Yury Bykov

Congratulations and all the best of luck!

The mitochondrial intermembrane space nuclease Nuc1 (endonuclease G) prevents mitophagy-mediated mtDNA escape in yeast Cupo et al. find that Nuc1 nuclease activity and mitochondrial intermembrane space localization prevent mtDNA escape in yeast. In Nuc1 mutants, inducing mitophagy increases mtDNA escape, whereas inhib...

I liked this classy and convincing paper from the Youle lab: intermembrane space endonuclease destroys escaped mtDNA. The escape happens during autophagy, and the vacuole is involved. How? To be determined.
www.cell.com/current-biol...

image of a golden retriever at computer with a tie with the following caption "i have no idea what im doing"

Just submitted my first manuscript as an independent PI

It was a great pleasure to host Svetlana @dodonova-sveta.bsky.social as a guest lecturer at the @rptu.bsky.social. Thanks so much for your fascinating talk about archeal chromatin!

Together with @herrmannlab.bsky.social, we wrote this Preview in Mol Cell featuring a new study on the role of glutamine in cancer progression. I was also challenged to draw a "normal" figure. I think it came out nicely :) authors.elsevier.com/c/1mPZE3vVUP...
doi:10.1016/j.molcel.2025.12.014

Check out the Highlight Issue of Biological Chemistry on the new avenues in organelle biology! I was very honoured to assemble it together with Emma Fenech. We devote it to our mentor Maya Schuldiner on the occasion of her anniversary. Enjoy! www.degruyterbrill.com/journal/key/...

This is the last week to apply!

Junior professor position at the University of Kaiserslautern! Our Department of Biology is seeking a colleague working with microalgae. This is a wonderful place to do wonderful science with great people! Please, repost :)
Further details:
jobs.rptu.de/jobposting/1...

Very thorough work that applies cryo-ET to measure bilayer thickness. Surprisingly, the missing wedge is not a big problem!

Attention new PIs! Here is a workshop to develop as a mentor and project leader, meet your peers and exchange experience. Please repost!

Registration open: 77. Mosbacher Kolloquium "More than lipidic barriers - New horizons in membrane biology" from March 25-28, 2026
lnkd.in/dgsW4c3

Scientific Organizers: Britta Brügger, Robert Ernst, André Nadler, Christian Ungermann
Early registration & poster abstracts until January 31, 2026

Here is my take on the two recent papers by Shu-ou Shan and Jonathan Weissman labs. It appears that there might be 'signal inhibition' instead of 'signal recognition' for the mitochondrial proteins in the cytosol. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Illustration of the HA library creation and assessment of the efficiency of incorporation.

Din Baruch, Maya Schuldiner, Ofir Klein and colleagues create and validate a proteome-wide yeast library for protein detection and analysis.
journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/...
#OpenAccess #ReadandPublish

Principles of cotranslational mitochondrial protein import Selective ribosome profiling reveals that nearly 20% of mitochondrial proteins in human cells are imported during translation on cytosolic ribosomes. Cotranslational import requires an N-terminal pres...

A very cool paper from Shu-ou Shan's lab defines a range of mitochondrial proteins that are imported co-translationally: unexpectedly late recruitment, and evidence for my favourite hypothesis of active inhibition of co-translational import into mitochondria! www.cell.com/cell/abstrac...

Imagine being an Israeli scientist: you protest the war in Gaza every week, your institute gets bombed, and then the EU cancels your funding in a move that achieves nothing but makes some people in Europe feel morally superior and 'doing the right thing'.

Very excited to announce that my first, first author paper, is now on BioRxiv! In this paper we unambiguously show #COPII coated vesicles in unperturbed human cells for the very first time!!

Make my day and check it out!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

#Cryo-ET #TeamTomo #Cryo-CLEM ❄️🔬❄️🔬❄️🔬❄️🔬

The first-ever group trip! This week we visited @simonemattei.bsky.social group at EMBL Heidelberg for a seminar and dinner. Thanks so much for the fantastic day!

A green dichromophoric protein enabling foliage mimicry in arthropods | PNAS Molecular mechanisms underlying the green insect camouflage have puzzled researchers for over a century. Here, we isolated and identified a green w...

Recently we discussed at lunch how can molecular biology be brought closer to organismal biology. I remembered this awesome work from Nikolai Sluchanko's lab. Why are grasshoppers green? New, dual-chromophore protein discovered by classic protein purufucation.
www.pnas.org/eprint/YMXEU...

Yeast labs. Beware!

A very exciting day for every yeast genetics lab! Our ROTOR+ from Singer Instruments arrived and was installed. Tons of plans and ideas!

Very cool!! We did it once with @cellarchlab.com for Golgi but only in 2D using Relion. Do you see the dependence on membrane angle (missing wedge effect)? Do organelle contact site membranes have different thickness?

🚨New preprint!🚨 #teamtomo
We expanded Surface Morphometrics to quantify membrane thickness from cryo-ET—revealing local variation across organelles.

Led by the lab’s first grad student, @mmedina300kv.bsky.social (defending Monday! 🍾) w/ @attychang.bsky.social @hamid13r.bsky.social & @tomo.science

The fact that BLAST considered all possible spellings is nice and funny. What's your favorite?

It was the greatest pleasure to host @sheinerlab.bsky.social as a visiting lecturer this week and hear the new fascinating story on Toxoplasma mitoribosome! Thank you, Lilach!

Hello everyone! New year new blog. Starting 2nd of January our group now consists of me and three PhD students! With three more practical MSc students and a big BSc practical looming over next week this is of course pure chaos but fun!