Grosshans Lab

Read this inspiring perspectives coauthored by the Worm Resource directors and worm Nobel Laureates! 4 Nobel Prizes and how they were enabled by major NIH-supported research resources (the Caenorhabditis Genetics Center, WormBase, and WormAtlas) www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Switzerland is joining Horizon Europe!

We are uniting two research powerhouses.

For cutting-edge innovation that will boost our energy security, digital transformation, health and so much more.

Today is a good day for science, and for our EU-Switzerland partnership.

And we have another open position, this time with a focus on Genome Biology! Join a great community in Vienna to bring your research to the next level!

One clock, two functions: from daily rhythms to development Scientists at the FMI and the University of California-Santa Cruz have found that similar molecular machineries control daily circadian rhythms and developmental timing. Their work in worms shows that...

Now in @embojournal.org: Researchers in @labgrosshans.bsky.social & UCSC found that similar molecular machineries control daily circadian rhythms & developmental timing—showing that evolution can repurpose core timing systems to coordinate both daily cycles & growth. www.fmi.ch/news-events/...

Programme of the upcoming TriRhena Gene Regulation Club in Basel on November 5, 2025 https://www.ie-freiburg.mpg.de/gene-regulation-club

Here is the schedule for the next TriRhena Gene Regulation Club at the FMI @fmiscience.bsky.social in Basel 🇨🇭 next week (5 Nov 2025; 14:00-18:45).

Exciting topics ahead & we are looking forward to the #newPI talks by @julianeg.bsky.social (MPI) & Anupama Hemalatha (FMI).

www.ie-freiburg.mpg.de/grc

"[In C. elegans] researchers uncovered key principles of cell death and RNA interference [that] paved the way for new therapies and technologies. These breakthroughs were made not because they were sought by design, but because a few scientists, supported by public grants, followed their curiosity"

For the love of frontier research, or why Elon’s rockets keep blowing up | EMBO reports EMBO Press is an editorially independent publishing platform for the development of EMBO scientific publications.

Nektarios Tavernarakis on why curiosity-driven research, not focusing on application, is fundamental to problem solving and requires government support in @emboreports.org doi.org/10.1038/s443...

Bull’s-eye! Static electricity pulls worm through air to its insect victim Electrostatic charges may help roundworms infect a wide variety of hosts

Flying worms! www.science.org/content/arti... (And I always wondered how worm cuticular alae (= wings) got their name 😉)

🔬 Next in the NCCR RNA & Disease Seminar Series: Prof. Olivia Rissland (Univ. of Colorado School of Medicine, USA)!

📅 27.10. 16:30 – University of Bern, DCBP
📅 28.10. 15:00 – ETH Zurich, Hönggerberg

👉 More info: nccr-rna-and-disease.ch/education/nc...

@unibe.ch @ethz.ch @snf-fns.ch

For what it’s worth, The Wyoming Worm lab has funding for 5 years along with exciting projects with solid foundations. We are is still looking for capable, dedicated, and fun-to-work-with lab members at all career stages. davidfay@uwyo.edu

scholar.google.com/citations?us...

Fabulous @katb92.bsky.social was the lead on our side!

Old cogs, new clocks: a conserved protein complex controls developmental and circadian timing | The EMBO Journal EMBO Press is an editorially independent publishing platform for the development of EMBO scientific publications.

This invites speculations about the evolution of circadian vs. developmental clocks and the features that make the PER/LIN-42:CK1/KIN-20 module so central to different timing mechanisms – as discussed in the accompanying News & Views article @embojournal.org doi.org/10.1038/s443... . 8/n

Intriguingly, this tango also appears to happen in circadian clocks: while CK1 licenses PER for degradation, PER also regulates CK1 activity and its targeting of the CLOCK protein in the nucleus. 7/n

Indeed, KIN-20 exhibits dynamic localization to the nucleus – dependent on LIN-42 binding. We speculate that this may provide KIN-20 to access to additional substrates. 6/n

Animals lacking CK1/KIN-20 or its enzymatic activity are highly arrhythmic – in fact much more so than animals only lacking the LIN-42_CK1BD. This made us wonder whether the key function of the complex is regulation of KIN-20 by LIN-42, rather than the other way around. 5/n

LIN-42 co-immunoprecipitates KIN-20 – an orthologue of Casein Kinase 1delta/epsilon that also occurs in a complex with PER in mammals. The LT/SYQ region forms a CK1-binding domain (CK1BD) that also regulates CK1 activity. CK1 phosphorylates LIN-42. 4/n

Its most conserved feature are the PAS (PER/ARNT/SIM) domains – but we find them to be dispensable for rhythmic molting. Instead, a less conserved region previously termed LT/SYQ for an amino acid signature is required. 3/n

The C. elegans LIN-42 protein is orthologous to fly/mammalian PERIOD – but during development, oscillates with a 7-hr rather than a 24-hr period. It affects temporal cell identity and promotes rhythmic molting – but how, was unclear 2/n

And the next one: dx.doi.org/10.1038/s44318-025-00585-z . Super-fun collaboration with @partchlab.bsky.social & @gotworms.bsky.social to find similarities between developmental and circadian clocks – supported by @fmiscience.bsky.social Facilities and, financially, @snsf.ch and @erc.europa.eu . 1/n

Despite the mess, we are grateful to be funded, have exciting science happening, and have an opening for a postdoc!

If you are interested in sensory biology and esp in cilia, thermosensation, or interoception, and would like to join an interactive & supportive group - please email.

Please RT 🙏

And here is a layperson video summary of parts of our recent paper👇

YouTube video by The Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research DNA rhythms orchestrate gene activity across development

🎥 FMI scientists discovered that thousands of C. elegans genes switch on and off in rhythmic patterns controlled by chromatin, revealing how gene timing shapes development & offering clues to human biological clocks. @labgrosshans.bsky.social www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dibw...

Thanks you, Xantha!

Watch Lucas' amazing artistic/musical rendition of C. elegans larval development and our work on developmental timing and molting here youtu.be/-hGHYRvw87w and read on his inspiration and challenges below

Model organisms as platforms for training scientific minds

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

Absolute fun project with lead authors Dimos Gaidatzis (@fmiscience.bsky.social Comp Bio), Maike Graf-Landua and @smethot.bsky.social - and many other wonderful collaborators @labgrosshans.bsky.social ky.social and @fmiscience.bsky.social. Thanks to @snsf.ch and @erc.europa.eu for funding! n/n

For >1,100 peaks, we could match their phase and amplitude to rhythmically expressing genes. The model also predicted the effects of GRH-1 depletion on the mRNA levels of those genes correctly. 10/n

We validated the model experimentally, by acutely depleting GRH-1. The model reliably predicted the resulting changes in chromatin opening, even in those cases where they were not caused by GRH-1 directly, but, indirectly, through GRH-1’s effect on other TFS. 9/n

In an extreme case, such additive activity can lead to a phenomenon of “destructive interference”, where the rhythmic activities of different TFs cancel each other out to cause non-rhythmic chromatin opening. 8/n

Using a model with only these 9 TFs, and considering their binding strengths, we could predict chromatin dynamics of any phase and amplitude. Since we used linear models without interaction terms, this reveals that new phases and amplitudes can be generated by adding up the activity of TFs. 7/n