Lucas Farnung

Calling all rising undergrad juniors & seniors: 9 weeks, mentorship from top scientists, up to $15K stipend to support "the most incredible" summer research experience. Want to learn more? Register for our live, #CechFellows webinar 10/26, 4pm ET! ➡️ bit.ly/4zKhIM8 | Program page: bit.ly/4dRWYJZ 🧪

Excited to share PostChicago, our lab's new R/Bioconductor package for the analysis of Capture-(Hi)C data downstream of loop calling. We present two of its applications: Meta-profiling of interactions and detection of crosslinking artefacts: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

This is an attack on all of science. www.cbsnews.com/news/russia-...

Some of the AI slop is impressive. Check out the video. My Claude prompt: "Make a dynamic 15-second motion graphics video that highlights my research (farnunglab.com) with incredible motion design. It's the showreel for my lab. Go all out."

Von der Leyen: "We do not need to be the ones who develop the frontier technology to be the ones who draw the greatest value from it." Read this twice! Europe's ambitions in a nutshell. Daunting.

Excited to share our new preprint on in situ chromatin structure of the inactive X chromosome in differentiated female mouse embryonic stem cells. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 🧵1/8

Happy to share our new preprint on the structure of the human mitochondrial RNA degradosome, a central player in organellar RNA metabolism! Work led by graduate student @paulafprado.bsky.social in our group. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 🧵 1/9

⚡Preprint alert⚡ So proud of @amohamed98.bsky.social! Abdallah determined the cryo-EM structure of BRD4 bound to the kinase P-TEFb, defining the molecular basis of this key transcription interaction — and revealing that BRD4 and AFF4 binding are mutually exclusive to P-TEFb. Lots more inside 👇

Congratulations to @harvardcellbio.bsky.social faculty member Corey Allard, who has been named a 2026 Vallee Scholar! Well deserved. @valleefoundation.bsky.social

🚀 Next week we will be at the 2026 New England #Cryo-EM Symposium at MIT, showcasing recent #CryoSPARC developments. If you're attending, we'd love to connect! cryoem.mit.edu/2026-ne-cryo...

Our new study shows a CHD-family remodeler can nucleate and spread H3K9 methylation de novo, inverting the canonical hierarchy between writers and remodelers. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Work from Tao Fu in @harperlabhms.bsky.social reports DNAJC13 structure, revealing both a dimeric architecture & binding of InsP6 to dual PH domains. Both features promote recycling endosome functions such as melanin production @asapresearch.parkinsonsroadmap.org www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Your cryo-EM work deserves to be seen 🔬 Submit your poster or talk abstract for the annual New England cryo-EM symposium by July 15th. The meeting will be held September 8th at MIT. This is the place to be if you are doing structural biology in the Northeast! Register: cryoem.mit.edu/2026-ne-cryo...

How has #evolution shaped Transcription Elongation Factors, important for #GeneExpression? This study by Alex Francette, Karen Arndt &co traces ten core factors to the last eukaryotic common ancestor, and shows they display both conserved and lineage-specific domains. 🧪#AcademicSky plos.io/4eaCUTJ

(1/n) Very excited to share tri-lab collab (Mirny & Zechner) led by Harvey, Henrik & Jack: Q: How do enhancers & promoters interact in space (contact vs. action-at-a-distance) and time (stable vs. transient)? A: Transient E-P contact (~25-42 nm lasting ~10-20 sec): www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Very important paper from @andersshansen.bsky.social lab!

“…….integrating imaging, 3D genomics, and gene expression data across cell lines, we estimate that transcriptional activation is mediated by approximately 25-42 nanometer contacts on the seconds timescale. Our results support a transient contact mechanism for E-P-mediated gene activation.”

Herzliche Grüße aus Houston! #GERCUW

🚨 New preprint: GATO-seq did it again! ELOF1 is the missing promoter-proximal factor that confers RNA Pol II resistance to TFIIF. Including ELOF1, DSIF, and NELF in GATO-seq reactions recapitulates promoter-proximal pausing in vitro at physiological conditions for the 1st time. tinyurl.com/ELOF1

⚡New preprint from the lab⚡: A key early checkpoint in gene expression is promoter proximal pausing of RNA polymerase II. For over 20 years, we as field have not been able to recreate pausing under realistic cellular conditions. @robertovn.bsky.social shows that ELOF1 is the missing piece.

📣 Preprint alert! We developed a method to analyze concurrent interactions between multiple chromatin regions at single alleles at sub-nucleosome resolution (multi-way Micro-Capture-C, mwMCC) & used this to study structural synergy within super-enhancers. 1/14 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

One, perhaps two, of our postdocs are moving on to faculty positions this year (more news soon!). While they're truly irreplaceable, it does mean that we have openings for new members to join our team studying #cilia. If interested, please apply: academicpositions.harvard.edu/postings/15526

Out today - structure of the human HIRA histone chaperone complex bound to nucleosomes. Ever wondered how nucleosomes are assembled in the wake of transcription? It takes a 'hulk of a protein complex'. Work by the amazing Wei Tian weetian558.bsky.social. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 🧵

Congratulations to Della Syau and the Farnung Lab @lucas.farnunglab.com on this outstanding work!

