Opportunities! Four PhD positions focusing on "Synthetic cells (SynCells) as a smart-responsive healthcare technology"
at Imperial College London
09.03.2026 08:57
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Opportunities! Four PhD positions focusing on "Synthetic cells (SynCells) as a smart-responsive healthcare technology"
at Imperial College London
Do you work on DNA or RNA protein complexes? 🧬
Come to Machines on Genes this June in Crete! ☀️
Super early discount is ending this Sunday so register now! 😃
Interesting point. I suppose a precondition for the rule to work is that there is sufficient chemical “orthogonality” to make different phases coexist, which I doubt applies to a cell.
Please elaborate if possible
My answer:
xtallization in vitro can't predict xtallization in cells as:
1) The crystallising object is different in cells (binding, PTMs, etc.)
2) Cytosol and crystallisation buffer are distinct solvents
For precisely the same reasons, LLPS in this assay does not predict LLPS in vivo
😂 ok but at least to dismiss the threat of a new alternative religion like the liquid-solid phase transition predicted by in vitro crystallization some arguments are required!
I am curious to see if answers come up
Beautiful indeed! (But not ours though!)
If I claimed this liquid-to-solid phase transition assay on a pure protein in vitro predicts the same transition to happen in cells, what counterarguments would you raise?
Would the same counterarguments apply to a liquid-to-liquid phase transition assay on the same pure protein in vitro?
@joann-trejo.bsky.social, @marymunson4.bsky.social and I have a commentary in @natcellbio.nature.com on recent attacks on DEI in biomedical research: "If scientific research, especially biomedical research, is meant to serve everyone, then it requires that everyone has an opportunity to participate"
Our paper is now out in Nature:
“Ancient co-option of LTR retrotransposons as yeast centromeres”
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
A short thread on how retrotransposons helped give rise to yeast point centromeres.
1/14
Re-gain of function (synthetic viability from mixing perturbations) may result from removing two different parts of a sequence. Very hard to make conclusions on "chemistry" without a detailed mechanism in my view.
Thank you for these comments. The IDRs of Abf1 works next to DNA-binding domains. Their local concentration is very high. Motifs may be very short, and the IDR may have coexisting activation and repressive functions that may lead to unexpected phenotypes (including dominant effects).
Something of general value, however:
Homotypic phase separation of IDRs is so implausible that it can only be a fantasy.
This fantasy has distracted both the science community and the publication system from supporting real progress in molecular biology
3/ The reason? There is no intrinsic sequence grammar independent of specific function and binding partners! Many different mechanistic models may explain the data.
Why does it matters? Because the hardest part of the job is to unravel the molecular mechanism that explains the observations...
2/ I tend to disagree. The study addresses correlations between the sequence variants of IDR2 of Abf1 and viability.
In my view, without a detailed mechanistic model, mutations cannot be understood and claimed to support a general principle...
1/ This is a nice and thorough study that "does not strongly support a homotypic phase-separation-based model" and supports sequence and "chemically specific interactions" for IDRs.
On the conceptual level, the title suggests general mechanistic conclusions can be inferred...
We're launching a research lab at SMART. Shenzhen Medical Academy for Research and Translation is a newly established institute with long-term funding mechanisms for internal and external investigators. At full capacity SMART aims to support up to 400 labs.
www.scmp.com/news/china/s...
The second paper is related to
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
and
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
and is accompanied by this nice commentary
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
by Monica Gobran and @plenart.bsky.social and
Two new papers from the lab published in The EMBO Journal!
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
By Kai Walstein, @louisa-hill.bsky.social and others – On role of M18BP1 in CENP-A loading
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
By Arianna Esposito Verza and others – On mechanism of activation of PLK1
See also the great News&Views comment by Monica Gobran and @plenart.bsky.social - highlighting all three papers!
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Additional complementary evidence
by Arianna Esposito Verza, @andrea-musacchio.bsky.social et al
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
and by Anais Pillan, Lionel Pintard @ccdlab.bsky.social et al
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
in our sister journal @embojournal.org
Arianna Esposito Verza, @andrea-musacchio.bsky.social et al describe the long-sought-after mechanism of Bora dependency of PLK1 activation by Aurora A kinase during mitotic entry
Another #RefereedPreprint ℅ @reviewcommons.org
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
AlphaFold protein interaction modeling tutorial and workshop thenode.biologists.com/https-www-yo...
Daziofrenici
Alessandro Costa @costalaboratory.bsky.social, Dana Branzei and myself are co-organising the 2026 Machines on Genes meeting in beautiful Crete as the 94th Harden Conference hosted by @biochemsoc.bsky.social
Register now - lots of opportunities for selected talks www.eventsforce.net/biochemsoc/f...
Se Berlusconi appartiene alla categoria “liberali italiani”…
He is neither an aide nor a diplomat, yet Giuliano da Empoli's books have in recent years become some of the most fashionable reading for those in Europe’s halls of power.
🔗 politi.co/4pREopi
(This story was first published in September.)
The discovery of the first kinetochore proteins (CENP-A, CENP-B, CENP-C) was reported by Bill Earnshaw and Naomi Rothfield in 1985 in Chromosoma. Forty years later, Chromosoma/Chromosome Research has published a special issue (most articles are open access)
link.springer.com/collections/...