Joanna Chustecki

🚀 Our new paper is out @natmethods.nature.com!

Kuffer & Marzilli engineered conditionally stable MS2 & PP7 coat proteins (dMCP & dPCP) that degrade unless bound to RNA, enabling ultra–low-background, single-mRNA imaging in live cells.

🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
🧬 www.addgene.org/John_Ngo/

A privilege to attend the 9th annual Computational Plant Biology workshop last week at @slcuplants.bsky.social heard inspiring talks, got direct help and advice with pipeline bottlenecks and explored some very pretty places!

Nice to see a small summary of our research findings in the Plantae Research Weekly! ☺️🌱

The image shows one straight magenta line and, close to it, another wavy green line.

This might be one of the simplest images I captured, but very fascinating nonetheless, as it shows how tight the cytoplasm in a plant cell is. The cytosol and all other organelles are squished between the plasma membrane (magenta) and the central vacuole (its membrane is green)
#MicroscopyMonday

Congratulations Anne Marie!!!! 🥳🥳

I'm happy to share new work in collaboration with Elena Koslover's lab! First author Keaton developed a mathematical framework for diffusion of soluble material through mitochondrial networks. Then, Lewis lab PhD candidate Camryn used live cell imaging to parameterize... 1/3

Mitochondrial transfer is a fascinating phenomenon where cells shuttle mitos. The therapeutic potential is compelling and observational science is solid but the mechanism is a black box.
Excellent Viewpoint in @naturemetabolism.bsky.social breaks down one of cell biology’s biggest emerging mysteries

Cytoplasmic inheritance: The transmission of plastid and mitochondrial genomes across cells and generations (Kin Pan Chung) doi.org/10.1093/plph... #PlantScience

The only meeting I’ve ever been to with a fun fair at night! #brumforever #NGS2025

It’s been a wonderful meeting so far at #NGS2025 the ECR community is a great place to be right now, and we’ve had some fascinating talks and workshops. Loved presenting my work on mtDNA and mito dynamics #plantscience

Please RT! Call for Fellows! If you’re a structural biologist and wanting to start your lab by applying for an external Fellowship then we at Imperial may be excited to host you. Synthetic biologists too.. Please submit expression of interest with details below 🙏

www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperi...

Got papped yesterday at the @biology.ox.ac.uk research showcase spreading the good word about mitochondrial dynamics! So fun being in the new LaMB building and interacting with psych/bio colleagues 🌱🧠

(You can check out the paper I was soapboxing about here: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...)

Congrats, Joanna! New article out in collaboration with our Microscopy Core!

Spatial organization of mitochondrial nucleoids. (A) Human mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is a covalently closed, circular DNA molecule composed of heavy (outer) and light (inner) DNA strands. Each strand has its own origin of replication, referred to as OH and OL, respectively. mtDNA contains 16,569 nucleotides and encodes 37 genes, including two rRNAs and 22 tRNAs (designated by letters). These genes are vital for protein synthesis within mitochondria. (B) Left, live-cell microscopy image of MCF7 breast cancer cells stained with Picogreen (DNA, green) and MitoTracker red (mitochondria, red) taken by S.B. of our laboratory. mtDNA nucleoids appear yellow. Right, a schematic diagram shows mtDNA wrapped in nucleoid-associated proteins, which form core and peripheral complexes within the nucleoid. These protein complexes are essential for the replication, transcription, translation and maintenance of mtDNA within mitochondria.

In their Review, Sangheeta Bhattacharjee and Benu Brata Das discuss the roles of topoisomerases in mtDNA maintenance and repair, and highlight their potential as therapeutic targets.
journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/...

Old mitochondria regulate niche renewal via α-ketoglutarate metabolism in stem cells - Nature Metabolism Andersson et al. show that intestinal stem cells enriched for old mitochondria are metabolically distinct and have enhanced ability to regenerate the epithelial niche.

Proudly presenting Simon’s @simonsterson.bsky.social‬ paper on asymmetric apportioning of old mitochondria biasing intestinal stem cells for the Paneth cell linage through aKG-dependent metabolism
@naturemetabolism.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s42... @helsinki.fi @metastem.bsky.social 🧵1/8

Low copy numbers for mitochondrial DNA moderates the strength of nuclear–cytoplasmic incompatibility in plants Low copy numbers of mitochondrial DNA per cell sustain proper mitochondrial function by moderating nuclear-mitochondrial incompatibility, ensuring normal growth and development of plants.

…we know that if you artificially increase mtDNA amount so every mito has some, the plant suffers (onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...) and it also may be linked to recombination- plant mtDNA recombines much more readily than metazoan mtDNA- compartmentalising may keep this at bay!

Frequent fusion and fission of plant mitochondria with unequal nucleoid distribution | PNAS The balance between mitochondrial fusion and fission influences the reticular shape of mitochondria in yeasts. Little is known about whether mitoch...

It is wild! It’s hypothesised that this is an outcome of the constant fission/fusion these guys go through- they can share their contents (www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....), so may share proteins/equilibrate upon fusion. As for specific purpose, it’s still hypothetical but….

Thank you to David Macherel, Jose Gualberto and Hakim Mireau for organizing the 2024 ICPMB meeting and the special issue of Phys. Plant. And to Olivier Keech, Allan Rassumsson and Olivier Van Aken for organizing the 2022 ICPMB meeting where I first met Joanna and the seeds of this work germinated.

Thanks Sjon!! 😄😊

Thanks Rory 😄😄😄

#plantscience

A huge thank you to @achristensenphd.bsky.social‬ for supporting me and believing in this project, and @AltartouriB from @BiotechUNL (both on X) for help advising and helping the imaging experiments, as well as wonderful undergraduates Maddy and Alora. Feedback/discussions always welcome!!(9/9)

So, the big question is why do these mitochondria behave differently if they do or do not have mtDNA? Mitochondria may differ in their receptivity to other individuals based on their genome content… we go into much more detail in the discussion, and the debate is still open!(8/9)

During this work, I developed a ubiquitous, photoconvertible, stable mtDNA marker for plants based on the bacterial H-NS protein, developed in human lines by @mitomorph.bsky.social I hope this tool will be of great help to the plant mitochondrial community!(7/9)

Do we differences in ‘social’ characteristics, or how well connected different individuals are? Yes! Mitos without mtDNA are less well connected to the rest of the network. (6/9)

So, do we see differences in physical movement? Yes! (5/9)

Then we asked, do individuals with mtDNA move/interact differently to those without? This follows our tracking & network analysis I developed during my PhD (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34015261/) - but now we can build functional data into these networks! (ie,colour code networks by yes/no mtDNA)(4/9)

We started by characterising exactly how many mitos per cell have mtDNA (not before quantified per cell), using SYBR green as a marker in fixed tissue. (3/9)

Plant mitochondria are very different from animals/yeast, existing mostly as bacteria-shaped individuals. They have very large genomes, full of non-coding sequences, and fascinatingly, not all mitochondrial carry mtDNA. (2/9)

(ID‐ICPMB05) Running on Empty: Mitochondria Without DNA Exhibit Differential Motility and Connectivity Plant mitochondria are in continuous motion. While providing ATP to other cellular processes, they also constantly consume ATP to move rapidly within the cell. This movement is in part related to tak....

An exciting day! Our latest work is now out; we ask the question, are there any differences between plant mitochondria with and without mtDNA? 🌱

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... (1/9)