Chuffed to have defended my PhD thesis! Big thanks to @danielgerlich.bsky.social for all his support and guidance; and to the wonderful @gerlichlab.bsky.social, @imbavienna.bsky.social & @viennabiocenter.bsky.social for being an incredible scientific home these past few years. On to the next :)

New preprint! Cell division has to happen at the right place but how Archaea pick that place is unknown. We now identified a three-protein system, Dip, that positions the divisome at midcell in H. volcanii and is broadly conserved across Archaea. A thread 🧵 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

I'm happy to share that I have started a new position in the Gerlich Lab (@gerlichlab.bsky.social) at IMBA (@imbavienna.bsky.social) as Senior Bioinformatician. Looking forward to contributing to the great science developed in the group! 😊🧬

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

Amazing colloquium talk by Christa Schleper from @univie.ac.at @archaea-vienna.bsky.social on how archaea use protrusion to crawl on surfaces! #archaea #loki @istaresearch.bsky.social

Asgard on the move ! Watch our videos! Biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.30.690169v1

Something I was recently discussing with some colleagues: is the work of computational scientists closer to the one of experimentalists or to the one of theorists working on analytical models?

I tried it -- very impressive! A caveat, however -- it might make you feel as if your published papers aren't as good as you thought 😅

Our paper on chromosome segregation in the archaeon Sulfolobus Acidocaldarius has been published in PNAS! This has been a great collaboration with @joeparham19.bsky.social and the rest of @buzzbaum.bsky.social's team. Stay tuned for more to come!😉 @istaresearch.bsky.social doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

Grateful for this opportunity of taking part in the 9th International Soft Matter Conference in beautiful Crete and presenting my research! It's been a great week of science, stimulating discussions and great food in a beautiful scenery 😊🏖️

It has been a great workshop! Thanks to @romanstano.bsky.social, Peter, Emanuela and Christos for giving me the opportunity to present my work :)

Super excited that our group will be supported by an ERC Starting Grant! In project "InfoFate" we will study how cells use information in dynamical, neighborhood & mechanical signals to make decisions. We'll have PhD and Postdoc positions available, please get in touch if interested!

Our paper on the nonequilibrium mechanics and remodelling of collagen-IV networks is finally out on @prxlife.bsky.social! It has been a long and exciting scientific journey, led by @billiemeadowcroft.bsky.social! @ivnpla.bsky.social @yanlanmao.bsky.social journals.aps.org/prxlife/abst...

Sally Rooney books are kinda neat until you read a couple and realize that all the plots and characters are exactly the same...

Sass de Putia, Dolomites!

The Dolomites really are a special place. Very lucky to have had so many days of great weather! ⛰️🥾

A stambecco (ibex) with her baby 🐐

Scientific curiosity at IMBA inspired this year's art series, created from research images. Today's kaleidoscope is based on an artistic rendering of the spiral staircase model of the mitotic chromosome, produced by the Goloborodko lab using new tools for analyzing 3D chromosome structure.

And it's finally published on @prxlife.bsky.social! Thanks to Paul Robin (Hannezo lab) , @ivnpla.bsky.social (Šaric lab), @aharmendariz.bsky.social (Cuylen lab). It's been a very stimulating and highly satisfying journey! 🧬 journals.aps.org/prxlife/abst...

Sass dla Crusc in the Dolomites 😊

So satisfying when the last round of proofs for your paper comes back the day before you leave for vacation! 😊

Is it just me or Google search results got significantly worse recently?

We found a new asymmetry in the large-scale chromosome structure: sister chromatids are systematically shifted by hundreds of kb in the 5′→3′ direction of their inherited strands! The work was led by Flavia Corsi, in close collaboration with the Daniel Gerlich lab. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 1/

Wow!! This is super cool!

Good Science xkcd.com/3101/

First time it happens to me: the book I'm reading (Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman) is missing 49 pages 😅

With the explosion in popularity of Gen AI tools, I wonder if we will go back to having more oral exams in schools and universities. Which in Italy we already do, because we haven't really updated our teaching methods in like 50 years... 😅

@buzzbaum.bsky.social @joeparham19.bsky.social

How do archaea partition their genome just at the right time before cell division? Check out this new #preprint if you want to know! A great collaboration with Joe and the @buzzbaum.bsky.social lab! 🦠🧬

The workshop on polymers and biomolecular condensates in Meißen was great! I've learnt a lot and met some great people, and got to visit the beautiful Meißen and Dresden! Thanks to the organizers @albertilab-tud.bsky.social, Arash and Jens!

Meißen at night! 🤩

Very engaging talk by Daniel Bonn on rheology and phase separation of active (and in some cases drunk) worms! 🪱🪱🪱

Happy Star Wars day!

A recent @newscientist.com cartoon #fungi

I love papers like this 🌹 Discovering complexity in mundane things! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

🔥New Night Science paper!! Discovery happens when your initial plans fall apart but it requires you to have a particular mindset: it's not extraverted, orderly, neurotic or agreeable that's the most important – discovery requires an OPENNESS to new ideas and unexpected insights.

I remember it being unpleasant & a lot less fudge-y.

Super cool experiments by Alfredo and the team!! The laser ablation one in particular is very clever. Definitely check this out if you're interested in the cytoskeleton or active matter in general 🙌

Made Mapo Tofu (vegetarian version, with shiittake mushrooms instead of meat) for the first time yesterday. Pretty happy with the results! 😋

Typical researcher

The insanity of being a fire ecologist in the epicenter of a major fire event, bags packed and ready to evacuate, watching active fire from my window, while taking media requests and explaining to the public, for the 100,000th time how climate change is largely responsible for this

This show was incredible

Cacio e Pepe is a notoriously difficult pasta recipe. Luckily, we can find the perfect recipe using science! 🍝🧑‍🔬 Most importantly, be sure to avoid the "mozzarella phase"! Great article by @vicioms.bsky.social and colleagues 😁

The New Year's Eve fireworks in Naples 🎇🎆

When you get an email from a post doc CCing the big shot boss

View of Naples from Castel Sant'Elmo 🏰

It's the time of the year when I make a Christmas themed experiment to celebrate another year gone by: this year, a micropatterned branched actin network with myosin, aka a Christmarp(2/3) tree, doing weird stuff. Happy holidays Bluesky! 🥳🥳🥳

The mitotic chromosome periphery: a fluid coat that mediates chromosome mechanics https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.12.21.628209v1

Davide isn't here yet so here's a nice review he just wrote on kinetoplast biophysics academic.oup.com/nar/advance-...

Loop extruders induce twist on DNA strands! Very cool!