Thanks to all lab members of the lab and our collaborators for a productive year. We had 4 papers, another successful PhD defence and some challenging methods established. Our first paper was in colab with @alexeimaklakov.bsky.social lab on ageing onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

We are pleased to host Prof Ying Wang on Wednesday 3rd December 2pm @johninnescentre.bsky.social . Please join us for this exciting talk. @yiliangding.bsky.social @whaerty.bsky.social @alperakay.bsky.social @earlhaminst.bsky.social @biouea.bsky.social @rnasociety.bsky.social Lexogen

We are pleased to host Prof Danny Incarnato @incarnatolab.bsky.social on 5th December 9:30am @johninnescentre.bsky.social. Please join us for. @yiliangding.bsky.social @whaerty.bsky.social @alperakay.bsky.social @earlhaminst.bsky.social @biouea.bsky.social @rnasociety.bsky.social Lexogen

Can we *please* stop rewarding bullying behavior in academic social media?

It’s fellowship season in UK and many postdocs will be looking for host institutions. This is a very critical step. Approach at least 3-4 hosts. Make sure there is genuine interest in hiring you. Many institutions claim to support fellows into long term careers but most actually don’t. #UKRIFLF

Looking for a PhD in RNA biology? The deadline is approaching fast! This is a great opportunity to do a PhD together with an industry partner fully funded by @nrpdtp.bsky.social BBSRC Case studentship.

Katarzyna Hencel, @alperakay.bsky.social, @drsull.bsky.social & co demonstrate an accessible and affordable assay to measure #vitaminB12 in biological samples. doi.org/10.1242/bio....

“The Guardian reported on Tuesday that British military equipment licensed for export to the UAE had been used by the RSF and found on battlefields in Sudan, according to documents seen by the UN security council” www.theguardian.com/world/2025/n...

I can now vibe code, use HPC and analyse RNA sequencing data at large scale. LLMs are amazing for this. On the negative side, now I can see how bad some(most) of the published RNA-seq datasets are. We really need to insist that all sequencing datasets should come with their QC data.

This is a super interesting paper by @conradlab.bsky.social lab on METTL16. They separate METTL16 function on U6 and MAT2A allowing more accurate analysis. Their results cast serious doubt on hundreds of papers claiming METTL16 methylates vast number of mRNAs. www.cell.com/cell-reports...

This ceasefire or more accurately the “pause in genocide” will not last if the UN soldiers don’t get involved. Not that the UN has a great record in preventing genocides but thats still the best option. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/o...

“Many of my students are now dead” www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

I’m not surprised. I tried this with REF21 case studies by giving chatGPT 5 4* and 5 1/2* case studies and ask it to decide if the further case studies for likely 3/4* or 1/2* and it did a really good job matching known scores.

Congratulations to Aykut Shen, one of my first PhD students, who has successfully passed his viva yesterday. Many thanks to examiners @conradn.bsky.social and @adamcribbs.bsky.social and co-supervisor/collaborator. @whaerty.bsky.social. @nrpdtp.bsky.social @biouea.bsky.social

New BBSRC funded PhD opportunity in my group with Inspiralis Ltd and @conradn.bsky.social. If you are interested in RNA - protein interactions and RNA modifications check the details below for how to apply. @nrpdtp.bsky.social @biouea.bsky.social @earlhaminst.bsky.social tinyurl.com/bdzvn4dr

‘Golden triangle’ institutions snap up 80% of AI supercomputer time. Exclusive: Oxbridge and London dominate early stages of government programme to expand AI-powered research. www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-u...

“The reading, which was done in order of the ages of the deceased from youngest to oldest, began at 7am and, by the time the march reached it at around 13:45, still had notfinished the names of toddlers.” www.theguardian.com/world/2025/o...

Super successful workshop! Thank you very much to all the speakers including all the talent postdocs and students! @norwichrnaclub.bsky.social @johninnescentre.bsky.social @earlhaminst.bsky.social @alperakay.bsky.social @uniofeastanglia.bsky.social

The @molbiosystems.bsky.social was an absolutely fantastic meeting. So many amazing people doing so much amazing research. I learned many new things, made new friends and hopefully will have new collaborations and more excuses to return in two years. Big thanks to organisers and everyone else!

Can’t tell I am in Chile looking at the food I am eating.

This Thursday AI in RNA biology event organised by @yiliangding.bsky.social @norwichrnaclub.bsky.social! Don’t miss!

Ready for the @molbiosystems.bsky.social conference at amazing Puerto Varas, Chile. What a wonderful location.

