Rangan Lab

New preprint in collab with Capelson & Schindler labs): Nuclear pore complexes are developmentally removed and rebuilt during oocyte specification. Blocking turnover prevents gene silencing and meiotic entry. Nuclear architecture renewal is required for cell fate. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Our Dept. of Genetics and Developmental Biology at the Institut Curie in the heart of Paris is hiring a new junior PI. It has a nice start up package and excellent I. Curie facilities. Please spread the word: Deadline Dec. 18th! jpi-recruitment-curie-umr3215-u934.curie.fr

My department at UCSF (Cell & Tissue Biology) is recruiting for a tenure-track Assistant/Associate Professor studying the fundamental cell biology underlying disease. Join us! App due Dec 1. aprecruit.ucsf.edu/JPF06272

How open is “open” chromatin? Our new Nature Genetics paper uses nucleosome-resolution modeling to reveal condensed euchromatin domains with short, accessible regulatory regions at the surface. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Out today in @jcb.org! Work from the Mogessie, Fachinetti & Redemann labs reveals how CENP-A/B/C cooperate to maintain kinetochore function in oocytes and how declining centromere strength predisposes aging eggs to aneuploidy. doi.org/10.1083/jcb.... @health.pew.org @valleefoundation.bsky.social

IMO the paper of the year in the gene regulation field - such a clean and clear study, showing how promoter-enhancer contacts mediate transcriptional activation. www.cell.com/cell/abstrac...

so cool. what beats the power of Drosophila genetics in answering fundamental cell biological questions?

This is a truly startling paper. It shows that mRNA can perform regulatory functions *in addition to* its role in encoding a protein. In other words, the distinction between protein-coding RNA and noncoding regulatory RNA is fuzzy. /1 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Out now in @science.org In situ structure of the human ciliary transition zone links linker defects to primary ciliary dyskinesia | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

40 years ago today, the BDSC made its 1st shipment. To celebrate, Trudy Kaufman, who packed the 1st shipment, boxed up the same kinds of flies for John Roote at Cambridge, who placed the 1st order. Watch for pics of the arrival next week. We’ve shipped 4,882,378 vials total. That’s a lot of flies!

Very nice discovery from the Jackson, Bravo and Basel labs. Cleaved tRNA ends, loaded with an amino acid, activate a form of bacterial immunity

How can histone acetyl-transferase acetylate a specific histone tail residue ? Using cryo-EM, we captured the MSL complex in a stable post-catalytic state, visualising the acetyl group on H4K16, a central mark for gene regulation authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...

🎉 Exciting research published out of the Mlodzik lab in Nature Communications! The study reveals a new role for LRP5/6/Arrow in Wnt/Planar Cell Polarity signaling, showing how this co-receptor helps establish cell polarity. 🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

For the second fiscal year, the U.S. National Institutes of Health made fewer new and competing grants than the average annual total from 2021–24. Learn more: https://scim.ag/4hCSIjX

Large dog breeds die younger. 'Jumping genes' may explain shorter lifespans. www.popsci.com/science/why-... Epigenetic aging & transposon dysregulation reflect size-related lifespan compression in dogs www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... (And the 1st author is 'Mariner'!!!)

Join us for the 2026 Bay Area RNA Club (BARC) meeting! At UCSF Mission Bay on Dec 8– abstract submission is live! barc.ucsf.edu

I am a long time subscriber to National Geographic. National Geographic generally does a superb job of covering complex scientific topics. However, The End of Aging” in the September issue was a dramatic deviation from this record. 1/n

Wow. Did you know you can "delete" a centromere in vivo?! 🤯Crazy cool. Congratulations @centromellone.bsky.social and team ‼️ ‼️

Are you an associate (or assistant soon to be associate) professor studying neuro and looking for a change of scenery? Apply to our search for an associate professor in the Dept of Biology at Johns Hopkins! apply.interfolio.com/195323

Most animal species pack sperm DNA with protamines instead of histones. Protamines are essential for male fertility. They are among the fastest-evolving genes in animals. That makes little sense. We think we know why, in a new paper led by @ching-hochang.bsky.social. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

1. CRISPR came from basic research on bacteria. 2. Optogenetics started with a discovery in algae. 3. The GFP protein comes from jellyfish. The biggest breakthroughs all trace to scientists following their curiosity, and this is one huge reason why we must keep funding basic research!

Alan Spradling kicking off Germ Cells meeting!

NIH’s move toward multiyear funding is a major reason for the drop in grant numbers: The agency now commits several years of funding at once to fewer awards, rather than paying for projects one year at a time. www.the-scientist.com/federal-rese...

