Hiro Ebina / 蛯名裕久

Discrete Subdomains Establish Epigenetic Diversity in Subtelomeric Heterochromatin Subtelomeres are imperfect repeats adjacent to telomeres that are repressed by heterochromatin. Although essential for genome integrity, their repetitive nature has thwarted dissection of local hetero...

This one feels special: our latest work on subtelomeric heterochromatin is now on www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1....
This story was driven by the virtuoso PhD work of Agnisrota Mazumder @agnisrota.bsky.social, co-mentored with @al-sadylab.bsky.social, and grew out of our #MSCA Cell2Cell network.

Sex or growth? Life must continually balance these strategies. We forced yeast to choose and captured the trade-off in real time. Evolution rewired existing regulators and fixed them through genetic assimilation, creating specialists for sex at the cost of growth. https://www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/short/2025.09.26.678705v1 Thrilled to finally share this seven-year story—a journey that began during my postdoc in Sophie’s lab and continued for four more years as I built my own lab in Shenzhen.

Sex or growth? Life must continually balance these strategies. We forced yeast to choose and captured the trade-off in real time. Evolution rewired existing regulators and fixed them through genetic assimilation, creating specialists for sex at the cost of growth.
www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...

Schematic of MAPK signalling in fission yeast, budding yeast and Metazoa. No MAPK scaffold was known for ERK-like MAPK in fission yeast, as opposed to budding yeast Ste5 and metazoan KSR1/2.

Mammalian cells have KSR, budding yeast has Ste5… and fission yeast has Sms1 as the MAPK scaffold for sexual reproduction!

Very excited to share my postdoc work where we discover that the hemi-arrestin Sms1 binds all components of the MAPK cascade, including ERK-like Spk1

doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Repeated losses of self-fertility shaped heterozygosity and polyploidy in yeast evolution Evolutionary transitions in mating strategy have profound consequences for genetic variation and adaptation. In Saccharomyces cerevisiae, mating-type switching is a central feature of the life cycle t...

New preprint from the lab: we show that the ability to switch mating type was lost at least 13 times independently in the evolution of S. cerevisiae. At least 27% of isolates are heterothallic with a strong association with polyploidy and heterozygosity
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

コウイカは「手話」で話す？　触手のダンスでコミュニケーション（無料記事）
www.nikkei.com/article/DGXZQO...

触手をダンスのように振る動きが4パターンあることがわかりました。

視覚的にコミュニケーションしている可能性があります。

コウイカが様々な状況でサインを示す様子を録画し別のコウイカに見せたところ、サインを返したといいます。

Constraints on chromosome evolution revealed by the 229 chromosome pairs of the Atlas blue butterfly The genome of the Atlas blue butterfly contains ten times more chromosomes than most butterflies, and more than any other known diploid animal. Wright et al. show that this extraordinary karyotype is ...

How many chromosomes can an animal have?

In our paper out now in @currentbiology.bsky.social we show that the Atlas blue butterfly has 229 chromosome pairs- the highest in diploid Metazoa! These arose by rapid autosome fragmentation while sex chromosomes stayed intact.
www.cell.com/current-biol...

An electrostatic repulsion model of centromere organisation During cell division, chromosomes reorganise into compact bodies in which centromeres localise precisely at the chromatin surface to enable kinetochore-microtubule interactions essential for genome se...

1/ New preprint alert!
In collaboration between the Rosen, Redding, Collepardo-Guevara & Gerlich labs, we uncover a surprising principle of chromosome organisation: electrostatic repulsion positions centromeres at the chromosome surface during mitosis.
🔗 doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Exciting to see our protein binder design pipeline BindCraft published in its final form in @Nature ! This has been an amazing collaborative effort with Lennart, Christian, @sokrypton.org, Bruno and many other amazing lab members and collaborators.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Aspergillus fumigatus dsRNA virus promotes fungal fitness and pathogenicity in the mammalian host - Nature Microbiology A mycovirus infecting the pathogenic fungus Aspergillus fumigatus enhances its stress tolerance and virulence in mice.

🚨 Fungi + viruses + mammalian lungs? Buckle up! Our new paper in
@natmicrobiol.nature.com
uncovers the story of a deadly fungus and its gnarly viral hitchhiker — and how this duo may change how we diagnose & treat fungal disease 🍄🫁🚨 doi.org/10.1038/s415... ⬇️

Faculty Position in Life Science Engineering The School of Life Sciences at EPFL invites applications for a faculty position in life science engineering. Appointments will be at Tenure Track Assistant Professor or at Associate Professor level. W...

Outstanding Faculty opportunity in the broad area of 'life sciences engineering' @EPFL School of Life Sciences, open to both junior and senior researchers. We may prefer metabolism-centric applications but remain open to outstanding applications across domains:
www.epfl.ch/about/workin...

