learning to design de novo synthetic embryonic enhancers active in the heart, limb, and CNS. Great collab with @alex-stark.bsky.social lab! @ucibiosci.bsky.social @impvienna.bsky.social

Our preprint "Predictive design of tissue-specific mammalian enhancers that function in vivo in the mouse embryo" is on bioRxiv: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... . Amazing collaboration by @shenzhichen1999.bsky.social, Vincent Loubiere (@impvienna.bsky.social,@viennabiocenter.bsky.social),... (1/2)

Read our new preprint where we uncover a hierarchy in human PIC assembly and establish a quantitative framework that connects factor exchange kinetics to the regulation of Pol II activity in living human cells. doi: doi.org/10.64898/202... By A. Oravecz and our collaborators @molinalab.bsky.social

“2025 will be known as the year of the peak bubble, and also the moment at which Wall Street began to lose confidence in generative AI... the Oracle craze early in September and what has happened since will in hindsight be seen as the beginning of the end.” garymarcus.substack.com/p/six-or-sev...

I'm working on a new water-dipping objective targeting expansion imaging. Targeting the following specs: 5mm WD NA 1.0 1.2mm FOV, plan-corrected 8mm EFL ("25x") but this is flexible well-corrected in visible minimum mechanical profile Optics question: is there any reason to make it telecentric?

“A process which led from the amoeba to man appeared to the philosophers to be obviously a progress - though whether the amoeba would agree with this opinion is not known" - Bertrand Russell, 1976. Time-lapse video of Vampyrella lateritia eating Spirogyra algae from Science Source/Oliver Skibbe. 🦠

A major output of the 4D Nucleome project appeared today. This is the joint effort of many scientists working together and (publicly) sharing data and results for several years. We hope this is of interest to many genome biologists! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Our study with @stadtfeldlab.bsky.social on the dual mechanism by which EHMT2 is repressing totipotency-associated vs lineage-specific loci is now out @emboreports.org. See thread by @cmuyehara.bsky.social who led the study with K Chatterjee. Full article here link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Now published here! doi.org/10.1038/s443... @efapostolou29.bsky.social @stadtfeldlab.bsky.social @kritikakasliwal.bsky.social

(1/10) How do diverse leukemia mutations converge on the same molecular program? In #RibackLab first manuscript @cp-cell.bsky.social, collaboration with @goodell-lab.bsky.social shows that disparate mutations rewire shared protein networks to form nuclear condensates called C-bodies.

Really important that this is out for those waiting for it

CellSAM A foundation model for Cell Segmentation Segment Anything Model - Vision Transformer cellsam.deepcell.org Outperforming CellPose Similar to Human Single-cell spatial transcriptomics Live-cell tracking 3D cell segmentation @natmethods.nature.com 2025 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

An early Christmas present for those interested in chromatin and transcription! Fantastic work from @au-ho-yu.bsky.social and @aleksszczurek.bsky.social . Thanks to Inge and Michiel for their help. Please repost! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Very happy to share our 'Evoscape' paper, now published in PNAS ! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Here is the new meditative film about zooplankton and other cute animals from Okinawa. If you feel a need to calm down - just start watching it: youtu.be/JtwwoEzW3vU?...

Missed #FluorescenceFriday, but let's go for #GlowingSaturday! freshly out of the prep JF549 derivative for a colleague

📣 I hereby make my Bluesky debut to announce that our work linking DNA binding affinities and kinetics 𝘪𝘯 𝘷𝘪𝘵𝘳𝘰 and 𝘪𝘯 𝘷𝘪𝘷𝘰 for the human transcription factor KLF1 just got published in Cell! @cp-cell.bsky.social www.cell.com/cell/fulltex... Key findings in a thread (1/6):

We developed a 'smart STED microscope' to detect rare objects/events in cells, and unraveled the 3D morphology of a nuclear membraneless organelle (paraspeckle). Amazing collaboration with Sjoerd Stallinga, Bernd Rieger (TU Delft) and @mixmue.bsky.social 🙏 (1/3) www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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/... 🧵👇

Transcribing Pol2 With elongation factors Kinetic control #ChromatinHaiku #SingleMolecule www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Today is the International day for the elimination of violence against women. In 2024, an estimated 50,000 women and girls were killed by intimate partners or family members worldwide. That is 137 women and girls every day. One every ten minutes. www.un.org/en/observanc...