Super frustrating story on how NHS missed lyme disease and how ME/CFS has become an umbrella diagnosis for doctors. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/s...

C. elegans is a real animal and we set out to understand how it comes to have its distinctive biogeography. Its ancestral center of diversity is in the higher elevation forests of Hawaii. Its closest relatives are spread across east Asia. Did they travel from Asia? [Preprint 🧵]

New cures feel sudden, but the seeds were planted decades ago by basic scientists. Which seeds will turn into cures? Unpredictable looking forward, a straight line looking back. 🧪🧬 🧵

Removing portability of outputs has been very damaging to early career researchers as there is less incentive for universities to make new hires. Equally universities ca do mass lay offs beyond census window and still benefit from outputs. This is very damaging to research culture. @ukri.org

Our crab apple tree fruits every 2 years and we make yummy jelly! I’m not sure if anyone found C. elegans on rotting crab apples though.

It was great catching up with past and present @miskalab.bsky.social members to celebrate 20 years of Miska Lab. Thank you, Eric!

It is my pleasure to share with you the latest from @jsvejstrup.bsky.social lab, where we look at how the reduction of RNAPII levels has a severe, yet organized transcriptional response in the cell.

portlandpress.com/biochemj/art... PhD student Jacquie Mills has been getting to grips with RNAcapology. She has written this review on everything you wanted to know about m7G cap methylation and more....

Because there is good track record of politicians and civil servants predicting the next scientific breakthrough like GFP or RNA modifications or CRISPR or …. 🙄🙄🙄🙄

The percentage of children identified as acutely malnourished in screenings across Gaza increased to 13.5 per cent in August, from 8.3 per cent in July. www.unicef.org/press-releas...

It’s great to see this story out. Congratulations!

🚨New paper published today on cancer bugs and drugs!🚨 “Chemotherapy modulation by a cancer-associated microbiota metabolite” Congrats to the Cabreiro lab on this exciting study! #Cancer #Microbiome #Metabolism #Chemotherapy #MRC_LMS #ImperialCollege #CECAD_Cologne www.cell.com/cell-systems...

Some transparency will be good but in the end what we will see is that majority of QR funding goes to covering budget holes left by insufficient research grants. Wouldn’t it be better to fund the grants at 100% rather than QR funding? Or increase 📈 direct costs at the same time?

Looking for a new approach to studying or eliminating phages? Check out our study introducing anti-phage ASOs (antisense oligos) out in @Nature today. nature.com/articles/s4158…

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...

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/...

Many conserved exons in the heart and brain utilize weak 5 ′ splice sites, yet they are accurately spliced. But how? We show that splicing fidelity is actively enforced through a QKI-U6 checkpoint at the U1→U6 handover in essential cardiac genes during organogenesis. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Excited to share some new work from our group - www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... A great collaboration with @kurianlab.bsky.social that began with how an RBP (QKI) controls cardiomyocyte function, and led to uncovering a unique mechanism of direct interaction with U6 & the tri-snRNP at weak 5'SS

New preprint! How are developmental cycles coordinated across cell types? It turns out that, like Geppetto's cuckoo clocks in the GIF below, individual cell types are each performing their own little crazy routine, but all in sync with each other.

Academic authors, here's a peek into the black box of journal publishing from an journal editor if you can bear it:

🍽️🧬 How do diet and gut microbes shape fertility across generations? 🪱🔬 Our Laboratory at #InstitutPasteur is recruiting a PhD student to study epigenetic inheritance of fertility using C. elegans. Fully funded via the International PPU program. Apply now! 🌍 #PhDposition #Epigenetics #Inheritance

🥳 Thrilled to share that our lab has been awarded an ERC StGrant for our project SigReg: Signal to Regeneration! How can we unlock limb regeneration in adult mammals? It’s time to apply what we learned from 🐸 ➡️ 🐭 Thank you @erc.europa.eu for supporting ambitious science!!!

Our group’s latest paper where we developed a simple, fast and inexpensive method to detecting and measuring vitamin B12 in biological samples. Lead by Katarzyna Hencel and in collaboration with @drsull.bsky.social. @biouea.bsky.social #vitaminB12 journals.biologists.com/bio/article/...

Our next speaker at Norwich RNA Club is Prof Chun Kit Kwok from City University of Hong Kong. Please join us this Friday at 2pm at @johninnescentre.bsky.social . @yiliangding.bsky.social @whaerty.bsky.social @alperakay.bsky.social @biouea.bsky.social @earlhaminst.bsky.social