Rob Klose

Congratulations Lluis and team. Looks very interesting!

Unbalanced chromatin binding of Polycomb complexes drives neurodevelopmental disorders Borges, González-Blanco, Arigela, et al. report new missense mutations in the PRC1 genes RNF2 and RING1 in individuals with neurodevelopmental disorders. Functional dissection of a deleterious variant...

Very excited to share our new Molecular Cell paper on missense mutations in Polycomb genes and how they can disrupt chromatin regulation to drive neurodevelopmental disorders. A huge thank you to everyone involved, and to our amazing collaborators!
www.cell.com/molecular-ce...

Spring vibes

Raymond stands at the centre of the picture next to the entrance to the seminar room. He is surrounded by five family members including his wife.

Yesterday we came together to honour Professor Raymond Dwek through the naming of the Raymond Dwek Seminar Room. Raymond's family (pictured) joined the celebration and Raymond was visibly touched, saying: "Thank you for this amazing gesture. I'm humbled by it, but I will treasure it."

Seminar announcement for Max Planck Seminar Freiburg titled 'Super-resolution imaging of chromatin in health and disease' with date, time, location, and speaker Melike Lakadamyali from University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia USA

This Friday (today), we’re pleased to welcome Melike Lakadamyali (@melikel.bsky.social) from @upenn.edu.

If you are interested in Super resolution microscopy, cytoplasmic and nuclear organization with a focus on biophysics, then do not miss Prof. Lakadamyali talk in our lecture hall at 13:00. 🤗

Our new preprint on SMCHD1! We’ve shown SMCHD1’s ATPase activity is critical for function in vivo, and excitingly a new DNA binding domain neighbouring the ATPase domain activates the enzymatic function, which is important for normal chromatin binding.
urldefense.com/v3/__https:/...

Structural biologist Alexey Amunts launches new research lab in Shenzhen ‘Shenzhen adds another dimension; it is a place where ideas do not remain ideas for long,’ Amunts says of new position.

We're launching a research lab at SMART. Shenzhen Medical Academy for Research and Translation is a newly established institute with long-term funding mechanisms for internal and external investigators. At full capacity SMART aims to support up to 400 labs.
www.scmp.com/news/china/s...

Please share: we're hiring a new tenure-track faculty member to our Department of Genetics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

faculty-einstein.icims.com/jobs/17847/a...

Lovely lab hike in Werribee Gorge to celebrate the EckMasLab’s 5th birthday 🎂

Out now in @natureportfolio.nature.com: PARM reveals gene regulation is far more predictable than thought. Lightweight, cell‑type specific, and experimentally validated. Enables functional prediction of regulatory mutations with just one dish of cells + one day of compute.
➡️ doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Hey that’s cool Capucine! Exciting, congratulations!

Exciting news! The lab is moving to Colorado at @cuanschutz.bsky.social 🎉
We’ll be recruiting at all levels—stay tuned!

Congratulations Brian and team!

The chromatin remodeller CHD4 regulates transcription factor binding to both prevent activation of silent enhancers and maintain active regulatory elements CHD4 directly limits transcription factor binding to chromatin, which prevents activation of silent or cryptic enhancers but facilitates activity of active enhancers.

Final version of our paper now published.
elifesciences.org/articles/109...

Take homes:
CHD4/NuRD directly limits transcription factor residence times. At active enhancers this keeps them working efficiently. At inactive enhancers it prevents TFs from getting a foothold and causing activation. 1/n

DOT1L provides transcriptional memory through PRC1.1 antagonism - Nature Cell Biology Neville, Ferguson et al. show that non-canonical Polycomb repressive complex 1.1-mediated gene silencing is antagonized by DOT1L and is required for the therapeutic efficacy of Menin and DOT1L inhibit...

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

happy i could be a part of this paper from the Gilan lab out now. Along with many other things, it provides strong evidence of chromatin memory for gene activation, and suggests that DOT1L is the missing link balancing the fast and slow arms of the MLL/Polycomb axis

M18BP1 valency and a distributed interaction footprint determine epigenetic centromere specification in humans - The EMBO Journal The histone H3 variant CENP-A is considered an epigenetic landmark of centromeres. Its deposition reflects cell-cycle-regulated assembly of M18BP1, HJURP, and PLK1 on a divalent MIS18α/β scaffold. The...

It’s out! 🥳 Excited to share our new paper (with Kai Walstein, @andrea-musacchio.bsky.social and all others) on the role of M18BP1 in CENP-A loading!

“M18BP1 valency and a distributed interaction footprint determine epigenetic centromere specification in humans”
link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Dont miss out on it ! Hands on Summer School.
Cut&Run, Cut@Tag, ChIP, ATACseq and analyse your own data ! ➡️Unique opportunity ! 14 exiting days ➕ Daily high profile lectures.
👉 Applications & info: bit.ly/4oGDR8f

I started offering career advice to two junior colleagues today in separate meetings, and both times I caught myself thinking that, if I'm honest, I don't have very good advice on navigating the current funding and job climate. I think it's important to say that no one does.

This just in. So honored and grateful...

🧬📄 Preprint update (v2): We added new biochemical experiments that clarify how IWS1 associates with the transcription elongation complex and further define competition between IWS1 and RECQL5. 🧪⚙️
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Structural model is already available in the PDB (9MLC).

Bacteriocin biophysics: From protein-protein interaction models to navigators of the bacterial cell envelope Bacteriocins are toxins deployed by bacteria to kill their competitors. Here, I reflect on my laboratory’s work on protein bacteriocins and their immunity proteins from Gram-negative bacteria. We unco...

A gift of an article from the inimitable Colin Kleanthous as he says a moving farewell to his laboratory. A brave, unrepentant and scientifically brilliant journey is described - please have a read, friends.

www.jbc.org/article/S002...

I’m the only one at this minute leaving Montreal to the US. Gee wonder why that is… (photo of customs an immigration line)

Great, thanks!

Thanks for the kind words Max and please let us know if you have any comments. As is evident @au-ho-yu.bsky.social went where few dare in order to drive this project, so kudos to him!

Both I think. Thank goodness for Biorxiv! Hopefully as we move forward preprint and a community peer review will predominate.

Yup!

Is it just me, or has publishing become ultra slow in the last 5 years?

Announcing the 2026 Suffrage Science Awardees in Maths and Computing The Suffrage Science Awards honour pioneering women in science, with the January 2026 awards focusing on Maths and Computing

Congratulations to the Maths and Computing Suffrage Science 2026 cohort of awardees 👏 👏 👏 🎉 These distinguished women were all recognised by peers as pioneers, leaders and inspirational role models. We salute you! Read all about the awardees ⬇️

The boss tries to run one simple PCR just to chip in a bit, and this is the reaction from the lab 😂

Congratulations Hannah and team!