Hello everyone, I will give a talk at SSM 2025 in Interlaken, Switzerland (August 27th, Day 1, Session 8) with the title "Discrimination of exogenous DNA by mitotic heterochromatin in fission yeast." I'm looking forward to seeing many people in the room!

#SSM2025

www.meeting-com.ch/en/conferenc...

www.nature.com/articles/s41... Intracellular pathogen effector reprograms host gene expression by inhibiting mRNA decay | Nature Communications

NuMA promotes constitutive heterochromatin compaction by stabilizing linker histone H1 on chromatin Heterochromatin has been widely recognized to exert pivotal functions of silencing specific genes and maintenance of genome stability. However, the mechanisms underlying heterochromatin formation and ...

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... NuMA promotes constitutive heterochromatin compaction by stabilizing linker histone H1 on chromatin | bioRxiv

We are looking for new colleagues to come join us in Galway as group leaders (Junior and Senior). The Centre for Chromosome Biology is a great place and it is a good time to join. Please reach out if you want to chat about the opportunity!
www.nature.com/naturecareer...

We found a new asymmetry in the large-scale chromosome structure: sister chromatids are systematically shifted by hundreds of kb in the 5′→3′ direction of their inherited strands! The work was led by Flavia Corsi, in close collaboration with the Daniel Gerlich lab.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
1/

HP1 loses its chromatin clustering and phase separation function across evolution - Nature Communications Here, the authors compare HP1 from fission yeast, fly and mouse, and find that the propensity of HP1 to phase-separate and to cluster heterochromatin decrease in this order, suggesting an evolutionary...

www.nature.com/articles/s41... HP1 loses its chromatin clustering and phase separation function across evolution | Nature Communications

Yeast 2025 - PremC

Hello everyone, I will give a talk at ICYGM32/Yeast 2025 in Paris (July 24th, Day 4, Workshop 18) with the title "Discrimination of exogenous DNA by mitotic heterochromatin in fission yeast." I'm looking forward to seeing many people in the room!

#ICYGM32
#yeast2025
#vivapombe

Transposable elements hitchhike on Starships across fungal genomes Horizontal transfer (HT) of transposable elements (TEs) is a widespread phenomenon in eukaryotes and is often associated with bursts of TE activity. This process profoundly influences genome evolution...

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

RNA polymerase III transcription-associated polyadenylation promotes the accumulation of noncoding retrotransposons during infection The accumulation of RNA Polymerase III (Pol III) transcribed short interspersed nuclear element (SINE) retrotransposon RNA is a hallmark of various cellular stressors, including DNA virus infection. H...

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

Exploring the relationship of transposable elements and ageing: causes and consequences url:https://academic.oup.com/gbe/article/doi/10.1093/gbe/evaf088/8133184

Safeguarding spermatogenesis from retrotransposon insertions by forming ecDNA Retrotransposon mobilization in germline cells enables the rewriting of genetic information to drive genome innovation, species evolution, and adaptation through the generation of de novo mutations. H...

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

Molecular basis for the regulation of retroviral nucleosomal integration by chromatin compaction Cellular chromatin represents the first nonreversible contact point between the genomes of incoming infectious agents, such as integrative viruses, and their hosts. The integration of retroviral genom...

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

Kinetochore mutations and histone phosphorylation pattern changes preceded holo- and macro-monocentromere evolution Centromeres are essential for kinetochore assembly and spindle attachment. While chromosomes of most species are monocentric with a single centromere, a minority exhibit holocentricity, with a centrom...

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

Native nucleosomes intrinsically encode genome organization principles - Nature A technique called condense-seq has been developed to measure nucleosome condensability and used to show that mononucleosomes contain sufficient information to condense into large-scale compartments w...

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Transposable elements as instructors of the immune system - Nature Reviews Immunology In this Perspective, Feuerer and colleagues consider how transposable elements (TEs) — which are mobile nucleic acid sequences in the genome — can impact diverse immune responses. For instance, transc...

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Epigenetic motifs distinguishing endogenous from exogenous retroviral integrants Retroviruses are subject to epigenetic regulation by the host genome after integrating, similar to vertebrate genes. However, their patterns of integration, and therefore their likely epigenetic regul...

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

Ancient co-option of LTR retrotransposons as yeast centromeres The evolutionary origins of the genetic point centromere in the brewer’s yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, a member of the order Saccharomycetales, are still unknown. Competing hypotheses suggest that t...

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

DNA binding and mitotic phosphorylation protect polyglutamine proteins from assembly formation DNA binding and phosphorylation protect FOXP2, a transcription factor with the longest polyQ track in the proteome, from aggregation during interphase and mitosis. Harnessing these native solubility-p...

www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Cryptic infection of a giant virus in a unicellular green alga Latency is a common strategy in a wide range of viral lineages, but its prevalence in giant viruses remains unknown. Here we describe a 617 kbp integrated giant viral element in the model green alga C...

Cryptic infection of a giant virus in a unicellular green alga | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...