Next Sunday I'll be giving an online lecture for The Last Tuesday Society on my @bodleian.ox.ac.uk book ✨Book Curses✨. I'll be talking about curses like that of John Wryghtson, which sits opposite some rather threatening illustrations of surgical instruments (Ox, St John's, MS 76, f. 5v).

Someone in the Arabidopsis/clock community seems to deeply dislike my work on research culture. Just want to say: whoever you are, please write & debate me directly instead of cowering behind anonymous grant reviews that threaten my students’ work. (2nd year in a row)

Now online: Pingzhuang Ge's studies on the impact of pH on local chromatin structure and transcriptional activity of the H-NS-regulated hdeAB operon www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

What are the main sources of gene expression noise in bacteria, and why do slower growing bacteria exhibit more expression noise? TLDR: we found growth-rate fluctuations are a key driver of gene expression noise that increase as average growth rate decreases. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 1/n

I updated ipSAE code to handle Boltz2 files properly -- non-standard chainIDs/order, PDB input as well as mmCIF; other pull requests. github.com/DunbrackLab/.... Also updated preprint--fixed Latin grammar error in title - very embarrassing and added new figure. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Are you a long-time fan of Archaea, an extremophile-phile, or are you simply curious? Either way, we have good news. We’re delighted to announce the 2026 EMBO Workshop on Archaea, 6–10 July. Sign up: meetings.embo.org/event/26-arc... We look forward to seeing you in Cambridge, UK Please repost!!

Experimental structures provide valuable hypotheses and accelerate but do not replace evolutionary and statistical analyses of protein sequences

Happy to share that our work on HLp, a bacterial histone from Leptospira perolatii, is now published in Nature Communications 🎉 In this study, we show that HLp forms stable tetramers that wrap ~60 bp of DNA, revealing a distinct histone–DNA organization in bacteria. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Delighted to share our new preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... We address a longstanding question about the role of the topoisomerase reverse gyrase in hyperthermophiles. Great collaboration with Baranello and @tobiaswarnecke.bsky.social groups. #Archaeasky #Microsky

Delighted to share our latest preprint on reverse gyrase, a unique topoisomerase found exclusively in thermophiles! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

I'm super excited to announce the first preprint of my PhD, together with Chenxi Ou and @sokrypton.org! ML has revolutionized protein modeling, but crucial challenges remain. For example, we can't reliably predict complicated protein structures without MSAs, which limits what we can design.

Peristaltic waves inside Stylaria lacustris #microscopy

Ending my PhD with a bang: Face-to-face histones are important organizers of archaeal chromatin alongside classical histones. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Now published. Thank you very much to our collaborative team, and very supportive editors and reviewers!!! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

New article online: Modulation of archaeal hypernucleosome structure and stability by Mg2+ In this work, we dissect the effects of Mg2+ on hypernucleosomes formed by the canonical histones from M. fervidus (HMfA and HMfB) and T. kodakarensis (HTkA and HTkB). www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Soon available in my group: 1 PhD position to investigate prokaryotic histones. See our recent work that highlights the existence and diversity of prokaryotic histones (e.g. Schwab et al., TIBS, 2025; Schwab et al., Nat Comm, 2024; Hu et al., Nucl Acids Res, 2024). Please DM for informal enquiries.

📝New preprint! #MicroSky 🕰️We chart the full, synchronized lifecycle of a predatory bacterium using Hi-C, RNA-seq, ChIP-seq & microscopy. 🧬We uncover dramatic shifts in nucleoid architecture & transcription, tightly coordinated with predation. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

pip install ipsae from www.linkedin.com/in/ullah-sam... www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5ph... PyPI pypi.org/project/ipsae/ His github fork github.com/ullahsamee/I... My github github.com/DunbrackLab/... Paper www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... For designed protein binders www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Archaea are often surrounded by bacteria. But is there ever active conflict between the two? Can archaea kill bacteria? If so, how do they do it? Work by @romainstrock.bsky.social shows that some archaea can kill bacteria by secreting peptidoglycan hydrolases. journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

Scaling down protein language modeling with MSA Pairformer https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.08.02.668173v1

And the story is published now!🍾 www.nature.com/articles/s41... Open access link: rdcu.be/exnOc Many years in the making, great collaboration with @archaellum.bsky.social & @tunglejic.bsky.social Thanks @ukri.org BBSRC & @leverhulme.ac.uk for funding, reviewers & editor!! 🙏 #microsky #archaeasky

Next up from our lab - a ring nuclease with a novel fold which cleaves all cOA species involved in Type III CRISPR defence. It's also found in plasmid and phage genomes, where it presumably functions as an anti-CRISPR. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Because of a lack of separation of the time scales for TF binding/unbinding and fluctuations in active TF levels, non-equilibrium gene regulation may be common in bacteria. Check out this nice piece by ‪@philipcball.bsky.social‬ on our new publication in PRX Life. physics.aps.org/articles/v18...

I am pleased to share our new review on the role of bacterial nucleoid-aasociated proteins in mediating responses to changes in environment. Important: some NAPs can directly ‘sense’ physico-chemical changes. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... @pingzhuangge.bsky.social

Now online - the Review "Histone-mediated chromatin organization in prokaryotes and viruses" from @samuelschwab.bsky.social‬ @vikramalva.bsky.social @damelab.bsky.social‬ and co. #histones #DNAorganization #chromatin #eukaryogenesis Read it here 👉 authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...

A must-read for histone afficionados: our new review on 'Histone-mediated chromatin organization in prokaryotes and viruses' www.cell.com/trends/bioch... @samuelschwab.bsky.social @vikramalva.bsky.social

Ready to meet some Nobel Laureates 😄

We’ve uncovered Asgard chromatin structures formed by a Hodarchaeal histone : closed hypernucleosome conserved in archaea and an open form resembling the H3-H4 eukaryotic octasome. Fantastic work by @harshranawat.bsky.social! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #Chromatin #Asgard #Archaea #cryoEM

Hitomezashi stitch patterns: samuelschwab.com/hitomezashi-...

Excited to share our new preprint on HLp—a bacterial histone from Leptospira perolatii that forms stable tetramers and wraps ~60 bp of DNA: "DNA Wrapping by a Tetrameric Bacterial Histone" www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... @mpi-bio-fml.bsky.social

ChimeraX daily builds can predict small complexes of proteins, nucleic acids and small molecules using Boltz on your Mac, Windows or Linux computer without Nvidia graphics. www.rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimerax/dat...

Chromatin aficionados take note: Second of two special issues on Prokaryotic Chromosome Organization now published! (6 review/perspective articles and 2 research articles) Guest edited by @damelab.bsky.social #MicroSky #Chromatin onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/13652958...

📢 Interested in chromosomes and microbes thriving at the edge of life?PhD project in York-UK on chromosome segregation in #Archaea. Supervised by me, @Steve Quinn & @georgerheath.bsky.social www.findaphd.com/phds/project... Open to Applicants Worldwide! 📅 January 6, 2025 #microsky #archaeasky