very unusual - a tRNA regulated anion channel

Last X-Mas, the ribosome gave you methionine, but the very next day, MetAP took it away. This year, to save histones from tears, NatD gives you an acetyl group. ⭐️ Explore our latest paper with the Deuerling lab @uni-konstanz.de and Shu-ou Chan lab @caltech.edu! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

@science.org Chromatin buffers torsional stress during transcription | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

It’s out! Using cryo-ET in Dicty cells, we take a fresh in situ look at vaults. Surprisingly, we uncover vaults associated with ER and NE membranes, and find that many vaults enclose ribosomes in defined orientations, opening new avenues to their cellular function! www.biorxiv.org/lookup/conte...

Our latest paper on the molecular mechanisms of XPF-ERCC1 recruitment to SLX4-dependent DNA repair pathways has been published! Congratulations to first author Junjie Feng, and a heartfelt thank you to all our collaborators for their contributions to this study! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The dark proteome: translation from noncanonical open reading frames 1⃣5'-UTR 2⃣3'-UTR small ORF/sORF 3⃣out-of-frame 4⃣In-frame overlapping ORF Translating micropeptide <100aa, proteins distinct from canonical ORFs, or isoforms #TrendsCellBio 2022 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

✨New preprint! 🧵1/4 Excited to share our work on AI-guided design of minimal RNA-guided nucleases. Amazing work by @petrskopintsev.bsky.social @isabelesain.bsky.social @evandeturk.bsky.social et al! Multi-lab collaboration @banfieldlab.bsky.social @jhdcate.bsky.social @jacobsenucla.bsky.social🧬 🔗👇

Colibactin-DNA interstrand crosslinks structure reveals DNA-damaging acitivity of colibactin that is linked to colorectal cancer #MicroSky www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

❄️ December RNA Modifications Newsletter is out! ❄️ rnamodifupdates.substack.com/p/rna-modifi... ❄️🔥RNA modifs = winter’s hottest adaptation toolkit. 🦠 #Ribosome #RNAbiology

From @kylecottrell.bsky.social lab rnajournal.cshlp.org/content/31/1...

So happy to see this work out! Was such a pleasure to co-lead this effort with Erin. Do you like viral immune evasion, and using protein structure to study immune antagonists? Give it a read!

Congrats to @chgjohnston.bsky.social , Andreani, Radicella et al.! Elegant PNAS paper on the ComEC/ComFA/ComFC complex in bacterial transformation. AF3 predictions validated by clever mutagenesis. We tried for years to solve this by cryo-EM/crystallography - never succeeded.

Happy to share that my PhD project is finally published!🪱✨ Selfish genes are found across the tree of life. They can disrupt inheritance patterns and at the same time act as units for molecular innovation. Here we tried to answer one big question: how do selfish genes emerge in the first place?

How does messenger RNA (mRNA) get out of the nucleus to become a protein? Eukaryotic mRNA is packaged, exported, and then translated in the cytoplasm. But how do these steps work? And what are open questions? Check out our new review for our take: www.annualreviews.org/content/jour... (1/3)

New work from the Green and Beckmann labs on how ZAK recognizes collided ribosomes. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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/...

Finally out in @nature.com! We uncovered a mechanistic framework for a general and conserved mRNA nuclear export pathway. www.nature.com/articles/s41.... 1/

Out today, our take on 6-methyladenine #6mA evolution in Eukaryotes @natgenet.nature.com. We asked a simple question, is really DNA 6mA common across the eukaryotes? The answer is "yes" if you're a unicellular eukaryote 🦠, not so if you're multicellular 🐝🌱🍄. www.nature.com/articles/s41... 1/9

Structural insights into the chaperone role of uncharged tRNA(Arg/Gln) in viral RNAP assembly #RNASky 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Excited to share our new preprint in collaboration with Ahmet Yildiz's lab. Check out how our team uncovers a novel binding footprint and motor regulation mechanism for MAP9 Congrats to Burak Cetin and @aryantaheri.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Very happy to share our collaborative project on FAM118 proteins - noncanonical sirtuins that form filaments and process NAD in human and other vertebrate cells.

Thank you to our sponsors for the GA RNA Salon @rnasociety.bsky.social and Lexogen- we hosted Dr. Francesca Storici for our annual symposium yesterday @dunhamlab.bsky.social @ghaleilab.bsky.social

I’m very happy to share Zhong Han’s beautiful work on the biochemical function of Senataxin, encoded by a gene that is mutated in rare and early-disabling neurodegenerative diseases. Turns out it rescues backtracked RNA polymerase II during early transcription! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Thrilled to share that the final piece of my PhD work is now on bioRxiv! biorxiv.org/content/10.1... With support from @nvidia and the @NSF, we used AlphaFold to screen 1.6M+ protein pairs, revealing thousands of potential novel PPIs. All data can be viewed at predictomes.org/hp

Regulated decay of microRNAs plays a critical role in controlling body size in mammals! Check out our new paper in @genesdev.bsky.social and see thread previously posted with our pre-print 👇 for more info. Congrats to Collette LaVigne, Jaeil Han, and all authors! genesdev.cshlp.org/cgi/content/...

Very proud of our recently published work in @narjournal.bsky.social led by senior PhD candidate Julia Warrick. #RNA academic.oup.com/nar/article/...

Tremendous paper from Narry Kim’s lab identifying a sequence element that recruits cellular factors to exogenous mRNAs to ‘rejuvenate’ their poly(A) tails leading to a huge boost in output. Significant implications for therapeutics. Now, I wonder what the factor X is… www.nature.com/articles/s41...

