Pablo Alcón

An open archive folder with a single column newspaper cutting from the News Chronicle, 15 May 1953.

This was the first newspaper coverage of the discovery of the double helix, a few weeks after publication of the three articles in Nature. It mentions all those involved, except Rosalind Franklin. She was the only one to keep a cutting (this is from her archive at Churchill College).

YouTube video by Science Fiction Station Mr. D.N.A.'s Science Lesson! | Jurassic Park (1993) | Science Fiction Station

youtu.be/NKmbh8hpNns

Finally published! Our work on how the #CircadianClock controls DNA repair. This has direct implications for cancer treatment: #Chronotherapy.
@CABIMER @UniSevilla

rdcu.be/eSwxl

Postdocs at Center for Gene Expression in Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine

We are looking for a Postdoc to join us at the Center for Gene Expression @cgen2025.bsky.social at the University of Copenhagen! Full advertisement here: employment.ku.dk/faculty/?sho...

This has now been published in print! Check it out:
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Postdoctoral Position in Structural and mechanistic investigation of the ciliary trafficking machinery bound to cargo, Denmark - Ledig stilling på Aarhus Universitet Ledig stilling ved Institut for Molekylærbiologi og Genetik - Proteinvidenskab, Aarhus Universitet

open postdoc call in our friendly neighborgroup with Esben Lorentzen. Higly recommed🌟:
www.au.dk/om/stillinge...

"Como parte del proceso había una entrevista en la que la primera pregunta era siempre: “¿Qué has leído?”. Para él la ciencia era parte de un gran conjunto cultural con raíces en la curiosidad individual."

Antonio García-Bellido y el hilo de Ariadna de la biología El influyente científico, fallecido el 10 de noviembre a los 89 años, deja una pregunta: cómo las conversaciones entre células controlan el espacio y la forma

"Como pasa con mucho de lo que rodea a la ciencia en España, el nombre no es muy conocido en nuestros lares. La única forma en la que un científico salta al candelero es cuando le dan algún premio, se implica en un escándalo o fallece."

elpais.com/ciencia/2025...

Thanks for the invitation, I really enjoyed the day!

How is the integrated stress response terminated?

@annebertolotti.bsky.social’s group have revealed the mechanism of termination of the ISR, answering a decades-old question surrounding the ISR pathway, which is crucial to cellular homeostasis.
www2.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/how-is-the-i...

#LMBReserch

Thank you so much for the opportunity to attend your talk at the IBFG 🙌. It was truly inspiring! ✨👏 @palconh.bsky.social

Thanks Luuk - I hope all is going well setting up the new lab!

Knæk Cancer grant to support new research in DNA repair mechanisms Assistant Professor Pablo Alcón from the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics has received a three-year Knæk Cancer grant of DKK 3.6 million from the Danish Cancer Society. The project aims to...

Very grateful to the Danish Cancer Society and our MBG colleagues for their support!

This grant will enable us to expand our research scope and grow our team.

mbg.au.dk/en/news-and-...

So excited to visit Salamanca this week!

Extraordinary Seminar at the IBFG!
📢 Talk by Dr. Pablo Alcón - Aarhus University (Aarhus, Denmark)

🔬Topic: Understanding DNA Repair: Visualizing Tumour Suppressors in Action

🗓 Nov 14, 2025 – 12:00 PM
📍 IBFG Auditorium, Salamanca

Muere Antonio García-Bellido, descubridor de las fronteras invisibles dentro de los seres vivos El biólogo, fallecido a los 89 años, deja un legado científico que roza las alturas de los nobeles Santiago Ramón y Cajal y Severo Ochoa

Ha muerto Antonio García-Bellido, uno de los mejores científicos de la historia de España tras descubrir las fronteras invisibles dentro de los seres vivos: elpais.com/ciencia/2025...

Repair of DNA double-strand breaks leaves heritable impairment to genome function Upon DNA breakage, a genomic locus undergoes alterations in three-dimensional chromatin architecture to facilitate signaling and repair. Although cells possess mechanisms to repair damaged DNA, it is ...