⭐ #NARBreakthrough! ⭐ New #cryo-EM study reveals how #transcription factor IWS1 promotes #RNApolII #elongation. Its C-terminus contains #modularmotifs that bind elongation components, stabilizing the complex. IWS1 also competes with #RECQL5 for Pol II binding. 📖 Read here: doi.org/10.1093/nar/...

Open q to the #cryoem crowd - what’s your fav NN/ML picker for hard SPA targets? We use topaz with good results, but there have been a bazillion new pickers over the last years… It is often hard to tell from the paper on each picker, as the training data matters a lot for topaz at least..

The Farnung Lab is looking for postdoctoral researchers interested in understanding mechanisms at the intersection of chromatin, transcription, and replication. Find out more here: www.farnunglab.com

BenchOS.ai just received an update. Check out the feature section to see what you ca do with BenchOS.

#RIP Pierre Chambon (1931-2026) via @alainberetz.bsky.social one of the last giants in biology: PARP, nuclear receptors, RNA Pol II, nucleosome, promoters, split genes

🚀 Soft-launching BenchOS today. An agentic OS for molecular & structural biology labs, combining ELN, biologics databases, equipment booking, cryo-EM tracking, cloning tools, and more. Powered by state-of-the-art LLMs to help you plan and run experiments faster. Learn more: BenchOS.ai

(1/n) Super excited to share that our preprint is out today in @natsmb.nature.com with a new name "Integrated MINFLUX tracking reveals two distinct chromatin dynamics classes across cell types" and more than 2x more data: www.nature.com/articles/s41... See also MIT News news.mit.edu/2026/how-chr...

CONGRATULATIONS!! to our own Steve Liberles for his election to the National Academy of Sciences for his work on vagus nerve sensory perception and gut-brain communication. @hhmi-science.bsky.social www.nasonline.org/news/2026-na...

www.nasonline.org/news/2026-na...

Hibernation is a biological superpower that can extend lifespan. What if we could harness its benefits? #FreemanHrabowski Scholar Siniša Hrvatin has ID'd the neural trigger that induces key features of the state, which could transform how we treat disease, injury, & aging: bit.ly/41Uzw8F.

@hhmi-science.bsky.social's #FreemanHrabowski Scholars Program offers early career faculty up to $10M over 10 yrs, plus salary & benefits Stable, sustained support can transform your career: Senior Postdoc? This year's competition has a program for you too. Applications open 11/3! bit.ly/4vhC0LA

Finally published at long last (at least in the pre-view version). Explore the wild and woolly world of archaeal histones! Interactive archaeal histone graph incluced rdcu.be/fdFjv. Congratulations to first author Shawn Laursen

Next BenchOS update: BenchOS contains an equipment booking system. E Ink displays automatically update and show the current equipment booking status of our instruments. Check out how this looks like for our AKTA Atlanta.

Abstract deadline extended to April 20 for the FASEB #UbiqSRC, colocated with the #ProtFoldSRC, June 1-4 in Louisville! Register for one of the ~20 talk slots throughout the main meeting and pre-meeting career forum! events.faseb.org/event/Ubiqui...

BenchOS is taking shape. Today, our cryo-EM storage tracker.

1/11 In our story out today in @nature.com , we showcase the molecular mechanisms that enable Cas9 to bind and cleave negatively supercoiled ((-)SC) off-targets! 🧬🧵 🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41... #CRISPR #Cas9 #DNATopology #AFM #CryoEM #SingleMolecule #Biophysics

Glückwunsch, Bruderherz! Really outstanding work by @bartellab.bsky.social and Schulman Lab. This is how transatlantic research is done 🇺🇸🇩🇪.

The E3 ubiquitin ligase mechanism specifying target-directed microRNA degradation (TDMD) is now published! 🎉🍾 We, @bartellab.bsky.social and Schulman lab, describe how 2-RNA factors control protein degradation by recruiting an E3 ligase. @mpibiochem.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The longest-running UB/UBL conference, join @labjoazeiro.bsky.social and @sshaolab.bsky.social, for #UbiqSRC. Featuring keynotes by @idikic.bsky.social of @goetheuni.bsky.social with Jeff Kelly from @scripps.edu.bsky.social. Submit your abstract and register to join us in Louisville: buff.ly/uAY0w0M

NYT feature on their website's front page about our local C. elegans colleague Will Mair and NIH funding www.nytimes.com/2026/03/13/u...