Jess Kelley

Time to talk about one of my favourite Oxford buildings, 26-27-28 Cornmarket!!

Popularly known as The Old Pret

If you're looking for Oxford local news that actually reports local news, the Oxford Clarion is worth a follow and subscribe!

Who can work in science, EVERYONE #pride

EPIGENETIC HULK READY TO SMASH AGAIN! GET IN LOSERS!

🔬 New from the Farnung Lab: We established a fully in vitro reconstituted chromatin replication system and report the first cryo-EM snapshots of the human replisome engaging nucleosomes. Brilliant work by @felixsteinruecke.bsky.social with support from @jonmarkert.bsky.social! tinyurl.com/replisome

RNA xkcd.com/3056

Unlocking the Pause: A new player in gene transcription A new work from the Klose lab published in the journal Molecular Cell

Research @oxfordbiochemistry.bsky.social @ox.ac.uk supported by the Wellcome Trust (UK) and NIH (USA) reveals essential new player in the process of deciding whether genes should be made or not. Great work @jesskelley.bsky.social
@robklose.bsky.social @edimitrova.bsky.social 👏 bit.ly/202502-klose

Please could you correct the spelling on my tag in this? I'm sure Jess Kelly doesn't want the random notifications either!

@bencarty.bsky.social and the team did a fantastic job in a wonderful collaboration with @naltemose.bsky.social as well as Dani Fachinetti and Simona Giunta’s teams to help define the molecular basis for maintaining centromeric chromatin size and position. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

I love scientists

Two photos of Anna, a young white woman using an electric wheelchair, wearing a blue lab coat that fits her well with tables and dry-lab equipment in the background. Text reads: "A team of researchers and designers led by UCL is looking for wheelchair users working in wet lab environments to user-test what is believed to be the first-ever prototype of a lab coat adapted for wheelchair users."

Do you know a UK-based wheelchair user who works in a lab and would be willing to user-test our prototype of what is believed to be the first-ever lab coat adapted for wheelchair users?

Please share far & wide! Interest form: forms.office.com/e/66FhcQjqRT

More info: www.ucl.ac.uk/ucl-east/new...

Donate to Duvet Know It's Christmas, 2024, organized by Rhodri Marsden Unbelievably, it's the 14th year of this thing. What is it? Improbably, the nig… Rhodri Marsden needs your support for Duvet Know It's Christmas, 2024

So I'll be back around then. We'll be trying to raise a bit of money for Centrepoint, bearing in mind that there are a bunch of people who have nowhere to go this evening. gofund.me/637d21d0 ENDS FOR NOW 🎄🛏️

Photo of an airbed set up with a sleeping bag and pillows, on the floor in front of a TV and Christmas tree. There is a two-seat green sofa and a grey folding camping chair around it.

I finally get to join an honoured festive tradition in #DuvetKnowItsChristmas
Parents are stopping over in my 1-bed flat before we go join the family gathering in the morning. They get my bed, I get the airbed on my own living room floor.
Also featuring camping chair to supplement my 2-seat sofa

This title if the comic is ‘Googling Stuff…’ The comic shows two columns: on the left is “Then” showing search results with one thing listed as “the thing you want” On the right column is ‘Now’ - also showing search results but in this case it’s a whole bunch of stuff you don’t need: AI TAKING A WILD STAB AT IT WITH SOME BLATANT MISINFORMATION SPONSORED RESULT SPONSORED RESULT SPONSORED RESULT SPONSORED RESULT PEOPLE ALSO ASK VIEW PRODUCTS And then right at the bottom just off screen is ‘the thing you want’

Googling Stuff: Then v Now.

We have had multiple discussions about why people have not previously observed the very dramatic reduction in transcription upon PNUTS depletion. So I looked at our own TT-seq data and analysed it without including the spike-in. The numbers speak for themselves! Spike-in calibration is important!

2025 Application Round for Fellows in Oxford Biological Physics

Join Oxford Biological Physics! #KavliOxford is inviting applications for Fellows to establish independent research groups in this dynamic, interdisciplinary field. Apply now: kavli.web.ox.ac.uk/article/2025...

Turns out that, for me, news sites are a great way to become usefully informed about what's happening in the world, and Twitter is a great way to get uselessly stressed about it.

Thank you! We had an amazing team on this project with everyone contributing their own unique expertise to tackle a tricky problem!

Nice thread collating all these exciting new reviews! My 'to read' list has definitely just got even longer...

On the reading list

This paper is genuinely amazing! Not only is the science very cool, it is also a masterclass in scientific writing, as are most @robklose.bsky.social lab papers!

Repost for the morning crowd! ICYMI, our new paper on PNUTS-PP1 in transcription pause release is out now:

Go team PNUTS! @jesskelley.bsky.social @aleksszczurek.bsky.social @neilblackledge.bsky.social @robklose.bsky.social and Maciek!

The phosphatase PP1 sustains global transcription by promoting RNA polymerase II pause release The major cellular protein phosphatases are widely recognized as transcriptional repressors. However, Wang et al. identify the PP1 phosphatase as a global transcriptional activator that activates paus...

And as a final bonus, do also take a look at the complementary study from Fei Xavier Chen’s lab, who describe a similar role for PNUTS-PP1 in a human cell system: www.cell.com/molecular-ce...

Final note: The success of this project relied on collaboration. We couldn’t have done it without bringing together different approaches, from genomics and proteomics to biochemistry to live-cell imaging. Every author put in a lot of hard work and I’m so proud to share credit with them all (8/8)

Huge thanks to my co-conspirator @edimitrova.bsky.social as well as @robklose.bsky.social, Maciek Maciuszek, Amy Hughes, @aleksszczurek.bsky.social, and @neilblackledge.bsky.social. We’re also incredibly grateful to Arminja Kettenbach and Hieu Nguyen for their proteomics expertise (7/8)

There’s plenty more detail in the paper, so please do give it a read! This one was something a bit different for us, but when we initially observed these transcription defects we had to find out what was going on! (6/8)

Finally, we show that interactions between the PNUTS TND and corresponding TND-interacting motifs in other proteins are also essential for transcription, and we propose that these interactions are a key substrate selection mechanism for PNUTS-PP1 to control transcription pause release (5/8)

We then use an elegant rescue system designed by @neilblackledge.bsky.social to show that the interaction between PNUTS and the phosphatase subunit PP1 is essential for transcription, and identify a number of potential substrates including Cdk9, SPT6 and the PAF complex (4/8)

In the absence of PNUTS, RNA Pol II accumulates at the 5’ end of genes and elongating polymerase is lost from gene bodies. We profile the occupancy of factors that regulate the early stages of transcription and conclude that PNUTS is required for exit from pausing into productive elongation (3/8)