Andrew Deans

Nuclear actin and DNA replication stress regulate telomere maintenance by telomerase - Nature Communications Telomerase recruitment to telomeres is a tightly regulated process which is stimulated by replication stress. Here, the authors identify that nuclear filamentous actin is important for interaction bet...

New @natcomms.nature.com paper today from Tracy Bryan's lab @cmri.bsky.social: "Nuclear actin and DNA replication stress regulate telomere maintenance by telomerase".

Happy our lab could play a small part.

Congrats Tracy, Ash Harman, Noa Lamm and the whole team.

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

No, not that FANCL!
New paper on FancL mutant mouse just out in @bloodadvances.bsky.social shows essential function of E3 RING ligase activity to phenotypes of #FanconiAnemia plus, Black Friday deal: a new model for testing gene editing therapies: ashpublications.org/bloodadvance...

Finally! We have a FANCM:RMI inhibitor that is cell active and specifically kills ALT+ cancer cells 🎯
@yuhenglau.bsky.social + my labs just published the first cell-active peptide inhibitors of this critical target in 10-15% of cancers. doi.org/10.1021/acs....

Chromatin fatigue: DNA repair alters the chromatin environment and introduces heritable variation in gene expression in a larger region around the lesion! Amazing achievement by @sbantele.bsky.social and Jiri Lukas published in @science.org 🙌 Happy we could contribute. See 👇

Registration is open!🧬

Join us at Egmond aan Zee (April 19–24, 2026) for the next DNA Repair Meeting. We have an amazing line-up of speakers.

📅 Deadline for early registration: Jan 10, 2026
🔗 dnarepairmeeting-egmond2026.com

DNA REPAIR/GENOME STABILITY CONFERENCES

🧬 List of 2026 DNA repair and genome stability conferences, now updated. Please let me know if there is anything missing!
docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

Multi-lineage natural gene therapy mediated by embryonic triploid mosaicism in the context of Fanconi anaemia Fanconi anemia is a rare inherited bone marrow failure syndrome caused by inactivation of genes in the Fanconi anemia/BRCA DNA repair pathway. We report a patient with X-linked Fanconi anemia, and aty...

🧵 Our latest preprint is available.

It describes an extraordinary case of a boy with two very rare genetic conditions: Fanconi anaemia (FANCB, with a deep intronic pathogenic variant) and embryonic triploid–diploid mosaicism.

Read more here 👉 www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

Human RPA is an essential telomerase processivity factor for maintaining telomeres Telomerase counteracts telomere shortening by repeatedly adding DNA repeats to chromosome ends. We identified the replication protein A (RPA) heterotrimer as a telomerase processivity factor critical ...

Our paper in Science is out! @souravagrawal.bsky.social, @rlynn.bsky.social, @susvirkar.bsky.social, and the rest of the team show human RPA is a telomerase processivity factor essential for telomere maintenance. This reshapes our thinking about telomerase regulation. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

FIGNL1 inhibits homologous recombination in BRCA2 deficient cells by dissociating RAD51 filaments Homologous recombination (HR) deficiency upon Breast Cancer Gene 2 (BRCA2) loss arises from defects in the formation of RAD51 nucleoprotein filaments. We demonstrate that loss of the anti-recombinase ...

Want to know how homologous recombination defects are caused upon loss of BRCA2? Check out our recent efforts in uncovering this phenomenon just out in Science!
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

I attended the Australian Cell Cycle, DNA Repair and Telomere Meeting for the first time, and now I wish I could have attended it earlier.

Thanks much to the organisers and especially to @genomestability.bsky.social for putting such a nice meeting together.

I am looking forward to the future ones!

It was a great honour to present the AGCT (Australian Genome instability, Cell cycle and Telomere) award to Prof Kum Kum Khanna yesterday evening at #ADCTM25. Kum Kum has had an amazing career in discoveries relating to these fields in Australia, and been a remarkable leader and mentor to many.

Poster session 1 was such a hive of activity and discussion at Melbourne museum today! #ACDTM25

Its so awesome to have Alan D'Andrea here in Melbourne today for #ACDTM25. What a great talk framed by his classic work on FA!

Ever wondered what S-phase tastes like? 3 lucky presenter prize winners will find out (+Amazon voucher!) at #ACDTM25. You can still register for this fantastic Melbourne meeting Oct 20-22. Official 10 year old taste tester: "lemon excision repair" is the best flavour www.australiancellcycle.org

Final 2025 programme The final programme for our conference is now available. You can download either just the programme, or the full abstract book by clicking below. A printed copy will also be provided to all registr…

The final programme for the Australian Cell Cycle, DNA repair and Telomere meeting is now available online: australiancellcycle.org/final-2025-p...
Its not too late to register for the October 20-22 meeting.

