Elias Adriaenssens

And now for something completely different in co-translational targeting In two recent papers in Cell, Zhu et al. and Luo et al. use selective ribosome profiling to identify the substrates and timing of co-translational protein targeting to mitochondria. The results sugges...

And now for something completely different in co-translational targeting: Molecular Cell www.cell.com/molecular-ce...

Translation landscape of stress granules Cryo–electron tomography visualizes stress granules in situ, revealing their spatial interplay with translation machinery.

What's the role of stress granules in translation? Here we provide a clue: we characterized the distribution of ribosomal complexes within SGs and reproduced this landscape with a phase-field model, pointing to a new regulatory mechanism. #TEAMTOMO www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

GCN1 couples GCN2 to ribosomal state to initiate amino acid response pathway signaling During nutrient deprivation, activation of the protein kinase GCN2 regulates cell survival and metabolic homeostasis. In addition to amino acid stress, GCN2 is activated by a variety of cellular stres...

Beautiful reconstitution of amino acid stress-dependent ISR activation by my @harvardcellbio.bsky.social colleagues presenting a unifying mechanism for GCN2 activation, which requires ribosome collisions and is enhanced by cognate uncharged tRNA in the A site! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Giant DNA viruses encode a hallmark translation initiation complex of eukaryotic life In contrast to living organisms, viruses were long thought to lack protein synthesis machinery and instead depend on host factors to translate viral transcripts. Here, we discover that giant DNA virus...

Historically, viruses were thought to primarily use host cell's translational machinery. New work from @harvardcellbio.bsky.social faculty Amy Lee reveals that a giant DNA virus encodes its own IF4F initiation complex, suggesting an unexpected evolutionary innovation. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

GCN1 couples GCN2 to ribosomal state to initiate amino acid response pathway signaling During nutrient deprivation, activation of the protein kinase GCN2 regulates cell survival and metabolic homeostasis. In addition to amino acid stress, GCN2 is activated by a variety of cellular stres...

Ooohhh....GCN1 couples GCN2 to ribosomal state to initiate amino acid response pathway signaling | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

De novo design of RNA and nucleoprotein complexes https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.01.679929v1

Elaborate machinery for inserting proteins into the outer membrane of bacteria Bacteria in the gut use an unusual molecular apparatus to insert complex proteins into their outer membrane.

Elaborate machinery for inserting proteins into the outer membrane of bacteria www.nature.com/articles/d41...

A miniature CRISPR–Cas10 enzyme confers immunity by inhibitory signalling - Nature Panoptes, an anti-phage defence system against virus-mediated immune suppression, is revealed.

Now online at @nature.com we show how the Panoptes defense system protects against viruses that attempt immune evasion - and expands our understanding of the role of oligonucleotides in immunity.

Check out this work co-led with @benadler.bsky.social here:

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

Phosphorylation on tyrosines control key pathways in immunity, cancer, and metabolism. For the first time, we can now design proteins that specifically recognize individual phosphotyrosines, even in disordered regions. (1/8)

Preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Cardiolipin dynamics promote membrane remodeling by mitochondrial OPA1 - Nature Communications This study reveals how cardiolipin governs mitochondrial morphology by modulating the activity of human OPA1 and how its replacement by monolyso-cardiolipin, as observed in Barth syndrome, impacts mitochondrial membrane-shaping mechanisms.

Excited to share that our paper on mitochondrial cardiolipin dynamics is published in @natcomms.nature.com today! We provide molecular explanations for unique aspects of mitochondrial morphology and the mechanisms underlying cardiolipin-related Barth Syndrome.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Itaconate is metabolized to 2-hydroxymethylsuccinate through a CoA-independent degradation pathway in mitochondria https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.29.679238v1

Dose-efficient cryo-electron microscopy for thick samples using tilt- corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy - Nature Methods Tilt-corrected bright-field scanning transmission electron microscopy offers enhanced cryogenic electron microscopy contrast and substantial improvement in dose efficiency for thick samples such as bacterial cells and large organelles, while still being able to perform single-particle analysis.

Tilt-corrected bright-field scanning transmission electron microscopy (tcBF-STEM) offers enhanced contrast and dose efficiency for cryo-EM in thick biological specimens.

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

Protein Domain Designer tool for the generation of publication-ready protein domain diagrams

New week, new tool: Find our Protein Domain Designer tool to generate publication-ready protein domain diagrams here: domaindesigner.farnunglab.com

Impaired hematopoiesis and embryonic lethality at midgestation of mice lacking both lipid transfer proteins VPS13A and VPS13C VPS13A and VPS13C are bridge-like lipid transport proteins with distinct subcellular localization and function, and their absence is linked with chorea-acanthocytosis and Parkinson's disease, respecti...

