It is with great sadness that we share the news of the death of our founder, colleague, mentor and friend, Professor Sir John Gurdon. His vision and dedication will continue to inspire generations of scientists.
🔗 www.gurdon.cam.ac.uk/nobel-laurea...
🚨New preprint from the lab🚨
🧬 What keeps certain chromatin domains anchored at the nuclear periphery? Our new genome-wide HiDRO screen uncovers a key role for RNA-binding protein hnRNPK.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Federal investment in UC research Federal funds are the university’s single most important source of support for research, accounting for more than half of UC’s total research awards. Many of California’s leading industries grew from UC research, including biotechnology, computing, semiconductors, telecommunications and agriculture. Providing health care at UC University of California Health (UC Health) is one of the nation’s largest public academic health systems, serving as a critical part of the California safety net. UC trains approximately 36% of the medical residents in California
The university of California is a powerhouse of innovation, healthcare, and social mobility for California and the US.
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New preprint!
How do transcription factors (TFs) use intrinsically disordered regions (IDRs) to find their target sites?
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
#TranscriptionFactors #IDPs #SingleMolecule #Biophysics
🧬@science.org ASB7 is a negative regulator of H3K9me3 homeostasis | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
#epigenetics #chromatin #genetics #histone
I’m excited to announce that my paper describing non-canonical mitotic mechanisms in the early mouse embryo is out in @science.org ! (link at end of 🧵)
It has taken decades to get to this point, but stem cells for Parkinson's disease showing promise in 2 clinical trials
nature.com/articles/d41...
nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com/articles/s41...
Harvard has set an example for other higher-ed institutions - rejecting an unlawful and ham-handed attempt to stifle academic freedom, while taking steps to make sure students can benefit from an environment of intellectual inquiry, rigorous debate and mutual respect. Let’s hope others follow suit.
Fairly sure my UG course used primate 16s rDNA or mitochondrial genes to learn tools of the trade. And then once more sophisticated, re-analysis of viral genomes to track epidemiological spread via character evolution etc.
As a Jew I will feel a lot safer at Columbia knowing that there are fewer graduate students toiling in labs to cure cancer and drug addiction.
Structures of TFs bound to core histone (Sox2, Cramer, PU.1/FoxA1 Bai, OCT4 Halic, ect) shows a mechanistic solution for stable binding on nuc. Of course stable structures would be biased for in the cryoEM densities.
I do like the idea of transient interactions, but these are hard to study! By FRET?
Many have tested this! Most compelling IMO are that foxa1 re-ChIP’s with core histone, overlapping MNase-resistant chromatin (Iwafuchi/Zaret) pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...
And C&R distinguish pioneering/nuc binding events by fragment size (Meers/Henikoff)
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...
Recently joined Bluesky, so sharing here. Our latest work on bioRxiv. Using cell-cycle dynamics and NIPBL depletion, we show that long-range enhancer-promoter interactions can form de novo without loop extrusion. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Another assault on US competitiveness at a time when biomedicine is roaring with innovation, an own-goal in a high-stakes international tournament. Of course the real losers are American people needing medicines and cures.
www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/...
Our latest work: how can compartmentalization emerge in a eukaryotic genome lacking canonical heterochromatin?
By investigating bacterial genomes put in yeast, we show that the presence or absence of transcription is sufficient!
#chromatin #3Dgenome #generegulation
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
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Also… the Waymo seats are super comfy
Hah, an n-of-1 of someone being inconvenienced seems better than the reality of hundreds of car deaths per day
Before Christmas I did threads on the application areas of genomics in rare disease (bsky.app/profile/ewan...) and in common disease (bsky.app/profile/ewan...) - now I am going to focus on Cancer genomics
Fantastic convo. And at times contained painful lessons that made me reflect on my own process. Thank you for this!!
Has anyone had success modeling histone peptides (with PTMs) or nuclesomes (with histone tail PTMs) with chromatin reader proteins using Alphafold or Chai1? If so, any tips? Most iterations I try have the histone tail flopping off to the side #Chromatin #Alphafold #Epigenetics
Late to the party, but alphafold is mind blowing. A high confidence heterodimer that would take an entire team months can be predicted by a grad student procrastinating writing, in minutes, on coffee shop wifi.
Wow, big congrats to Jailynn and co!
"Dark TFs": new manuscript mapped 166 uncharacterized human transcription factors, finding half bind genomic "dark matter," often closed chromatin rich in transposable elements.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
So. Much. Cool. Science. Here. Really invigorating. To my old friends and new, hi 👋
