Kazuhiro Maeshima

Brains of ‘super agers’ are still strong producers of new neurons Nature - Older people with exceptional memory have a surprisingly high number of young neurons, study finds.

Older people with exceptional memory have a surprisingly high number of young neurons

go.nature.com/4cm8VYB

Honored to deliver the 2025/2026 Paul Doty Lecture @harvardmcb.bsky.social
Excited to share our single-nucleosome view of chromatin behavior. #chromatin

Fascinating cryo-ET study! 🔬🧬
We can now trace strings of nucleosomes directly in cells.
Congratulations to the @eltsovmikhail.bsky.social‬ team! 🎉

My student Aoi Otsuka ’s PhD work is now officially published @csf-jscb.bsky.social! 🔬 Single-nucleosome imaging uncovers biphasic local chromatin dynamics in an oncogene-inducible human carcinogenesis model (1–3 d: same, 5–7 d: ↑, back by week 4). Congrats! www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/csf/...

Dynamic Organization of Chromatin Domains Revealed by Super-Resolution Live-Cell Imaging How a genome is organized and behaves in live cells remains unclear. Nozaki et al. visualized little bunches of chromatin, “chromatin domains,” and their dynamic behavior in live mammalian cells. The ...

@tadasu443.bsky.social was a PhD student @nigidenken.bsky.social (2012–2017). Our papers together 🧬✨:
www.cell.com/molecular-ce...
www.science.org/doi/full/10....

Thank you for your kind words. Please visit us next time.

Happy New Year! 🎍

Today’s view of Mt. Fuji over Mishima City — @nigidenken.bsky.social is on the right.

Wishing you all a wonderful year!

We’re recruiting PhD students. If you’re interested in chromosome biology or imaging, please apply to the MCB or Plant Biology graduate programs at UMass (deadline is soon, 12/1). DM me for projects or questions.
www.umass.edu/molecular-ce...
www.umass.edu/plant-biolog...

So proud of my former PhD student ‪@tadasu443.bsky.social‬ for starting his own lab at @umassamherst.bsky.social ! Wishing him all the best in this exciting new chapter. Looking forward to his future discoveries! 🎉🧬

We deeply appreciate our collaborators 🙏: @katsuminami.bsky.social and Tamura-san @nigidenken.bsky.social; Kiyono-sensei @NCCRI @Sasaki Institute; Watanabe-san and Takeshita-sansei @NCCRI
doi.org/10.1247/csf....

My PhD students Aoi Otsuka @masaashimazoe.bsky.social et al. published @csf-jscb.bsky.social 🎉 Single-nucleosome imaging in an oncogene-inducible human carcinogenesis model shows biphasic chromatin dynamics (1–3 d same; 5–7 d ↑; back by week 4). Congrats! 👉
doi.org/10.1247/csf....

Our Science paper is out!

Huge congratulations to @huabin-zhou.bsky.social, Mike Rosen, and the brilliant @janhuemar.bsky.social @juliamaristany.bsky.social and @kieran-russell.bsky.social from our group

News: bit.ly/4avnkAr and bit.ly/3XBGVHS

Great perspective by @vram142.bsky.social +K Zhang

Excited to share our latest fully in-house paper! 🎉
We show how cohesin integrates loop extrusion with sister tethering to guide the homology search during DNA repair.

Huge congratulations to all authors, and to @fedeteloni.bsky.social for leading this work 👏
We’re excited to see his next steps!

Regulated TRESLIN-MTBP loading governs initiation zones and replication timing in human DNA replication - Nature Communications DNA replication in the human genome occurs preferentially at initiation zones (IZs). Here, the authors identify TRESLIN-MTBP as a limiting factor for replication initiation whose loading onto DNA-boun...

Exciting paper @natcomms.nature.com from Kanemaki lab @nigidenken.bsky.social　Congratulations 👏🎉
nature.com/articles/s41...
Using a ligase-depletion OK-seq approach, they map DNA replication initiation zones genome-wide in human cells and identify TRESLIN–MTBP as a key limiting firing factor.

