David Kuster

And that's a wrap! I hope you've enjoyed this thread and give our preprint a read. Let us know what you think! tinyurl.com/45ds5ccs

With this in hand, we set out to map the chromatin, RNAs, and proteins in the TTN RNA factory. We believe this is the first-ever biochemical dissection of a single-locus nuclear compartment, and has revealed tons of interactions that would be invisible to standard methods.

RNAs are pervasive regulators of nuclear organization. But when we think of architectural RNAs, we usually think of lncRNAs like XIST, NEAT1, and their ilk. Yet in the nucleus, *ALL* RNA is noncoding! Could pre-mRNAs—which are far more abundant—play similar roles?

New (to you?) preprint alert! Can protein-coding mRNAs "moonlight" as nuclear-architectural RNAs? 🧬 Our revised preprint uncovers how nascent TTN RNA organizes a specialized nuclear compartment in cardiac cells—and how its disruption may contribute to heart disease. A thread! 🧵👇

Our recent work on #Cellularization of the #ichthyosporean S. arctica is finally out in its final form @lsajournal.org www.life-science-alliance.org/content/10/1... Congrats to @margaridaaraujo.bsky.social @hiralshah.bsky.social @gautamdey.bsky.social & the rest of the team

Not all nuclei are the same. We went to some of biology’s most exceptional nuclei 👉 dinoflagellates with genomes 80× ours 👉 Giardia’s twin nuclei 👉 ciliates carrying two nuclei in one cytoplasm & asked a simple question: what sets nuclear density? 🧵 Preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Congratulations, Doctor Zack Mullin-Bernstein!🎍🐦🎇

In vitro binding energies capture Klf4 occupancy across the human genome DNA binding energies for full-length Klf4, with its 400+ residues IDR! Sequence specificity sufficient to predict genome occupancy in human cells. www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...

Using microneedle manipulation, Mullin-Bernstein et al. @dumontlabucsf.bsky.social show that #microtubule bundles of the mammalian #anaphase spindle are mechanically coupled, transmitting force both laterally and between spindle poles. rupress.org/jcb/article/... #Mitosis #CellDivision #Biophysics

Early mammalian embryos accumulate dsRNA, mimicking viral infection. Our two-step purification protocol reveals young LINE and LTR retrotransposons as the main dsRNA source bit.ly/4i3dhGc

Explore the unusual side of science in a classic PNAS Science Sessions episode. 🦇✨ What can mysterious swamp lights and bats’ vision teach us about the natural world? Revisit two unusual research stories this spooky season. 🎧Listen now: https://ow.ly/UBmb5100mxQ

We've just updated our 2027 EMBL Annual Poster with even more events 🧪 Have a look and tell us which course or conference you're excited to join: s.embl.org/2027-poster @embl.org @ebi.embl.org @embo.org

90% of doing science is being open to new ideas.

Go Birds!

Enormous news. A melanoma vaccine, one of the most deadly cancers out there. Science is good and helpful and there should be more of it. www.washingtonpost.com/health/2026/...

The birding has been rather quiet down in Cornwall (Choughs aside)… so this encounter in St Ives today may be the ornithological highlight of the week #birds

New Preprint from Sunbul Group! RhoBAST-FLIM, a platform that resolves free from RNA-bound dyes, enables high-fidelity, lifetime-assisted super-resolution RNA imaging. Many thanks to Berkan for the wonderful collaboration and all the support from @murat-sunbul.bsky.social! doi.org/10.64898/202...

We report a new RNA imaging platform based on 𝗥𝗵𝗼𝗕𝗔𝗦𝗧 and fluorescence life time microscopy; 𝗥𝗵𝗼𝗕𝗔𝗦𝗧-𝗙𝗟𝗜𝗠. It is more sensitive than intensity based imaging and enables higher resolution in 𝗦𝗧𝗘𝗗. It was very fun to work with amazing @xiaoxiao94.bsky.social and Berkan in this project. Congrats!

Check out our new poster on the pyrenoid— a diverse, convergently evolved, chloroplast compartment that supercharges #C02 fixation in algae 🧪🌊🌍

Ina @inahuppertz.bsky.social and Kathrin @katleppek.bsky.social cordially invite all RNA enthusiasts based in the Rhineland region to attend our series of inspiring in-person talks on RNA-related topics by local and invited speakers. This time on Friday November 13th at @mpiage.bsky.social Cologne.

🔥 Have you heard about the MBL summer courses at Woods Hole? In our new episode of the Night Science Podcast we visit the mythical Microbial Diversity course there and talk with the students & instructors. What we found really amazed me!

Sign up for the inaugural Singapore Biosciences Symposium at SBS, NTU. We have an outstanding lineup of speakers at the intersection of plant biology and biomolecular condensates! www.ntu.edu.sg/sbs/symposiu...

In their Cell Science at a Glance article and associated poster, @phaips.vd.st, Benjamin Engel @cellarchlab.com & @manondemulder.bsky.social highlight the current insights and future directions of pyrenoid and CO2-concentrating mechanism research. journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/...

