Dominic Luciano (He/Him)

Wife and I in tears reading this…

Science update from my postdoc Peiyuan Chai - his work “glycoRNA complexed with heparan sulfate regulates VEGF-A signaling” is now published @nature.com uncovering a new layer or glycoRNA-regulation of growth factor mediated control physiological processes rdcu.be/e1bBX

An eye-popping discovery: early vertebrates had four eyes rather than two Eyes on a face’s front or side enable a brain to perceive images. Fossil evidence suggests that two light-sensitive organs on top of ancient vertebrate heads generated images, too.

An eye-popping discovery: early vertebrates had four eyes rather than two @nature.com
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Thrilled to be able to finally post my first adventure into secondary metabolism!:

Flavoaffinins, Elusive Cellulose-Binding Natural Products from an Anaerobic Bacterium

pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10....

Co-authors: Ruocheng Yu, f. undergrad Jessie Lee, @katherinem.bsky.social , and Emily Balskus!

Butyrolactol A enhances caspofungin efficacy via flippase inhibition in drug-resistant fungi Chen et al. identify the natural product butyrolactol A as an inhibitor of the phospholipid flippase Apt1-Cdc50, which it locks in a nonfunctional state. By disrupting membrane homeostasis and enhancing drug uptake, butyrolactol A restores echinocandin efficacy against intrinsically resistant fungal pathogens, including Cryptococcus and Candida auris.

Now online! Butyrolactol A enhances caspofungin efficacy via flippase inhibition in drug-resistant fungi

Organelles do NOT have a single uniform pH.
And if you think they must, because “protons diffuse fast,” this paper is for you.
A thread on why that assumption is wrong; and what we found instead. 🧵 1/n

Controlled colonization of the human gut with a genetically engineered microbial therapeutic Precision microbiome programming for therapeutic applications is limited by challenges in achieving reproducible colonic colonization. Previously, we created an exclusive niche that we used to engraft...

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

Dated gene duplications elucidate the evolutionary assembly of eukaryotes - Nature Analysis of eukaryotic gene sequences using a relaxed molecular clock methodology indicate that eukaryotes emerged 3.0–2.25 billion years ago as a result of mitochondrial endosymbiosis with complex ar...

Eukaryogenesis was a billion year spree, but the acquisition of mitochondria happened when the party was winding down www.nature.com/articles/s41...

my name is pattie gonia and i’m backpacking 100 miles in drag to try to raise $1,000,000 for 8 outdoor nonprofits. here goes nothing. TikTok video by pattiegonia

I love Pattie Gonia so much! 100 miles… in drag. It’s spectacular. Consider checking out their fundraising project. (Plus, I love a mustachioed queen!) Aaaaand, they were in the #Out100 with @mswmedia.com’s own @dgcomedy.bsky.social. 🫶🏻

An archaeal genetic code with all TAG codons as pyrrolysine Multiple genetic codes developed during the evolution of eukaryotes and bacteria, yet no alternative genetic code is known for archaea. We used proteomics to confirm our prediction that certain archae...

An archaeal genetic code with all TAG codons as pyrrolysine www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1... #jcampubs

Just gonna put this here for now
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
bsky.app/profile/jlst...

Happy to share Jialin's first publication. She did a great job exploring the transition to land in animals. Co-supervised by the great Jordi Paps and me and in collaboration with Davide Pisani and @phil-donoghue.bsky.social

Dual transposon sequencing profiles the genetic interaction landscape in bacteria Gene redundancy complicates systematic characterization of gene function as single-gene deletions may not produce discernible phenotypes. We report dual transposon sequencing (dual Tn-seq), a platform...

Dual transposon sequencing profiles the genetic interaction landscape in bacteria | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Bacterial cell wall & periplasm paradigm shift - important read #MicroSky

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

At the edge of centennial park fighting for democracy ❤️

From 2010 to 2016 (latest data I have ), NIH research contributed to EVERY drug approved by the FDA

Telomeric transposons are pervasive in linear bacterial genomes Eukaryotes have linear DNA and their telomeres are hotspots for transposons, which in some cases took over telomere maintenance. Here we identify several families of independently evolved telomeric tr...

Telomeric transposons are pervasive in linear bacterial genomes | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Lysine vitcylation is a vitamin C-derived protein modification that enhances STAT1-mediated immune response Vitamin C directly modifies lysine residues through vitcylation, regulating STAT1 signaling and enhancing anti-tumor immune responses by preventing STAT1 dephosphorylation.

Now online! Lysine vitcylation is a vitamin C-derived protein modification that enhances STAT1-mediated immune response

RNA-binding proteins and glycoRNAs form domains on the cell surface for cell-penetrating peptide entry Mammalian cells present RNA-binding proteins on the cell surface that form clustered domains containing glycoRNAs.

Excited to share the work of Jonathan Perr where he uncovered a surprisingly common feature of cell surfaces - the presentation and clustering of RNA binding proteins with #glycoRNA.

Critically support by #NIH @cp-cell.bsky.social www.cell.com/cell/abstrac...

Whenever you hear someone sneer about scientific research that seems useless to them — “they’re studying the spit of lizards?!” — remind them that’s exactly how we got Ozempic.

globalnews.ca/news/9793403...

Archaeal lineages related to eukaryotes encode functional diterpenoid cyclases The first eukaryotic cell originated through the union of an archaeon (Asgardarchaeota) and a bacterium (Alphaproteobacteria). Little is known about the molecular basis of eukaryogenesis, but it is li...

New, very exciting preprint where we identify polycyclic triterpenoids lipids in archaea (Asgards) for the first time. This was a wonderful collaboration with Paula Welander’s lab..… a thread… //www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.02.07.637177v1 @valdeanda.bsky.social and Hanon McShea

Here's the promised natural product preprint: Flavoaffinins, elusive cellulose-binding natural products from an anaerobic bacterium. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Graphic showing modification of mRNA with ADP-ribose mediated by bacterial enzyme cmdTAC

Check it out! Another novel RNA modification - ADP-ribosylation - that was previously only known on proteins. A cousin to #glycoRNA 👏

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

zol and fai: large-scale targeted detection and evolutionary investigation of gene clusters Abstract. Many universally and conditionally important genes are genomically aggregated within clusters. Here, we introduce fai and zol, which together ena

Difficult to focus on science during these times, but if you have the bandwidth, our study on zol is now out in NAR: academic.oup.com/nar/article/...

GitHub: github.com/Kalan-Lab/zol

Please give the software a try and let us know if you have any feedback! And stay tuned for new features...

This is really cool! :)

What is it about chaining nucleobases together that turns them into acids? 🤣

Does anyone know where PhD students can receive supplemental mentorship outside their lab for additional support and scientific discussion? Does something like this exist?

Copper-dependent halogenase catalyses unactivated C−H bond functionalization - Nature A halogenase enzyme uses the copper in its active site to catalyse iterative chlorinations on multiple unactivated carbon−hydrogen bonds, enabling carbon−hydrogen functionalization that is not achieva...

First post on Blue sky! Congratulations to graduate student Yorick Chiang and scientist Masa Ohashi on discovery of new copper dependent halogen from Nature @nature.com !
Many thanks to the wonderful collaborators!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Can we all PLEASE take a moment to acknowledge that the new forbidden words include female, females, woman, and women which describe about half the population. But of course the words male or men are still allowed.

Am I to understand that this is a direct attempt to defeud women's health research?

Doctoral students,

The choice of a mentor is much more important than the choice of a grad school.