Michael Trakselis

Amazing

📣 The 2026 Midwest DNA Repair Symposium is coming to Kansas City (registration is open)

🗓 May 30–31, 2026

✨ Talks will be selected from abstracts, with a strong focus on trainees and new investigators.

Please RT & share with your labs!
🔗 sites.google.com/view/kumc-mi...

This line graph illustrates the percentage change in agency staff levels from the previous year for nine major U.S. federal scientific and health organizations between the fiscal years 2016 and 2025. The agencies tracked include the CDC, Department of Energy, EPA, FDA, NASA, NIH, NIST, NOAA, and NSF. For the majority of the timeline between 2016 and 2023, the agencies show relatively stable fluctuations, generally staying within a range of +5% to -5% change per year. However, there is a dramatic and uniform plummet starting in the 2024–25 period. Every agency depicted shows a sharp downward trajectory, with staffing losses ranging from approximately -15% to over -25%. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) shows the most significant decline, dropping to roughly -26%, while the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) shows the least severe but still substantial drop at approximately -15%.

This is the most astonishing graph of what the Trump regime has done to US science. They have destroyed the federal science workforce across the board. The negative impacts on Americans will be felt for generations, and the US might never be the same again.

www.nature.com/immersive/d4...

We are excited to host the first WOW Symposium for the 'Mutagenesis and Mechanistic Assessment" Special Interest Group @emgsus.bsky.social. Hosting Drs. Graham Walker (MIT), Mikhael Kashlev (NCI), and Julian Sale (MRC).

Please join us on March 6th at 11 am. Register at emgs-us.org/event/MolMec...

Want to get the data out of a PDF figure? As in, the actual data – not a rough trace-along-the-lines version?

I made an app you might like: adamkucharski.github.io/pdf2plot/

It all started a few years ago... 🧵

Alessandro Costa @costalaboratory.bsky.social, Dana Branzei and myself are co-organising the 2026 Machines on Genes meeting in beautiful Crete as the 94th Harden Conference hosted by @biochemsoc.bsky.social

Register now - lots of opportunities for selected talks www.eventsforce.net/biochemsoc/f...

Watched Stranger Things S5E5 tonight with the fam. They was a pretty good representation of the DNA replication fork in Henry’s journal. No one else was impressed but me. 🧬

Live thread of the NSF biology virtual office hour:

🧵

Horrifying news being confirmed about the state of NSF at the NSF IOS/BIO webinar

I’ve earned my PhD — what now? A chemist faces a classic early-career dilemma: what should they do next, and how do they start?

Grads.. Start building your network now. It is so essential for life after graduation. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

All the centers they’re cutting add up to less than $7 million in spending.

UNC athletics budget is $185.4 million for the 2025-26 fiscal year.

Adam Luthman says: it depends. Some answers here: rdcu.be/eUVBj

Chocolates! Mint flavored. 😘

Make sure to gift something to you administrative staff that keeps the Department running all year long. For me, the best gift to give is Frangos! Originally from Chicago!

I think some folks might be happy to see this. NIGMS MIRA R35 for EI/NI has been published. PAR-26-121 files.simpler.grants.gov/opportunitie...

I prefer Arial

Sugars, ‘Gum,’ Stardust Found in NASA's Asteroid Bennu Samples - NASA The asteroid Bennu continues to provide new clues to scientists’ biggest questions about the formation of the early solar system and the origins of life. As

Everyone shut thefuck up in that they discovered ribose and, for the first time in any extraterrestrialsample, glucose on Bennu.

This adds to earlier this yr 14 of the 20 amino acids thatlife on Earth uses to make proteinsand all five nucleobases that lifeon Earth uses

www.nasa.gov/missions/osi...

We are recruiting a postdoctoral fellow to study mechanisms of DNA replication stress using single-molecule imaging tools. If you are excited about microscopy, replisome dynamics, and genome stability, we’d love to hear from you.

Application deadline: 24 December

www.crick.ac.uk/careers-stud...

Genome integrity relies on rapid recycling of DNA Pol III in bacteria | PNAS DNA replication requires precise coordination between DNA unwinding and DNA synthesis. In all domains of life, protein–protein interactions at the ...

Happy to share our most recent work www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/.... Here we describe how efficient DNA replication in E. coli is dependent on an interaction between SSB-ssDNA and the DNA polymerase (Pol III). Thanks to all the co-authors for their hard work!

Our latest collaboration with the talented Susi @sbantele.bsky.social and Jiri Lukas is out now @science.org 🤩. We reveal the hidden price for DNA repair, with potential implications for genome function, gene therapy and ageing👇

ANTONY LAB SAINT LOUIS UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE Edwin Antony Lab Website

POSTDOCTORAL POSITION IN STRUCTURAL BIOLOGY
We need a structural biologist to work on several CryoEM datasets. For more information, please visit: www.antonylab.org

Expertise in structure refinement and model-building are required.

Please share.

Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra blew me away tonight. Thanks Baylor and A&S for sponsoring.

Senior Research Technician at University of Birmingham An academic position as a Senior Research Technician is being advertised on jobs.ac.uk. Click now to find more details and explore additional academic job opportunities.

Interested in inherited chromosomal instability syndromes and DNA repair? We are looking for an enthusiastic person to join the Stewart lab at the University of Birmingham as a senior technician. Please checkout the job advert: www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DPH515/senior-research-technician

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/...

Among the anti-recombinases, FIGNL1 rules them all. So much that inactivating it brings BRCA2-deficient cells to life. Who is responsible for RAD51 loading without BRCA2/FIGNL1, check out the paper to find out! Great collaboration with @raychaudhurilab.bsky.social

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

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/...

Happy to share a new publication on Mechanistic Coupling of Enzyme Activities at the Replisome in JBC. We #Traklab compare and contrast strategies used across organisms to coordinate the many enzymatic processes that occur during DNA replication. Hope it is helpful. doi.org/10.1016/j.jb...

For ASBMB 2026, each meeting day will have a "theme" organized by session chairs. This theme "Racing the clock: Molecular Mechanisms of Aging" will feature Meng Wang as the keynote and is co-organized by Dan Jarosz @jaroszlab.bsky.social (?) and Roz Anderson.

Two Fun facts: 1) I wanted to call this a "pinky-trigger" mechanism but the reviewers weren't having it. and 2) I designed the graphical abstract, so blame me. 🤫

Here, we show that specific arginine residues in the little finger domain of translesion DNA polymerases act to sense 8-oxoG bypass and then communicate to restrict subsequent incorporations downstream. This has kinetic implications for reducing mutagenesis after a TLS event.