FEBS Press The budding yeast Rad27 is a structure-specific endonuclease. Here, the authors reveal that Rad27 is crucial for maintaining the stability of the ribosomal RNA gene (rDNA) region. Rad27 deficiency le....

Our recent paper offers insights into unligated Okazaki fragment by the absence of Rad27/FEN-1 leading to severe rDNA copy number changes.

doi.org/10.1002/1873...

The histone chaperone CAF-1 prevents homologous recombination-mediated instability of the budding yeast ribosomal DNA during replication-coupled DNA double-strand break repair Abstract. DNA replication-coupled chromatin assembly is crucial to maintain genome integrity. Here, we demonstrate that the absence of the budding yeast hi

The paper from our lab came out on how the histone chaperone CAF-1 prevents the formation of circular rDNA!
doi.org/10.1093/nar/...

A correlative quantitative phase contrast and fluorescence super-resolution microscope for imaging molecules in their cellular context Fluorescence microscopy has been widely used to reveal the spatial distribution of specifically labeled molecules, but it is blind to cellular context. Quantitative phase contrast microscopy (QPC) pro...

Super-resolution single-molecule fluorescence combined with quantitative phase contrast. This powerful combo enables ~0.05 nm optical path difference detection, < 20 nm resolution, and continuous live-cell imaging with digital staining
doi.org/10.1101/2025...
#Microscopy #CellBiology #OI-DIC #SMLM

3rd histone paper on my feed today!

Thanks. Yes, we agree to your point.

Thanks @zeinabrekad.bsky.social for your kind words. We totally agree to your point, and indeed we are working on H1:
bsky.app/profile/kazu...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Thanks! 😃

Condensed chromatin domain structure and cohesin-constrained mobility assure independent transcription regulation for each domain!
Also consistent with many previous studies.
(4/n)

Euchromatin is mostly condensed⁉️

With @shiori-iida.bsky.social , We revealed the detailed structure of euchromatin using super-resolution imaging.

Cohesin regulates the function of euchromatin via chromatin dynamics!
(1/n)

One more movie!
Using the RL algorithm (from pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...),
@masaashimazoe.bsky.social analyzed our nucleosome tracking data and classified them by their mobility.
Hotter color = faster motion (Slow🔵→ 🟢 → 🟡 → 🟠 Fast)

Our new preprint is out!
We combined single-nucleosome imaging and 3D-SIM to reveal:
🔹 Euchromatin forms condensed domains, not open fibers
🔹Cohesin loss increases nucleosome mobility without decompaction
🔹Cohesin prevents neighboring domain mixing

Full story & movies👇

Thank you so much!

Thank you for the nice list. Could you add me to the list?

🧩 Also highly relevant: a modeling study from Bin Zhang group predicts condensed euchromatin domains with active protrusions. Perfectly complementary to our findings! 3
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Is euchromatin really open in the cell? Growing evidence has demonstrated that strings of nucleosomes, consisting of DNA wrapped around core histones [1], are rather irregularly and dynamically folded as chromatin in the cell (Figure 1A,B) ...

We thank all the coauthors: @katsuminami.bsky.social‬, Tamura-san, Ashwin-san, Higashi-san, Nishiyama-san, Kanemaki-san, Sasai-san @lschermelleh.bsky.social‬, Toyoda-san. 🙏Special thanks to @healthcare.nikon.com‬ for 3D-SIM support. Also see our related paper‪@TICB bit.ly/4fW4cfL 2

Is euchromatin really “open”? Our new study @bioRxiv suggests otherwise. Using super-resolution imaging @shiori-iida.bsky.social‬ @masaashimazoe.bsky.social reveals: Euchromatin forms condensed domains in live cells. Cohesin constrains them and prevents domain mixing.
www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...