Sylvia Erhardt

This work © 2025 by Lee Zimmerman is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International

A single line poem

Looking Forward to trying this with a bunch of 14 year-olds next time I teach static electricity.

YouTube video by NPR Music Air: Tiny Desk Concert

Despite their best efforts, life is good.

"Google at its peak was basically the best information retrieval system in human history and they and every competitor decided going from there to “you didn’t want answers you wanted half-assed auto-complete 80%-wrong hallucinations” in a few years was the right idea" -- @davelevitan.bsky.social

this is mesmerizing

International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women | United Nations The International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women aims to create awareness of the fact that violence against women is a human rights violation that impedes progress in many areas, in...

Today is the International day for the elimination of violence against women. In 2024, an estimated 50,000 women and girls were killed by intimate partners or family members worldwide. That is 137 women and girls every day. One every ten minutes. www.un.org/en/observanc...

fantastic story, congrats to everyone involved 🍾

differential contribution of H3K9 methyltransferases to boundaries at satellites

A new and fascinating story from @bencarty.bsky.social and the group, with crucial help from the teams of @naltemose.bsky.social, Simona Giunta, and @dfachinetti.bsky.social. Many thanks to all for a fantastic collaboration.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

KIF18A promotes chromosome congression in cooperation with CENP-E downstream of CENP-C Miao et al. demonstrate that KIF18A depletion causes synthetic defects with CENP-C hypomorphic mutant and KIF18A functions for chromosome congression in cooperation with CENP-E. CENP-E levels at kinet...

Our new paper was just out. CRISPR screening with a CENP-C mutant reveals that KIF18A and CENP-E are coordinately involved in chromosome congression. We also find that cancer cells with low levels of CENP-E are sensitive for KIF18A inhibition. Congrats Jiahang Miao!
www.cell.com/cell-reports...

🧬 Interested in dissecting dose-dependent transcriptional regulation through epigenome editing and synthetic biology for your PhD? Apply by 07.01.2026 to join the lab of @eddaschulz.bsky.social @molgen.mpg.de & #IMPRS-BAC #gradschool.

👉 www.molgen.mpg.de/5099133/schu...

put your ear down close to your soul and listen hard. - anne sexton black and white photograph of a dahlia in front of a black background

General framework for centromere organisation built on a model of the internal stratification of the Earth

Special issue: The discovery of CENP-A, the centromere-specific histone H3 variant turns 40 years!
Sam Corless @scorless.bsky.social and Goks Thangaval @gokilavani.bsky.social are Revisiting the question: When is a centromere not a kinetochore? Check it out. rdcu.be/eMJkd

Rainbow over the Schlosspark in Karlsruhe.

Left work and 30 sec later it came down hard…but got to see a nice rainbow. Karlsruhe Schlosspark.

Next Tuesday Oct 28, great talks of invited and local speakers of our Synthetic Genomics Center, in Heidelberg and on Zoom!

Close up of the portrait in an oil painting.

Close up of an oil painting, focused a wolf

A woman dressed in a red robe, holds her chest. Behind her a wolf eats an indescribable piece of bloodied meat. The wolf’s muzzle is as bloodied as the woman’s hand.

Framed oil painting of a woman in red, a massive wolf behind her

As promised, a recent painting!

“Roja”
Oils 16x9

You can still view this one in person (always looks so much better in person!) at @spoke-art.com NY!

spoke-art.com/blogs/news/1...

New Tuesday (Oct 28) in Heidelberg and online: kick off event of the Center for Synthetic Genomics: program and link to zoom: www.syn-gen.de/kick-off

My entry for today’s #FluorescenceFriday: a pupal #Drosophila testis with muscles expressing
🔵 lifeact &
🔴 RFP-nls

Honored & grateful to receive an honorable mention at @healthcare.nikon.com Nikon Small World 🌍🔬✨

🔗 www.nikonsmallworld.com/galleries/20...

