Sylvia Erhardt

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/...

Become my colleague @oxfordbiochemistry.bsky.social !
2 Associate Professorships in the areas of
- prokaryotic/eukaryotic microbiology
- metabolism

my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru...

Embryonic signatures of intergenerational epigenetic inheritance across paternal environment & genetic background
@jamiehackett.bsky.social et al @embl.org see transcriptome changes in offspring after fertilisation by fathers exposed to gut dysbiosis or western diet
www.embopress.org/doi/full/10....

War ravaged Portland

Wut

#Jobalert 🚨: Please RT !
Looking for a #PhD student for exciting project on the interphase between epigenetics and cellular metabolism:
How do (nuclear) metabolic enzymes reguate chromatin function ?
#epigenomics, #epigenetics, #metabolism
www.helmholtz-munich.de/en/ife/job-o...

Wheat paste poster that says the all the world is dying and the new world struggles to be born now is the time of monsters. There's a picture of Elmo

Morning walk

Amazing 2. day at the GfG ‘Epigenetics & Chromatin’ symposium. Fantastic flash talks, a great first poster session and many memorable talks: among others @erhardtlab.bsky.social, @rodvilla.bsky.social, @thebraunlab.bsky.social, @flurylab.bsky.social, Ehrenhofer-Murray, Liefke, Heun, Imhof & Brehm.

The eukaryotic replisome intrinsically generates asymmetric daughter chromatin fibers DNA replication is molecularly asymmetric, due to distinct mechanisms for lagging and leading strand DNA synthesis. Whether chromatin assembly on newly replicated strands is also asymmetric remains un...

Some (+)ve news to lighten another heavy weekend: our latest preprint (c/o Mattiroli + Ramani labs) is up!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
A tour-de-force by 1st authors Bruna Eckhardt & @palindromephd.bsky.social, focusing on chromatin replication. RTs welcome; tweetorial in 3,2...(1/n)

J.S. Citizenshit and Immigratior Services September 20, 2025 Memorandum TO: Associate Directors, Deputy Associate Directors, Program Office Chiefs FROM: JOSEPH B Digitaly signed by JOSEPH B EDLOW Joseph B. Edlow EDLOW Date: 2025.09.20 Director, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services **00 SUBJECT: Proclamation, Restriction on Entry of Certain Nonimmigrant Workers, H-IB On September 19, 2025, the President issued a Proclamation, Restriction on Entry of Certain Nonimmigrant Workers, to address systemic abuse of H-1B nonimmigrant visas. Pursuant to sections 212(f) and 215(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), 8 U.S.C. 1182(f) and 1185(a), the entry into the United States of aliens as nonimmigrants to perform services in a specialty occupation under section 101(a)(15)(H)(i)(b) of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(15)(H)(i)(b), is restricted, except for those aliens whose petitions are accompanied or supplemented by a payment of $100,000. This guidance applies to H-IB employment-based petitions filed after 12:01 AM ET on September 21, 2025.| This proclamation only applies prospectively to petitions that have not yet been filed. The proclamation does not apply to aliens who: are the beneficiaries of petitions that were filed prior to the effective date of the proclamation, are the beneficiaries of currently approved petitions, or are in possession of validly issued H-1B non-immigrant visas. All officers of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services shall ensure that their decisions are consistent with this guidance. The proclamation does not impact the ability of any current visa holder to travel to or rom the United States. cc: David V. Roy, Chief Counsel (A) FOUO, For Official Use Only

NEW: Hours before a new entry ban is supposed to go into effect, the federal government officially acknowledges for the first time that the restrictions do NOT apply to people who currently have H-1B visas.

Link: www.uscis.gov/sites/defaul...

Congratulations Needhi 🍸

Kinetic organization of the genome revealed by ultraresolution multiscale live imaging Genome function requires regulated genome motion. However, tools to directly observe this motion in vivo have been limited in coverage and resolution. Here we introduce an approach to tile mammalian c...

Congrats to my friends in the Boettiger lab for this really beautiful live imaging work. A big leap forward in understanding the dynamic side of genome organization. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

PIWI clade Argonautes are essential for transposon silencing. Without them, animals are sterile due to massive transposon activity.

But how does piRNA-guided target interaction translate into silencing?

PhD student Júlia Portell Montserrat has an intriguing answer

www.cell.com/molecular-ce...

My favorite experiment:
targeted mutations in Piwi in flies that prevent it from binding Gtsf1/Asterix generate a Piwi protein that is loaded with piRNAs, translocates into the nucleus, but is unable to silence transposons, causing full sterility. A mutation we have been dreaming of for years.

How HIV enters the genome – Researchers identify previously unknown mechanism | German Center for Infection Research Researchers at the German Center for Infection Research (DZIF) at Heidelberg University Hospital have decoded a previously unknown mechanism by which

🧬DZIF researchers have discovered that #HIV does not randomly integrate into the genome: the virus follows R-loops as signposts, with the enzyme Aquarius enabling the process. These findings open new avenues for potentially curative treatments.

@marinalusic.bsky.social @natmicrobiol.nature.com

The BUB1 and BUBR1 paralogs scaffold the kinetochore fibrous corona The kinetochore fibrous corona docks on CENP-E and a second elusive receptor identified as the checkpoint protein BUB1.

The BUB1 and BUBR1 paralogs scaffold the kinetochore fibrous corona | Science Advances www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Congratulations @vcmentowski.bsky.social for solving a remarkably challenging molecular puzzle

Excited to share my postdoc work, out on bioRxiv today! Histones package DNA into nucleosomes to form the building blocks of chromatin, but how modular and programmable is this system? 1/9

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

The Fates

They do know how to 💥 🧨 🎇 🎆 in #Heidelberg

It’s just insane….sorry Needhi.

Congratulations, great story!

DNA methylation influences human centromere positioning and function - Nature Genetics Genome-wide and targeted perturbation of DNA methylation at centromeres affects CENP-A positioning and centromere structure, resulting in aneuploidy and reduced cell viability.

#1 Centromeres are epigenetic loci defined by CENP-A, positioned in unmethylated DNA flanked by highly methylated regions. Our work, published in @natgenet.nature.com in collaboration with @naltemose.bsky.social investigates the role of DNAme at human centromeres www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Fantastic opportunity. Vienna rocks!

Could you be the Node's next Community Manager? - the Node The Company of Biologists is recruiting a new Community Manager for the Node - a community site hosted by Development for developmental and stem cell biologists.

📅Are you a passionate science communicator with research experience in #devbio or #stemcell biology? Only a couple more days to apply for the Community Manager position at the Node.

Deadline: 05 September

bit.ly/4m7Fn28

The discussion of this paper is more fun to read than a scifi novel…wild!