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Reposted by Shelby Blythe

bioRxiv Molecular Biology @biorxiv-molbio.bsky.social · 11d

Nanopore-based sequencing of active DNA replication reveals key principles of metazoan replication fork progression, origin and termination sites https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.26.678856v1

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Julius Brennecke @juliusbrennecke.bsky.social · 21d

PIWI clade Argonautes are essential for transposon silencing. Without them, animals are sterile due to massive transposon activity.

But how does piRNA-guided target interaction translate into silencing?

PhD student Júlia Portell Montserrat has an intriguing answer

www.cell.com/molecular-ce...

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Vienna BioCenter @viennabiocenter.bsky.social · Sep 8

How cells lock down “jumping genes”:
Researchers from IMBA and IMP identify the first protein interactions that trigger PIWI–piRNA–mediated transposon silencing, using AlphaFold predictions, genetics, biochemistry and cell biology.
Read more: www.viennabiocenter.org/about/news/t...

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siddhartha jena @epijenatics.bsky.social · 27d

Excited to share my postdoc work, out on bioRxiv today! Histones package DNA into nucleosomes to form the building blocks of chromatin, but how modular and programmable is this system? 1/9

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ProPublica @propublica.org · Sep 6

Are you someone who has been or could be affected by imminent ICE raids in Chicago?

Do you have friends, family members or neighbors who have been or could be?

If you have information you can share, please reach out to @melissa-sanchez.bsky.social on Signal or WhatsApp at 872-444-0011.

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Yu-Chiun Wang @yuchiunwang.bsky.social · Sep 4

Tissue 'tectonic' collision is detrimental, but flies found two distinct solutions! Gratifying and grateful to be included in this collective effort, w/ Steffen Lemke, to crack the (or 'a') code of #cephalicfurrow, now out in @nature.com, all with @paveltomancak.bsky.social at the helm. (1/9)

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paveltomancak.bsky.social @paveltomancak.bsky.social · Sep 4

We are all super happy and proud to see our work on the function and evolution of the #cephalic #furrow published in @nature.com. Let me say a few things about the background and history of this work on the #Evolution_of_Morphogenesis (1/12)

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Stefano Di Talia @ditalialab.bsky.social · Sep 2

Priyom's preprint is out on biorxiv. See below for a detailed thread. In a nutshell, she has discovered and characterized the oscillator that times notochord and spine segmentation in zebrafish. Turns out that there are uniform Erk oscillations across the entire tissue that act as timekeepers!

Priyom Adhyapok @priyomadhyapok.bsky.social · Sep 2

Building a spine is no joke, but thankfully zebrafish have their own clocks to keep the pace. Excited to share our preprint on the role of biological oscillators in coordinating notochord development! (www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...)
Additional thread below

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Anders Sejr Hansen @andersshansen.bsky.social · Aug 19

I have
NIGMS R35, impact score 12
NIHGRI R21, 4th percentile
NHGRI R01, 7th percentile (co-I)
and it seems like none will be funded. 0/3.

PO (who has been very helpful) said "Unfortunately, I do not expect this application will be selected for funding in FY25."

😭

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Akanksha Thawani, PhD @akankshathawani.bsky.social · Aug 19

Extremely excited to share that I’m joining Columbia University @columbiauniversity.bsky.social as an Assistant Professor!

We will explore how the mobile genome works—how transposons shape us, our DNA and how they can be harnessed to build useful technologies. #NewPI #RNAsky #TEsky

thawanilab.org

The Thawani Lab at Columbia University

The Thawani Lab at Columbia University describing their research on mobile genome, cryo-electron microscopy and genome engineering

thawanilab.org

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Bluma Lesch @ambystoma22.bsky.social · Aug 20

New paper on the role of H3K4me3 at enhancers! We (led by Haoming Yu) used dCas9 epigenome editing to add H3K4me3 to intergenic enhancers. This was (1) sufficient to turn up transcription at open, active regions and (2) has no effect on target gene transcription. genesdev.cshlp.org/content/earl...