NY folks, please support this initiative!

A new and fascinating story from @bencarty.bsky.social and the group, with crucial help from the teams of @naltemose.bsky.social, Simona Giunta, and @dfachinetti.bsky.social. Many thanks to all for a fantastic collaboration. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I'm guest-editing a collection on "Enhancer-promoter interactions" at Genome Biology. Please send us your exciting stories! link.springer.com/collections/...

We are kicking off a blog series with @focalplane.bsky.social to provide insight into life at the AIC, microscopy careers, image analysis, and more! Read our intro post here: focalplane.biologists.com/2025/11/20/a...

Proteins are dynamic structures, but structural biology often shows them as static snapshots. Inspired by long-exposure photography and generative art, I built ProteinCHAOS, an artistic tool inspired by molecular dynamics to capture protein flexibility over time, much like long-exposure images.

This is an amazing sentence: "The Peekskill Meteorite Car ("PMC"), a 1980 red Chevy Malibu, is one of the two most famous objects struck by a meteorite (the other, Ms. Ann Hodges, died in 1972). " meteoritecar.com

We wrote a review on the "Physics of droplet regulation in biological cells": arxiv.org/abs/2501.13639 Beside the basic #physics of phase separation, we discuss three aspects that separate cellular from traditional droplets:

Hypothesis-based research: not dead yet

Check out our paper on transcriptional control of an artificial condensate, including engineering a feedback loop that includes phase separation. Led by the amazing @samwilken.bsky.social

Finally, the first public release of #BigVolumeBrowser, so after teasers, you can try it yourself. For details, please check the announcement post (1/2) forum.image.sc/t/bigvolumeb...

To probe gene-scale chromatin physics, we built 96-mer (20 kb) arrays with defined histone marks. Combining single-molecule tracking, AFM imaging, and developing in vitro Hi-C, we saw how specific modifications dictate chromatin structure and dynamics. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Radiolaria are microscopic unicellular sea creatures that create skeletons from silica. Their skeletons are among the most beautiful and complex natural microstructures, resembling elaborate filigree. blog post: n-e-r-v-o-u-s.com/blog/?p=9861

We just released a new major version of TrackMate (v8), the cell and organelle tracking plugin of Fiji. It ships many new features, detailed below, but that are articulated around the following:

Very excited to present OpenCGChromatin🔥🔥🔥 A new coarse-grained model that probes full chromatin condensates at near-atomistic resolution to reveal the molecular regulation of chromatin structure and phase separation Brilliantly led by @kieran-russell.bsky.social, with the Rosen and Orozco groups

Wonderful to see the beautiful preprint from Sabate et al now published - TADs are also dynamic structures in human cells, with remarkably similar parameters between mESCs and HCT116 cells www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Re-upping this with a Bluetorial in a shameless act of self-promotion. 1/n

Part 10 of 200 in historically interesting things to inspire your ttrpg Guillotine Earrings From France’s Reign of Terror

This is lunacy. The Chinese scholars I know are among the hardest working, most selfless people I've ever encountered. They want to contribute to our intellectual endeavors, and they make our research teams better.

I'd guess that 85-90% of American scientists would be ineligible for future funding under this law, maybe close to 100% in the R1 universities. So much for funding proposals based on scientific merit. Apart from being sinophobes, the people pushing this have no clue how science or higher ed works.

New preprint 🥳! We made photoclickable HaloTag ligands to precisely control protein labeling on living cells. With it, we can do some cool multicolor stuff. Huge congrats to Franzi and all co-authors! Check it out 👇 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

With sequencing of Hitler's DNA making headlines, time for a reminder: analysing a polygenic score from a dead historically-significant figure won't give new insights into that person's behaviour. In a brief paper last year, we used Beethoven's genome to directly illustrate the fallacies involved.🧪👇

What if instead of Cyber Monday (aka Daddy Bezos Day), we did a Support Indie Media Monday? What are your favorite indie publications? Who are some of your favorite freelance and indie reporters and commentators? Can we make this a thing?