Out now in @science.org with a related Perspective Loss of the tumor suppressor p53 generates a signaling gradient that drives epithelial clonal expansion | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

🩸🧬 Delighted to share our new @nature.com paper! Genetic studies of >28,000 people reveal a BACH2-NRF2 pathway for activating fetal hemoglobin, suggesting new tx avenues for sickle cell disease & β-thalassemia. Led by the amazing Chun-Jie Guo & co! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🧬🔬 Why are enhancers transcribed and how does that impact gene regulation? I’m really excited to share our new paper in @science.org showing that noncoding RNAs control the timing of gene activation in embryos. With Mike Levine #ScienceResearch @columbiamed.bsky.social A few highlights below... 🧵👇

1/5 Do you use GFP to measure protein abundance? Be very careful. Our new bioRxiv preprint shows that, under translation inhibition, fluorescence can stop tracking how much reporter protein is actually there. Please share widely.

Our description of fire amoeba, 𝘐𝘯𝘤𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘢𝘮𝘰𝘦𝘣𝘢 𝘤𝘢𝘴𝘤𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘪𝘴, is now online at Cell! Thanks @oliverio.bsky.social and amazing team for questioning the limits of eukaryotes! 🔥 www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

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

Very nice new paper from Paggi, Long, Zhang using physical modeling of RCMC data to reconstruct physical structures of euchromatin at the nucleosome scale: Euchromatin forms condensed domains and E-P interactions largely occur on the surface! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Stunning cryo-ET analysis from the Harrison Lab capturing every stage of how non-membrane viruses infect animal cells www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Mammalian cells produce and store a sulfur compound for antioxidant protection @science.org www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

🧬 Highly related @natgenet.nature.com paper from @binzmit.bsky.social group, using nucleosome-resolution chromatin modeling: Euchromatin forms condensed domains with short active regions on the surface www.nature.com/articles/s41... Congratulations! 🎉

Cryo-EM peeps are living the dream www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Congratulations to the @joelwblanchard.bsky.social lab on their two new studies on miBrains 🧠 Read more about their findings here: www.mountsinai.org/about/newsro...

🎉 Out today in Cell: the paper I've been looking forward to sharing for a long time 🎉 We used cryo-ET to find a molecular machine nobody knew existed on the surface of a minimal bacterium, and worked out what it does. 🧵(1/7) #TeamTomo #cryoET

Super excited to share my postdoctoral work at @imbavienna.bsky.social @viennabiocenter.bsky.social - We discovered that some retrotransposons, or "jumping genes" 🧬, are able to spread from cell to cell via a new viral infectivity route. A short thread: 🧵👇 (1/7)

Dreams do come true!! Pretty stoked to be invited to the invertebrate lovefest that is #cnidofest2026 to talk about technical details around live imaging regeneration. Amazing talks so far. @cnidofest.bsky.social

Exciting news: @uwgenome.bsky.social will be hiring for two tenure-track faculty positions this year, one open rank and one assistant professor. Both are “Genome Sciences” interpreted broadly so we welcome applicants working in a variety of fields and methods. Ad will be out shortly.

Thrilled to see this published today! Truly special because we made the initial discovery >15 yrs ago! We found two copies of a human gene called BC200 embedded in a human poxvirus. BC200 blurs the line between gene & transposon—both functional & mutagenic! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... 🧵1/n

I see that @anthropic.com is now competing with PhD students in Biology/Bioengineering labs, whose biggest worry until now was being inevitably scooped by the Feng Zhang and Jennifer Doudna labs. Very different from Wild West days of RT discoveries in my PhD. www.anthropic.com/news/claude-...

Then and Now: The Rapid Evolution of Harmit Malik www.the-scientist.com/then-and-now...

So proud of my lab mate @sagrill.bsky.social (whose on the job market 👀) for this magnum opus from @remlehmann.bsky.social lab @whiteheadinstitute.bsky.social ScRNA-seq of 🪰 germ cells reveals new biology, answers age old questions, and proposes new paradigms! 1/8 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Decoupling Transcription from Cell Fate Preserves Germ Cell Totipotency https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.17.752471v1

Out now in Science: Two papers from our lab reveal VIPR, an RNA-guided DNA-targeting system in bacteriophages, providing clues to the origins of CRISPR www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... Congrats to Peter Yoon, @kenjmloi.bsky.social @terryzzy.bsky.social, T.Docter & team

Come be my colleague here in Ithaca! We're looking for a colleague doing cool science in the realm of genome editing, structural biology, or pharmacology. Or all of the above. apps.hr.cornell.edu/recruiting/f...

New paper from the Capelson Lab in collaboration with the @ranganlab.bsky.social where they found that Nup93-2 only partially overlaps with mature NPCs. This off-pore Nup pool helps silence Polycomb domains. 🤩https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.08.28.747911v1

GCL pruning of PIP3 establishes the soma-germline boundary. From Mariyah Saiduddin, Ruth Lehmann @remlehmann.bsky.social and colleagues: rupress.org/jcb/article/... 📕 From our #Lipid and #Membrane collection: rupress.org/jcb/collecti... #EMBOLipidCode

New preprint in collaboration with the Capelson lab. Roles for nucleoporin paralogs.