𝗖𝗮𝗻 𝗰𝗲𝗹𝗹𝘀 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗹𝘆 𝗿𝗲𝗰𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗗𝗡𝗔 𝗱𝗮𝗺𝗮𝗴𝗲?Excited to share our new study “Repair of DNA double-strand breaks leaves heritable impairment to genome function”, revealing DNA repair’s hidden cost, out now @science.org tinyurl.com/5n6zw3ye. Led by @sbantele.bsky.social and Jiri Lukas.🧵👇1/n

When people celebrate the individual genius of folks in science, they should also
mourn the collective loss of genius of folks who were actively discouraged or disadvantaged from a career in science because of the same person(s)

James Watson, dead at 97, was a scientific legend and a pariah among his peers James Watson, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA who died Thursday at 97, was a scientific legend and a pariah among his peers.

Before her (too early) death, the amazing Sharon Begley wrote this piece on double helix co-discoverer James Watson and the racist and sexist pronouncements he seemed to revel in making in later life. Fascinating read about a troubling individual.
www.statnews.com/2025/11/07/j...

James Watson, Co-Discoverer of the Structure of DNA, Is Dead at 97

www.nytimes.com/2025/11/07/s...

I asked him what was the most important thing he ever did. He replied “opposing the patenting of human genes”. For a full picture of Jim, his terrible flaws and his insights, we will have to wait for @nccomfort.bsky.social’s forthcoming biography.

PLAMseq enables the proteo-genomic characterization of chromatin-associated proteins and protein interactions in a single workflow PLAMseq enables performance of genomics and proteomics of chromatin-associated proteins and protein interactions simultaneously.

Our PLAMseq paper is out today in @ScienceAdvances . We developed a TurboID-based protein-genomic approach to map proteins and protein interactions in the genome. Validated with CTCF and RNApolII. Applied to map Histone H1 SUMOylation genomic loci.
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Excited to share our discovery of the RAD51 filament cap, built by a newly identified RAD51 paralog complex 🔬🧬

New paper alert! Scientists in Clemens Plaschka’s lab at the IMP and @juliusbrennecke.bsky.social's lab at
@imbavienna.bsky.social solved a decade-old puzzle, uncovering how the information molecule mRNA travels from the cell’s nucleus to its periphery. More: bit.ly/4nHcvys

Multi-lineage natural gene therapy mediated by embryonic triploid mosaicism in the context of Fanconi anaemia Fanconi anemia is a rare inherited bone marrow failure syndrome caused by inactivation of genes in the Fanconi anemia/BRCA DNA repair pathway. We report a patient with X-linked Fanconi anemia, and aty...

🧵 Our latest preprint is available.

It describes an extraordinary case of a boy with two very rare genetic conditions: Fanconi anaemia (FANCB, with a deep intronic pathogenic variant) and embryonic triploid–diploid mosaicism.

Read more here 👉 www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

The cover of CRICK

Nice endpapers showing Crick and Brenner’s blackboard

Section pics that bleed off the page

Colour plate of Crick looking dreamy on the beach at Cold Spring Harbor, 1954.

UK publication day for this wrist-spraining beauty! Appropriately, I’m travelling to Cambridge, where I’m doing a book launch talk at the LMB tomorrow afternoon.

Models for the architecture of the human inner kinetochore CCAN complex on centromeric α-satellite CENP-A nucleosome arrays www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.04.686567v1 #cryoEM

Phosphorylation-dependent tuning of mRNA deadenylation rates - Nature Structural & Molecular Biology Stowell et al. show that the intrinsically disordered region (IDR) of Puf3 binds the Ccr4–Not deadenylase complex using an extended interface. Phosphorylation of the IDR regulates the interaction to t...

The latest from our group (@lapassmore.bsky.social)! Congrats to James and the rest of the authors!

Phosphorylation-dependent tuning of mRNA deadenylation rates

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

📢 Excited to share that our study has just been published in Nature Communications! We uncover how CRL4-DCAF12 regulates the cellular levels of MCMBP, a chaperone essential for assembling nascent MCM2-7 complexes, to ensure accurate and error-free genome duplication.

I love AlphaFold—but please include PAE (Predicted Aligned Error) plots for every “interaction.” Pretty PDBs ≠ proof. If the PAE doesn’t show an interface, it ain’t one. Show the plots. Structural biology's reputation is on the line.