"Impaired hematopoiesis and embryonic lethality at midgestation of mice lacking both lipid transfer proteins VPS13A and VPS13C" out now in PLOS Biology
journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

Dimerization for activation - Nature Chemical Biology Nature Chemical Biology - Dimerization for activation

Thanks a lot to Yiyun Song @natchembio.nature.com for highlighting our ZNFX1 paper. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Our new review is out! Likely once an independent organism, mitochondria have retained a striking degree of autonomy. We discuss their capacity to sense within—a process we refer to as mitochondrial inside-out signaling. Written by talented @furkanoflaz.bsky.social @signscaztl.bsky.social

Cryo-ET structure of the microtubule-associated autoinhibited LRRK2^I2020T.

Using cryo-ET, CRN Team Reck-Peterson showed that full-length LRRK2 can oligomerize on microtubules in its autoinhibited state. Both WT-LRRK2 and PD-linked LRRK2 mutants formed filaments on microtubules.

🔗 Read the full #preprint to learn more about their recent research: bit.ly/3VrVNaB

The future is visiting again! We are seeking applicants for the 7th season of MITOchats. Deadline for submission is October 17th. Visit www.mitotalks.org for details or submit your application at forms.gle/5D6vWE92yYCi...

You’ve heard of ubiquitination, meet deazaguanylation: Doug Wassarman in our lab discovered phage defense pathways have co-opted Q nucleobase biosynthetic enzymes to catalyze a new form of protein conjugation chemistry @science.org

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Review @cp-cellchembiol.bsky.social @xinnanwanglab.bsky.social @stanforduniversity.bsky.social
Sensing within: Mitochondrial inside-out signal transduction
www.cell.com/cell-chemica...

Huntingtin binds and bundles F-actin!
Thrilled to team up with the Humbert (Sorbonne Université) and Song (KAIST) labs on this discovery.
We had a blast doing cryo-ET on this unexpected complex — and now so many new questions lie ahead!
#TeamTomo #CryoET #HTT #actin

doi.org/10.1126/scia...

For decades, human genome editing has been limited to small, localized modifications.

Today, in a new paper published in @science.org , researchers from Arc's Hsu lab show that bridge recombinase technology is capable of large-scale genomic rearrangements in human cells.

Ribonucleotide incorporation into mitochondrial DNA drives inflammation - Nature Imbalanced nucleotide metabolism leads to age- and mtDNA-dependent inflammatory responses and senescence-associated secretory phenotype in senescence.

📢 Publication Alert: We're excited to share a new study from the Langer Lab published in @nature.com! It uncovers how an excess of RNA building blocks can destabilize mitochondrial DNA, which plays a role in age-related inflammation.

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

Paper alert! 📢 How do cells strike the perfect balance during meiosis? ⚖️ A new study from the Matos lab in @natureportfolio.nature.com uncovers how Holliday junctions and the synaptonemal complex safeguard crossovers ➡️ tinyurl.com/2k4mmpzu

@univie.ac.at
@meduniwien.ac.at

Origin of chaperone dependence and assembly complexity in Rubisco biogenesis Molecular chaperones assist with the folding and assembly of protein clients. Consequently, they are essential to diverse cellular functions. In most aerobic photosynthetic organisms such as B-cyanoba...

A new preprint from the lab. I won't do a tweetorial until this is peer reviewed, but I think it's a banger, led by
@JedNzy. It's about Rubisco and what chaperones are really for. He's on the market, get him while you can. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Ribonucleotide incorporation into mitochondrial DNA drives inflammation - Nature Imbalanced nucleotide metabolism leads to age- and mtDNA-dependent inflammatory responses and senescence-associated secretory phenotype in senescence.

Ribonucleotide incorporation into mitochondrial DNA drives inflammation

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

Congratulations to the Langer lab @mpiage.bsky.social, Amir, and the rest of the team!

A Leishmania virulence factor harnesses an allosteric kinase switch to regulate its ubiquitin ligase activity Stringent control of ubiquitylation is a central requirement of signaling specificity in eukaryotes. Here, we discover a domain module integrating pro…

Allosteric activation of a ubiquitin ligase by an internal kinase domain! Congratulations to our team member Thornton Fokkens for this fascinating discovery in a neglected disease area with strong therapeutic need. Many thanks to all our great collaborators!
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

I am excited to share our new preprint on the CAGE complex, a mysterious hollow protein complex that I first saw years ago while surveying Tetrahymena ciliary lysate www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #cilia #protistsonsky 🧬🧪

Molecular basis of polyadenylated RNA fate determination in the nucleus Eukaryotic genomes generate a plethora of polyadenylated (pA+) RNAs[1][1],[2][2], that are packaged into ribonucleoprotein particles (RNPs). To ensure faithful gene expression, functional pA+ RNPs, in...

How are RNAs sorted for export vs. degradation in the nucleus? In collaboration with @heick.bsky.social’s lab we (@clemensplaschka.bsky.social and @juliusbrennecke.bsky.social labs) discovered a direct mechanistic link between the export and decay machineries: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... (1/x)

🦠 Mycobacteria aren't just tough, they're interior designers! 🦠 Check out our latest #preprint 🚨, led by our PhD student @camimille.bsky.social , where we show that #Mycobacterium tuberculosis builds secret cytoplasmic membranes to adapt its metabolism and sneak past immunity 🤫

Thread coming soon!