ATP-dependent remodeling of chromatin condensates reveals distinct mesoscale outcomes Adenosine triphosphate (ATP)–dependent chromatin remodeling enzymes mobilize nucleosomes, but how such mobilization affects chromatin condensation is unclear. We investigate effects of two major remod...

Today I am so pleased to present our work on how chromatin remodelers affect mesoscale chromatin organization.
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Australian Cell Cycle, DNA repair and Telomere meeting draft schedule is now online!
Join us with 5 plenary speakers, 16 invited national speakers, 22 selected speakers, 61 poster presenters and lots and lots of fun science. Less than one month to go.
australiancellcycle.org/draft-schedu...

Differential PARP inhibitor responses in BRCA1-deficient and resistant cells in competitive co-culture Synthetic lethality describes a genetic relationship where the loss of two genes results in cell death, but the loss of one of those genes does not. Drugs used for precision oncology can exploit synth...

Happy to share the latest paper from the lab looking at PARP inhibitor responses in isogenic BRCA1 cell line pairs, from the Master work of Shiella Amelia Soetomo and Michael Sharp: dx.plos.org/10.1371/jour...

The Eukaryotic homology search complex distorts donor DNA structure to probe for homology Homologous recombination (HR) is a DNA double-strand break repair pathway that facilitates genetic exchange and protects damaged replication forks during DNA synthesis. As a template-based repair proc...

Just throwing this out there as a significant conceptual advance in the field

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

A high-resolution, nanopore-based artificial intelligence assay for DNA replication stress in human cancer cells Nature Communications - Determining how replication forks move across the human genome is critical for the effective use of agents that target replication stress. Here, the authors present...

Checkout our latest research in @natcomms.nature.com
rdcu.be/eBqBI A high-resolution, nanopore-based artificial intelligence assay for DNA replication stress in human cancer cells. A collaboration with Mike Boemo’s team

Australian Invited Speakers 2025 We are in the process of inviting a number of outstanding Australian leaders in the fields of DNA repair, Cell Cycle and Telomere biology. Current invited speakers include: Lisa Alcock, Curtain Uni…

🦘🧬Australian invited speaker list finalised for the
2025 Cell Cycle, DNA repair and Telomere Meeting!
Friday 5 Sep is your last chance to register at the EARLY BIRD rate & submit an abstract 🤩
australiancellcycle.org/australian-i...

🚨 Last chance! Register NOW for the Australian Cell Cycle, DNA Repair & Telomere Meeting 🧬
📍 Melbourne Museum | Oct 19–22
Submit your abstract + lock in the reduced rate this week
👉 australiancellcycle.org

Registering some members of my team for the 19th Australian Cell Cycle, DNA Repair and Telomere Workshop in Melbourne in October. Early-bird registrations by August 31. 🧪

High-throughput investigation of cyclin docking interactions reveals the complexity of motif binding determinants - Nature Communications Many protein–protein interactions depend on Short Linear Motifs (SLiMs). In this study, the authors use large-scale binding assays, deep mutational scanning, and structural analysis to map SLiMs recog...

Just published: Our paper on high-throughput analysis of cyclin docking interactions, led by the group of Norman Davey @icr.ac.uk and with some small-complex-plus-peptide #cryoEM by @natalia-mg.bsky.social from my lab. Congratulations, everyone!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Heads up for those working in ubiquitin biology and targeted protein degradation—Lorne Ubiquitin 2025 is happening 20–23 November in Lorne, Victoria, Australia.

Late abstracts are still being accepted—worth checking out if you’re looking to share your work in a focused, international setting. 🦘🦘🦘

New from us in @natrevmcb.nature.com -- @szmyd-radoslaw.bsky.social & @radoncdocgee.bsky.social explore how DNA repair actively shapes cancer cell fate following DNA damage, reframing repair as both a protective process & a driver of treatment response and cell death. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

In case you missed the online advance version, we are now in the latest print issue of EMBO J! www.embopress.org/doi/full/10.... Structural and biochemical investigation of the key activation step in the Fanconi anaemia DNA repair pathway, recognition of branched DNA by FANCM

Image credit: @gloglita.bsky.social‬ @lifescienceeditors.bsky.social‬ captured DynaTag in action: a pA-Tn5 probe (multicoloured) binds an antibody (white), which binds p53 DNA-binding domain (green) on DNA (blue) within 2 nucleosomes

🧪Move over CUT&Tag, there’s a new #TranscriptionFactor mapping method in town.
Our newly developed DynaTag is faster, cleaner, more sensitive than #ChIPseq, #CUT&RUN and #CUT&Tag.
🔗 Our @natcomms.nature.com paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
🧵Let’s break down what makes DynaTag so powerful (1/7)

This was my all time favourite conference to attend anywhere in the world. Almost makes me wanna get back into research just so I can attend.