New work from Tahirov x Lim collaboration! @qixianghe.bsky.social from my lab contributed the cryo-EM structures for this work. We are excited to help explain how anti-HSV drugs work and to guide their future development. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... @unmc.bsky.social @uwbiochem.bsky.social

‼️ Excited to share our new paper out now in @science.org ‼️ We describe a new tetrameric RAD51 paralog complex – XRCC3-RAD51C-RAD51D-XRCC2 – which caps the end of RAD51 filaments. Link: www.science.org/doi/epdf/10.... Thread ⬇️ (1/8)

This paper validates the original work establishing this concept for the cGAS-STING pathway. Kudos to the authors. @wyssinstitute.bsky.social journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

🎉 Joint paper from the Freudenthal and @tmweaver.bsky.social Labs! Abbey Vito’s first publication discusses a tug-of-war between BER enzymes and chromatin for access to damaged DNA, a battle central to genome stability. Built on Tyler's foundational work! tinyurl.com/ywkt2bt5

Interesting work profiling surface proteins from the Kossiakoff lab U Chicago. Corroborates the concept of @oawlab.bsky.social on cancer specific csU5-snRNP200 and our work on csNPM1 but here with more than 500 (!) novel Fabs and 40 antibodies developed. Very cool www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Our paper in Science is out! @souravagrawal.bsky.social, @rlynn.bsky.social, @susvirkar.bsky.social, and the rest of the team show human RPA is a telomerase processivity factor essential for telomere maintenance. This reshapes our thinking about telomerase regulation. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Exciting news for the RNA research community! The Human RNome Project has been launched: a global effort to map all human RNAs and their chemical modifications. Proud to support it and contribute to the article in Genome Biology doi.org/10.1186/s130... #RNA #bioinformatics #RNAstructure #modomics

Excited to share: DNA glycosylases are diverse antiviral effectors. They recognize phage base modifications and initiate genome destruction. A structure‑guided approach made the scope of this discovery possible! 🧪 #phagesky doi.org/10.1101/2025... #phage #microbiology

Among the anti-recombinases, FIGNL1 rules them all. So much that inactivating it brings BRCA2-deficient cells to life. Who is responsible for RAD51 loading without BRCA2/FIGNL1, check out the paper to find out! Great collaboration with @raychaudhurilab.bsky.social www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Excited to share a new paper led by @andreaslaustsen.bsky.social, Anne Ljungars, @tpjenkins.bsky.social, Shirin Ahmadi and Nick Burlet. It was a privelege to be a part of this amazing team! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Our study of pseudouridines in RNA was just published - it turns out that they stabilize RNA from cleavage by having much less nucleophilic 2'-OH groups: pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acscentsci.5c01345

Lab’s first paper is out!! We show the first structures of #Asgard #chromatin by #cryo-EM 🧬❄️ Asgard histones form closed and open hypernucleosomes. Closed are conserved across #Archaea, while open resemble eukaryotic H3–H4 octasomes and are Asgard-specific. More here: www.cell.com/molecular-ce...

'In this manuscript, we show that tag fusions often change protein expression to a degree that is highly dependent on cell and tissue context. We characterise two underlying mechanisms, providing information that should help others to design more effective transgenic strategies'

See our paper “Mechanism of trinucleotide repeat expansion by MutSβ-MutLγ and contraction by FAN1”. Using biochemistry, we show how DNA incisions by the MutLγ nuclease can lead to expansions, and how expansion is prevented by FAN1. Well done Issam and Valentina! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Happy to share our latest work, led by Sierra Love and in collaboration with Melissa Jurica's lab at UCSC and @danglab.bsky.social at U. Minnesota-Twin Cities. This work was funded by the Edward P. Evans Foundation/EvansMDS. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Our paper describing enhanced hybridization-proximity labeling technology is finally out! Enhanced HyPro can identify proteins associated with small RNA compartments and even some individual transcripts, such as pathological C9orf72 transcripts: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The enzyme cGAS senses DNA damage, but in humans and mice it inhibits a DNA repair pathway (homologous recombination), which reduces genome stability. In naked mole-rats, altering 4 amino acids in cGAS changes its role: instead of hampering repair, it boosts it. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Colliding ribosomes are potent signals of cellular stress. But do cells use ‘programmed’ ribosome collisions to regulate gene expression? I’m excited to present a new story from my lab led by Frederick Rehfeld(@fred-rehfeld.bsky.social) which revealed that the answer is YES! Read on to find out how👇

Test the activity of 300+ natural enzymes against 100+ substrates, discover 200+ new enzymatic reactions, and train machine learning models to predict which enzymes can do which reactions. @aepaton.bsky.social @gabegomes.bsky.social @alisonnarayan.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Kickstarting our Bluesky🦋 account with great news! Our REPAIRome study finally out today in @science.org www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Great work from Michelle Wang’s group at Cornell exploring how RNAP II and associated R-loops act as intrinsic roadblocks during mechanical DNA unzipping. These findings have mechanistic implications for transcription–replication conflict. rdcu.be/eILVd

Thrilled that our work is now finally out in Nature Comms! rdcu.be/eG3vP We reveal cryo-EM structures of the MRN complex bound to DNA & TRF2 - showing how DNA breaks are sensed and regulated at telomeres. Fantastic work by first authors @yilanfan.bsky.social @filizkuybu.bsky.social & Hengjun!

🚨🧠🔬 A major breakthrough in molecular neuroscience: I am excited to share a new story from our lab, published in accelerated format today by @nature.com: "Delta-type glutamate receptors are ligand-gated ion channels" Read more here (free article link): rdcu.be/eGIKz