H3K4me3 amplifies transcription at intergenic active regulatory elements

A biweekly scientific journal publishing high-quality research in molecular biology and genetics, cancer biology, biochemistry, and related fields

genesdev.cshlp.org

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The Daily Northwestern @thedailynu.bsky.social · Aug 17

NU Professor Jane Wu’s daughter and colleagues called her an “outstanding scientist” dedicated to “the greater good.” Before she died in July 2024, she was investigated, then cleared by the government. She still lost her funding and lab space.
—
Reported by William Tong

NIH probe, lab closure preceded NU Feinberg professor death

Northwestern Feinberg Professor Jane Wu’s daughter, colleagues said she was ‘outstanding scientist’ dedicated to ‘the greater good’

dailynorthwestern.com

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Mark Peifer (He, him) @peiferlabunc.bsky.social · Aug 12

Congrats to UNC Biology professor En Yang, named one of this year's Pew Scholars. Yang uses zebrafish as an experimental model to study the neural pathways involved in learning and memory formation. 1/n
college.unc.edu/2025/08/en-y...

Carolina neuroscientist named a 2025 Pew Biomedical Scholar - College of Arts and Sciences

En Yang, a neuroscientist in the College of Arts and Sciences at UNC-Chapel Hill, has won a Pew Biomedical Scholar award for her engineering-informed research on learning and memory.

college.unc.edu

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Christian Mosimann @chrmosimann.bsky.social · Aug 12

Big congrats to our postdoc @mary-flores.bsky.social, who's among the 2025 Pew Latin American Fellows! 🐟🧬🫀🧪
Onwards, always.
#PewLatinAmericanFellows #zebrafish #PILife #PostdocLife #devbio @cudevbio.bsky.social

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Stowers Institute @stowersinstitute.bsky.social · Aug 6

Snails with human-like eyes?!

Published in @natcomms.nature.com, the @planaria1.bsky.social & @accorsi-alice.bsky.social Labs have established apple snails as a novel model for studying vision restoration. They have complex camera-type eyes & the ability to regrow them in 28 days: bit.ly/4mvaxkq

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Ben Parker @ben-parker.bsky.social · Aug 1

The Parker Lab at UNC Biology is hiring a postdoc to work on insect–microbe interactions.

Support available for multiple years from startup; we are open to a range of project ideas. Come join us to study symbiosis in a supportive, collaborative environment!

unc.peopleadmin.com/postings/303...

Post-Doc Research Associate

The researcher will be primarily responsible for carrying out investigations related to our lab's research, using an insect model system (aphids) to address mechanistic and evolutionary genetic questi...

unc.peopleadmin.com

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Lerit Lab @lablerit.bsky.social · Jul 31

"[Our] journals provide a rapid and informed assessment by expert scientific editors (on average, within 4 days)."

Friends, it will be 2 weeks tomorrow. 😢

a man in a suit and tie wears a hard hat

ALT: a man in a suit and tie wears a hard hat

media.tenor.com

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Shelby Blythe @shelbyflies.bsky.social · Jul 29

Thanks to Ellie, Natalie, and @corinnecroslyn.bsky.social for driving these projects and to everyone who helped along the way.

Check out the full preprint here:
doi.org/10.1101/2025...

10/10 (end)

doi.org

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Shelby Blythe @shelbyflies.bsky.social · Jul 29

It also means that there is a brief but perhaps significant time in development when the maternal and paternal genomes are very asymmetric in their methylation state.

Ellie's model predicts that the paternal genome "catches up" about an hour after ZGA.

This may have biological implications.
9/10

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Shelby Blythe @shelbyflies.bsky.social · Jul 29

So what does this mean?

We think it’s a beautiful example of how histone modifications can be inherited in cis through read-write feedback, and indicates that the K27me2 state has sufficient information to do this.
8/10

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Shelby Blythe @shelbyflies.bsky.social · Jul 29

To test that (because flies are the best) Ellie used mutants that produce haploid embryos (just maternal chromatin). If the model was right, all chromatin should now retain K27me2.

And that’s exactly what she found.
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Shelby Blythe @shelbyflies.bsky.social · Jul 29

Sure enough, K27me2 survives! But there's a twist: only half the chromatin stains positive.

Her model suggested a reason: the surviving methylation might be from mom's genome, not dad's.
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Shelby Blythe @shelbyflies.bsky.social · Jul 29

Her model predicted what we already knew: fast divisions erase H3K27me3. But it also made a new prediction: lower-order methylation states like H3K27me2 might persist through the rapid divisions.

So she tested it.
5/10

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Shelby Blythe @shelbyflies.bsky.social · Jul 29

Ellie, a PhD student in the lab, built a model of this process. She started from a published computational framework, added our new measurements, and asked: what happens to histone methylation during these fast cycles?
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Shelby Blythe @shelbyflies.bsky.social · Jul 29

In the first study, we found that these rapid early divisions not only erase H3K27me3 but also that key nucleators of this modification are kept out of the nucleus until just before the zygotic genome activates.
3/10

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