Seamus Curran

Investigating the influence of temperature on meiotic recombination (MORGAN_J25RS) at John Innes Centre on FindAPhD.com PhD Project - Investigating the influence of temperature on meiotic recombination (MORGAN_J25RS) at John Innes Centre, listed on FindAPhD.com

Exciting opportunity for a 4-year fully funded PhD Studentship (starting Oct 2025) with the Morgan lab to study the link between temperature and meiotic crossover rate in plants!
www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

John Innes Centre/Meiosis/crop development

Nipah virus G protein with 16813 ligands (mostly waters) mapped from similar structures.

ChimeraX can run Foldseek to find similar structures, such as distantly related homologs, and analyze the results, for example, mapping all ligands onto your query structure. Here are ligands mapped onto Nipah virus G protein. www.rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimerax/dat...

Molecular determinants of condensate composition Biomolecular condensates are non-stochiometric assemblies that organize cellular matter in space and time. Despite much work, many questions remain regarding what determines the recruitment and exclus...

New review / perspective with @albertilab-tud.bsky.social on our thoughts on condensate speciality and recruitment, focusing on interplay between site specific and chemically specific interactions

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

Centromere evolution isn't a sudden switch!

Our study shows centromere transitions are a step-by-step process driven by a combination of drift and selection. Discover how the kinetochore interface shapes this gradual change in our new preprint 🥳 doi.org/10.1101/2025.01.16.633479 🧵(1/8)

🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

Cellular Function of a Biomolecular Condensate Is Determined by Its Ultrastructure Biomolecular condensates play key roles in the spatiotemporal regulation of cellular processes. Yet, the relationship between atomic features and condensate function remains poorly understood. We stud...

1/ 🚨We’re thrilled to share our latest study:

"Cellular Function of a Biomolecular Condensate Is Determined by Its Ultrastructure" 🌟

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

How do biomolecular condensates achieve their cellular roles? It comes down to their internal structure. 🧵⬇️

Nucleosome spacing can fine-tune higher order chromatin assembly [labs of Rosana Collepardo-Guevara and Michael Rosen]
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
▶️phase separation is decided by trade-off between inter- and intramolecular nucleosome stacking, favoured by 10N+5 and 10N bp linkers, respectively

The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that the holy grail here is if this can go beyond predicting ratio of folded to unfolded, to also predicting ratio of folded state A to folded states B, C, D, etc. Example from doi.org/10.1016/j.molcel.2024.04.008 w/ changes in the transporter OCT1

It was fantastic and humbling to receive a personal email from @J_A_C_S, the editor-in-chief, congratulating us on this work. Malay_Moldal and others deserve all the credit.👏

Method of the Year 2024: spatial proteomics - Nature Methods Approaches for profiling the spatial proteome in tissues are the basis of atlas-scale projects that are delivering on their promise for understanding biological complexity in health and disease.

I could not be more thrilled to announce the Nature Methods @naturemethods.bsky.social Method of the Year is Spatial Proteomics! Please see our editorial as a roadmap to the fantastic content in this special issue! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Chromatin compaction during confined cell migration induces and reshapes nuclear condensates - Nature Communications Cell migration through narrow constrictions during cancer metastasis significantly deforms the nucleus, creating mechanical stress on chromatin. Here, the authors reveal that such chromatin deformatio...

My latest Research Highlight is now online @natrevmcb.bsky.social!

The Brangwynne lab uncovers how chromatin heterogeneity influences condensate formation during #CellMigration, revealing intriguing insights into nuclear mechanics.

🔗 go.nature.com/3ZpwGH7

OG Paper: go.nature.com/3Baxpnn

Meet the CALVADOS RNA model

Ikki Yasuda, Sören von Bülow & Giulio Tesei have parameterized a simple model for disordered RNA. Despite it's simplicity (no sequence, no base pairing) we find that it captures several phenomena that depend on the charge, stickiness and polymer properties of RNA 🧬🧶🧪

Dynamic fibrillar assembly of αB-crystallin induced by perturbation of the conserved NT-IXI motif resolved by cryo-EM - Nature Communications Here the authors show that mutating αB-crystallin’s NT-IXI motif transforms polydispersed oligomers into ordered fibrils, enabling cryo-EM to provide insights into the principles of high-order assembl...

Pleased to share the peer-reviewed version of our latest work on resolving the complexities of a-crystallins/sHSP's: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A timely release of this story... as it is a great setup to the next one, coming soon!!

Evolution and function of chromatin domains across the tree of life - Nature Structural & Molecular Biology Szalay et al. discuss cross-kingdom similarities and differences in 3D chromatin folding in relation to gene regulation, including in bacteria, archaea, mammals and plants. This comparison reveals cer...

🔺🔺🔺RED TRIANGLE ALERT 🔺🔺🔺
Ever wonder how #TADs compare across the tree of life?Look no further & read our Review!!!

Find out what genes & 3D chromatin can & can't do in Bacteria! Archeae! Yeast! Plants! Animals!

SMCs & RNA-Pol are the only thing they have in common
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

This is pretty impressive--closing the gap between superresolution microscopy and structural biology is one of the Holy Grails and this is a big step in that direction--check out the nuclear pore imaging

Molecular basis of mRNA delivery to the bacterial ribosome Protein synthesis begins with the formation of a ribosome-messenger RNA (mRNA) complex. In bacteria, the small ribosomal subunit (30S) is recruited to many mRNAs through base pairing with the Shine-Da...

This week in @science.org Molecular basis of #mRNA delivery to the bacterial #ribosome www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

The Dynamic Lives of Intrinsically Disordered Proteins Shapeshifting proteins challenge a long-standing maxim in biology.

Very nice article by Danielle Gerhard in The Scientist on

“The Dynamic Lives of Intrinsically Disordered Proteins”

with quotes from Gabi Heller, @alexholehouse.bsky.social and myself about our shared love of and fascination with these proteins

www.the-scientist.com/the-dynamic-...

Experimental results showing DNA break formation by purified SPO11 protein. Above is an image of an electrophoresis gel, below is a graph showing quantification of the DNA cleaving activity

Hi Bluesky. For my first post, I'd like to advertise the latest preprint from my lab, describing at long last our reconstitution of SPO11-dependent double-strand break formation from purified recombinant proteins. Outstanding work from PhD student Zhi (Zack) Zheng.

Excited to share our new study with the Müller and @SchullerJm labs, online @nature: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04971-z

This is T. kivui, an anaerobic bacterium. It uses hydrogen energy to store #CO2. How does it do it? #CryoET revealed membrane-anchored bundles of...