#NikonSmallWorld #Microscopy #ScienceArt

Epigenetics and Gene Regulation in Health and Disease: Linking Basic Mechanisms with Therapeutic Opportunities | Keystone Symposia Join us at the Keystone Symposia on Epigenetics and Gene Regulation in Health and Disease: Linking Basic Mechanisms with Therapeutic Opportunities, March 2026, in Geneva, with field leaders!

Come join us in Geneva for everything epigenetics and gene regulation. It will be a great meeting! Please repost!
www.keystonesymposia.org/conferences/...

A high arched bridge at sunset or sunrise, with a rocky promontory rising from the water framed by the mirrored, circular arch of the bridge. "A world of Lord of the Rings ... Rakotzbrücke Kromlau im Rhododendronpark Kromlau im leichten Nebel." CREDIT: Dirk Förster, Flickr

This is 'Rakotzbrücke Devil’s Bridge', commissioned in 1860 in the German village of Kromlau in Gablenz on the estate of Friedrich Herrmann Rötschke, now a public park.

Its purpose is ornamental: to form a perfect circle with its own reflection when light & wind permit.

(📷: Dirk Förster, Flickr)

Picture of Azim Surani in a dark blue jumper and light blue collared shirt sitting by a microscope.

An Interview with Azim Surani

Ashley Moffett and @geraldinejowett.bsky.social spoke to Azim, recipient of both the 2025 Kyoto Prize and 2026 Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize, about his non-traditional and inspirational route into academia:

journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...

Phenomenal Fireflies - Alex Wild Fireflies are a family (Lampyridae) of about 2,000 beetle species known for their ability to produce light through chemical reactions.

A gallery of fireflies.

Last week we were in the Washington Post for our characterization of Robertsonian chromosomes. This week we are entering our 10th day of being shut down and all of our research is on hold. To help me feel not-so-bad, here is a thread of some studies we released right before the shutdown 🧵 [1/n]...

YouTube video by Stowers Institute for Medical Research How Stowers Scientists Found the DNA Site Where Robertsonian Chromosomes Fuse

🚂 The T2T train keeps rolling: "The formation and propagation of human Robertsonian chromosomes" with Gerton and Garrison labs is out! What's a Robertsonian chromosome? Let Jen tell you herself in this great video, or read our paper: [1/3]
📺 youtu.be/JmlY5omxQVc
📄 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Beautiful work! Congratulations to all!

It is with great sadness that the University shares the news of the death of Professor Sir John Gurdon, founder of the @gurdoninstitute.bsky.social

Read our tribute to the visionary Nobel Laureate and watch an interview from 2012, just after he won: https://bit.ly/4mM8o3r

Dipping into the function of DNA methylation at centromeres - Nature Genetics Human centromeres contain a small chromatin region with low levels of DNA cytosine methylation that resides with CENP-A. Salinas-Luypaert et al. find a role of DNA methylation in maintaining the size and function of centromeres by controlling the binding affinity of key centromere components.

Thanks to @erhardtlab.bsky.social for the news and views on our paper on DNA methylation&centromere www.nature.com/articles/s41....

I am leaving Rochester NY after attending the retirement fest of four giants in the field of evolutionary biology including my PhD advisor. This visit gave me a chance to revisit old haunts and reflect on my own somewhat unlikely origin story. 1/n

🧪

Jane Goodall with monarch butterfly scarf

“It actually doesn’t take much to be considered a difficult woman. That’s why there are so many of us.”
― Jane Goodall

💙 RIP to a real one. My childhood hero

Megabase-scale human genome rearrangement with programmable bridge recombinases Bridge recombinases are naturally occurring RNA-guided DNA recombinases that we previously demonstrated can programmably insert, excise, and invert DNA in vitro and in Escherichia coli. In this study,...

🧬🌉Online @science.org Megabase-scale human #genome rearrangement with programmable bridge recombinases | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...