Smolka Lab

New biosensor technology maps enzyme mystery inside cells | Cornell Chronicle Cornell researchers have developed a powerful new biosensor that reveals, in unprecedented detail, how and where kinases – enzymes that control nearly all cellular processes – turn on and off inside l...

And a nice Cornell Chronicle article about it: New biosensor technology maps enzyme mystery inside cells
news.cornell.edu/stories/2025...

Great job by graduate student Will Comstock @wjcomstock.bsky.social and co-authors

Check out our new biosensor technology to study DDR kinase signaling: ProKAS.

We combine:
-proteomics
-engineered peptide sensors
-a new concept of amino acid barcodes

ProKAS tracks kinase signaling with spatial resolution and produces highly quantitative data.

Just published today: rdcu.be/ePNo0

Congrats Arnab!

A significant conceptual advance in the field of DNA recombination… great work by the labs of @brookscrickard1.bsky.social
and Michelle Wang

Honored to receive an Outstanding Poster Award at the Protein Science Symposium! Huge thanks to the @weillinstitute.bsky.social and @weillcornell.bsky.social for an amazing event—and of course, big shoutout to the @smolka-lab.bsky.social for making the poster results possible!

3D rendering of a Ankyrin R adaptor protein

We are counting down the days to our Protein Science Symposium on June 10-12! Thrilled to be hosting our colleagues from WCM @weillcornell.bsky.social as well as keynote speakers Dr. Christopher Lima @christopherdlima.bsky.social and Dr. ‪Jin Zhang @jinzhanglab.bsky.social

An ATM-PPM1D Circuit Controls the Processing and Restart of DNA Replication Forks In response to DNA replication stress, DNA damage signaling kinases inhibit origin firing and promote the remodeling and stabilization of replication forks, leading to a systemic reduction in DNA synt...

New preprint from the lab:

ATM controls fork processing and restart, and the PPM1D phosphatase is needed to properly balance this action of ATM.

Congratulations to @yitingcao.bsky.social @yingzhengwang.bsky.social and Jumana Badar.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Double award to the fantastic graduate student @mateuszwagner.bsky.social …

Research at Risk: Life-saving heart pumps for babies YouTube video by Cornell University

Devasting that clinical trial for Jim's PediaFlow baby heart pump is on hold due the stop on all DOD funding at Cornell.

Funded by DOD CDMRP, Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs, yet White House stopped Congress funds

#ResearchSavesLives #Standup4Science
youtu.be/a7aUBvBcPV4

🚨🧪 Are you a researcher affected by the recent cancellation of federal grants and contracts at Columbia University?

I'm working on a story for @Nature.com. If you want to chat, your identity will be kept private.

Signal: humbertobasilio.24
Email: humberto.basilio@us.nature.com

Repost please!

Our preprint is now published www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Applications are open for the Weill Institute Emerging Scholars Symposium @ Cornell! Senior PhD students and, now, postdocs interested in networking & presenting their work in cell & molecular biology should apply by April 14, 2025. Please repost! wicmb.cornell.edu/emerging-sch...

Senior graduate students and postdocs, here is a great opportunity to network, showcase your science and get to know Cornell and beautiful Ithaca! Please repost.

My first-author paper on uncovering a non-canonical Tel1 motif using phosphoproteomics has been published in JBC! Amazing to work with @rainshj.bsky.social using both untargeted and targeted mass spectrometry. Check it out:
doi.org/10.1016/j.jb...

Congrats, that is a big deal!

Very interesting work by the @zhalab.bsky.social showing why Ku is essential in human cells

Who did you contact? Please forward me the contact info, thanks!

Great work by graduate students Will Comstock (@wjcomstock.bsky.social) and Shrijan Bhattarai (@rainshj.bsky.social)

Profiling Tel1 Signaling Reveals a Non-Canonical Motif Targeting DNA Repair and Telomere Control Machineries The stability of the genome relies on Phosphatidyl Inositol 3-Kinase-related Kinases (PIKKs) that sense DNA damage and trigger elaborate downstream si…

In this new paper we find that Tel1 kinase (yeast ATM) targets D/E-S/T motifs… more prevalent than S/T-Q!

Mec1 (yeast ATR) can’t target D/E-S/T, so we think D/E-S/T targeting allows Tel1 functional specialization.

A mutation in Tel1 makes it only target S/T-Q… and cells become CPT sensitive.

Happy to share a new work from the lab on how DNA damage checkpoint can be down-regulated. rdcu.be/d5o3E. Congrats to all authors at @mskcancercenter.bsky.social and our Weill BCMB student @tzippora.bsky.social. gradschool.weill.cornell.edu/bcmb-allied-...

We developed a proteomic kinase activity sensor platform (ProKAS) for the analysis of kinase signaling using mass spectrometry. ProKAS is based on a tandem array of peptide sensors with amino acid barcodes that allow multiplexed analysis for spatial, kinetic, and screening applications.

Excited to share our preprint reporting a completely new approach to study kinase signaling: ProKAS.

ProKAS is based on a tandem array of peptide sensors with barcodes for multiplexed, spatial and kinetic applications.

We applied it to DDR kinases. Please share.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Please add us

Exploiting cell cycle-dependent dephosphorylation for mitosis-specific protein recruitment Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology - In this Tools of the Trade article, Cao (Baskin lab) discusses the development of MARS, which enables mitosis-specific recruitment of enzymes to the plasma...

Great “tools of the trade” piece by Xiaofu Cao in Nat Rev Mol Cell Biol about her recent paper exploiting cell cycle-dependent phosphorylation to make a conditional protein relocalization tool!

ToT piece: rdcu.be/d0Utp
Original paper (@naturecellbiology.bsky.social): www.nature.com/articles/s41...