#CDCODE has been just updated to v2.4! (GIF represents us trying to keep up with and organize the data 🤫) 🔵 10 new condensates (incl. 3 infectious🦠) 🔵 400+ new condensate-protein connections 🔵 new #condensate modifiers #cmods and #condensatopathies 🩺 👀 the latest updates: cd-code.org/release

Season 3 of the Tiny Living Beings podcast is out with new episodes every 2-4 weeks! Here are the interviews I’ve done so far so you can catch up! I’ll continue to post updates here. The show is now supported by @asm.org and available everywhere you get podcasts. Subscribe so you don’t miss new eps!

The Complex Life of RNA in Heidelberg! #EESRNA leppeklab.org/embo-embl-sy...

Did you spot our cameo in You Can See Everything? PDB-101's Molecular Machinery graphic is shown on screen as Billy watches YouTube Thanks to A24 Movies for helping us celebrate 55 years of the PDB! Download the updated poster from pdb101.rcsb.org/lear...

Less than 5% chance!!! Come on @erc.europa.eu We need to find a solution. Otherwise, we will lose a generation of young researchers.

I need a better answer when asked by other birders: "What is your favorite bird?" Honest answer, sorry to say, is the mourning dove. This response always receives a perplexed look. So,my new birder-specific answer will be: Indigo bunting, green heron, or wood stork 🪶 Pics taken by me in Memphis.

This Wednesday!!🔔

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

This week, I had the incredible opportunity to present our work on tRNA processing systems at #ESSRNA. Thank you to the organisers for this privilege, my mentors @haukehillen.bsky.social and @kellythd-nguyen.bsky.social for the support, and the fellow participants for the great discussions!

🧬 Our live-cell imaging also shows condensed euchromatic domains—and that cohesin prevents their local mixing, helping maintain transcriptional insulation. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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...

Spent the day wandering the Cornish coast totally in thrall of Choughs. Such joyous birds! I think I would like to come back as a Chough #birds #UKbirding

Wait, wait, what !!!!! Regulation of target gene expression by chromatin-associated protein-coding transcripts in plants 686 protein-coding transcripts that mediate cross-locus chromatin interactions in Arabidopsis www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

#Mastodon paper was published in @dev-journal.bsky.social. A great home for this outstanding piece of software, long in the making. @preibischs.bsky.social ambitious plan for SPIM data processing and analysis from 2007 is finally finished 😀 journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...

How does an embryo build itself? Join experimentalists and theorists as they discuss the principles of biological forms, from molecular mechanisms to whole organisms #EESDevelopment

Scientific Mecca! My times at the MBL were among the best experiences of my career…and maybe even my life…

Discover how human DNA, spanning meters, fits into micrometer-scale nuclei! New study uses advanced imaging to reveal chromatin's 3D architecture in cells. PMID:42399220, Nat Commun 2026, @NatureComms https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-75087-5 #Medsky #Pharmsky #RNA #ASHG #ESHG 🧪

Why do I struggle even reading papers that are clearly AI? Writing is a window into another person’s brain, their thinking, values, and outlook. When I read AI text, I mostly feel they shortchanged themselves and me by not offering that.

Our latest paper is out in @embojournal.org! Chromatin compaction is a hallmark of apoptosis, but the mechanism & function of this process was unclear. We show apoptotic compaction is required to prevent fragmented DNA from spreading beyond the dying cell, and is driven by histone deacetylation.

120 years ago today, our namesake Hannah #Arendt was born. 75 years ago, her major work “The Origins of #Totalitarianism” appeared, a book she kept revising until 1967. Volume 5 of the Critical Complete Edition (@arendtedition.bsky.social) traces its genesis on 3,1000+ pages.

It is a wrap of a wonderful week of #RNA biology at @embl.org Heidelberg for the #EESRNA, a co-chairing co-transcriptional session, lots of scientific discussions, exciting and inspiring science🤩...and some fun with a warm scientific community 🥰. And huge thanks for the spotless organisation🙌!

It's exciting to see so many enthusiastic researchers sharing their science at 'The complex life of RNA' 🥼 Here are some impressions from the second poster session! #EESRNA 🧪

Our group members are having a great time at #EESRNA in Heidelberg! Yesterday, You Zhou gave a talk on the role of m6A in splicing and RNA quality control. Jonas Busam and Sri Sankaranarayanan are also presenting their work at posters 75 and 268. If you're at the symposium, stop by for a chat!

Part of the UNLEASH team from the Valcárcel lab (@crg.eu) is at @embl.org Heidelberg for the Complex Life of RNA conference #EESRNA. Today, Mónica gave a fantastic talk on the characterisation of small molecules modulating splicing!

Our lab is obsessed by hidden biology - protein products central to understanding how our cells function, but missing from standard genome annotations. Introducing new work from post-doc Eric Smith on alternative translational isoforms for heterochromatin protein 1. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

#EESRNA is packed full of fascinating science and new research, but it's also a lot of fun! Yesterday our participants got the chance to get to know each other better during our human bingo ✍️