Why can RNA only be linear or circular? It can be branched! We made multi-tailed mRNA, and we had fun! Here is our story led by brilliant graduate student Hongyu Chen: rdcu.be/dB7ck and his cartoon illustration👇MIT Chemistry Broad Institute

Omni been going bonkers, let's go 👏

Our latest from James Briscoe lab: How temporal & spatial pattering cues are integrated in the vertebrate neural tube to organise cell type generation during development. biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

Nice story from Crick about Sir Lawrence “Willie” Bragg:

For even the most bread-and-butter #synbio pursuits, testing as many candidate DNA sequences as possible is key. But there's one big constraint: obtaining synthetic DNA. Learn how we're addressing the biggest pain points in #DNAsynthesis in this article. synbiobeta.com/read/the-next-…

Swapping histone H2A for its ancient variant H2A.Z impacts transcription. Why that is has remained opaque. Work led by Zach Harvey & supported by @KateMaryStevens shows that variation in the L2 loop plays a key role, mediating diff interactions with Spt6 biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

A hallmark of sex is each parent transmits half of their genome through a recombined egg or sperm. What if this was not the case? Check our new paper Nature Genetics where we break this rule via diploid clonal gametes and develop polyploid genome design nature.com/articles/s4158…

In this review, we highlight the most recent methodologies in natural product isolation, paying particular attention to the strengths and weaknesses of each approach. The article is open access, so enjoy your reading. link.springer.com/article/10.100…

Very much enjoyed reading this dialogue piece. thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-collapse-i…

I guess that leads to cell cycle arrest 🥁

Excited to share our latest work: L126 fine-tunes enzymatic activity of histone H3, a discovery made possible by viewing the nucleosome as an enzyme. We have a gain-of-function mutant – it’s hard to enhance an activity if it doesn’t already exist! sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

Happy to see our paper on viral histones and the origin of the nucleosome finally out Nature Microbiology! nature.com/articles/s4156… Many thanks to Tom Richards and Merton College, Oxford

With Ben Larman, we developed a metagenomic library of animal venoms and a method for high-throughput binder screening against human receptors using phage display. Our method identified EGFR agonists from ant venoms and a novel itch receptor binder. 📄biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

Polycystic Ovary Syndrome, known more commonly as #PCOS, affects 1 in 10 women in the UK. At Imperial, you could be studying or working alongside someone managing the symptoms of this hormonal disorder. Many women living with PCOS may go undiagnosed for years. From irregular

Gene Myers just released super fast whole genome aligner github.com/thegenemyers/F…. He and Chenxi Zhou and I have lots of ideas for downstream use.

Happy to share a chapter of my PhD thesis🐣! We review the diversity of the cell envelope in Terrabacteria which tell us a lot about outer membrane biogenesis and the diderm-to-monoderm transition. Thanks to my co-authors Najwa Taib Christophe Beloin Simonetta Gribaldo nature.com/articles/s4157…

Out in Cell Host & Microbe: Conservation of antiviral systems across domains of life reveals immune genes in humans. Using phylogenomics, we traced antiphage systems in eukaryotes, predicted human homologs and validated their immune function in human cells! cell.com/cell-host-micr…

The MIMIC Lab is recruiting its first Postdoc! Come and kickstart key bioinformatics projects of the lab on protein based Molecular Mimicry. Please get in touch / circulate ! Mixed wet / dry lab candidates are encouraged to apply. Details: jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/48080/