Dmitry Kretov

Overcoming the eIF2α Brake in Human Cell-Derived Translation Systems Cell-free translation from human cells is a powerful platform for studying mammalian gene expression and building synthetic biology tools, but productivity is often curtailed by inhibitory phosphoryla...

Excited about Kolya Aleksashin's new work, enabling preparation of active in vitro translation systems from primary human cells and difficult-to-edit cells (fibroblasts and cardiomyocytes). This opens new opportunities to probe mechanisms of translation regulation.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Human DICER1 hotspot mutation induces both loss and gain of miRNA function Nature Structural & Molecular Biology - Jee et al. study a cancer hotspot allele of DICER1 that disrupts RNaseIIIb activity. Beyond ablating 5p hairpin cleavage, 3p passenger strands are...

new Lai lab paper @natsmb.nature.com! Dicer is specifically mutated in cancer, but we don't fully understand its molecular/reg impacts. with @danweihuangfu.bsky.social, we characterized the first knockin Dicer hotspot in hESCs, and found unexpected defects in miRNA biogenesis! 🧬 1/4

rdcu.be/eOc0q

Genetic regulatory mechanisms in the synthesis of proteins The synthesis of enzymes in bacteria follows a double genetic control. The socalled structural genes determine the molecular organization of the prote…

Gentle reminder that everyone should read Jacob and Monod, 1961. And then read it again every once in awhile. A master-class on clear writing (and, ya know, Nobel Prize winning stuff, too).

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

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

📅 Save the Date!
The 4th Canadian Zebrafish Research Conference will take place on Friday, May 15, 2026, at CHU Sainte-Justine, Montreal (just before the Canadian Neuroscience Conference!)
Multiple travel awards available with 2 Postdoctoral Rising Stars Awards! #izfs

Disparate leukemia mutations converge on nuclear phase-separated condensates Mutant NPM1 and various leukemia oncofusions form biophysically indistingishable nuclear condensates, termed C-bodies, which orchestrate leukemogenic gene expression. These findings consolidate diverse genetic lesions into a shared pathogenic mechanism in AML.

Now online! Disparate leukemia mutations converge on nuclear phase-separated condensates

Multiple overlapping binding sites determine transcription factor occupancy - Nature A new method enables comprehensive screening and identification of low-affinity DNA binding sites for transcription factors, and reveals that nucleotides flanking high-affinity binding sites create ov...

This is such an interesting paper. Why? Because the binding of transcription factor (TF) proteins to DNA governs how our genes are turned on/off/up/down, & so is the primary issue for how our genes work in development and how our cells respond to just about anything.🧵
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Oxidative stress sensing by the translation elongation machinery promotes production of detoxifying selenoproteins Selenocysteine, incorporated into polypeptides at recoded termination codons, plays an essential role in redox biology. Using GPX1 and GPX4, selenoenzymes that mitigate oxidative stress, as reporters,...

Colliding ribosomes are potent signals of cellular stress. But do cells use ‘programmed’ ribosome collisions to regulate gene expression? I’m excited to present a new story from my lab led by Frederick Rehfeld(@fred-rehfeld.bsky.social) which revealed that the answer is YES! Read on to find out how👇

mRNA poly(A)-tail length is a battleground for coronavirus–host competition Most eukaryotic mRNAs contain a poly(A) tail, which in post-embryonic cells enhances their stability. Many cytoplasmic RNA viruses also harbor poly(A) tails on their genomic RNA and mRNAs. Here, we re...

Check out the latest work from our lab, led by Arash Latifkar @ara-latifkar.bsky.social , www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

(1/4) New Pre-print! 🌟
Embryonic development is usually seen as a continuous process, yet some embryos can pause their development to survive harsh conditions, a phenomenon known as diapause. How this pausing is actively maintained has remained a mystery.

Really grateful to see our work featured by @quantamagazine.bsky.social in this piece on the evolution of genome regulation. Huge thanks to @philipcball.bsky.social for such a beautifully written article.

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

Translation landscape of stress granules | Science Advances

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

Figure 1. Spindle Cell Tumors Resembling MPNSTs in Zebrafish Heterozygous for Mutations in RP Genes (A and B) Fish with apparent masses, as indicated by the arrows, or other evident pathology were selected for histological analysis: (A) a hi2582 fish, (B) a hi1034B fish. (C–H) Histopathology of representative tumors stained with hematoxylin and eosin reveals patterns consistent with the diagnosis of MPNST in hi10 fish (C and D), hi1974 fish (E–G), and hi1807 fish (H). (D) A large tumor with central necrosis is seen emanating from the optic nerve (n) (e, eye) (20×).

#ZebrafishFunFacts: As the most-cited #zebrafish cancer research paper, Amsterdam et al screened hundreds of heterozygous lines for embryonic lethal mutations & found elevated cancer incidence in ribosomal genes. This previously underappreciated finding was published @plosbiology.org 21 years ago. 🧪

We combine our yeast genetics experiments with the massive body of literature data to make a case for 40S scanning of 5’UTRs of by 1D diffusion (finalised version): m.rnajournal.cshlp.org/content/31/1...

1/5 Lab's first manuscript 🎉 is out @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social today! Beautifully, it is performed by a senior undergraduate thesis student, Mohammed! We developed a 3-D printed #zebrafish embryo imaging chamber 🔬and connected it to syringe pumps to be able to perfuse drugs in a timely fashion. 🧪

RNA-binding proteins provide specificity to the PAN2-PAN3 mRNA deadenylation complex https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.27.678968v1

Congratulations Markus! Really cool work!👏

Collective homeostasis of condensation-prone proteins via their mRNAs - Nature The authors discover a homeostatic process termed interstasis, in which an increased concentration of proteins within RNA–protein condensates induces the sequestration of their own mRNAs.

This is a fascinating paper that particular types of RNA binding proteins with IDRs that target nuclear speckles also can recruit their own RNAs to nuclear speckles as a negative feedback mechanism for condensation the authors call "interstasis" www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🚀 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/

We quantified mRNA abundance, translation, protein abundance, protein degradation and cell growth across thousands of single cells from a mammalian tissue.

The results revealed 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐞𝐱 regulation & 𝐬𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐞 organizing principles:

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

🧵

Rapid remodeling of NTP levels enables immediate translational adaptation to energy stress in yeast Bexley et al. report that rapid metabolic shifts mediate immediate, protective changes in RNA metabolism following energy depletion. In yeast, protein production is regulated by tuning enzymatic const...

www.cell.com/molecular-ce...

It is my pleasure to share with you the latest from @jsvejstrup.bsky.social lab, where we look at how the reduction of RNAPII levels has a severe, yet organized transcriptional response in the cell.

Congrats, Eric and Renfu!!!

A molecular switch orchestrates the nuclear export of human messenger RNA The nuclear export of messenger RNA (mRNA) is a key step in eukaryotic gene expression ([Köhler and Hurt, 2007][1]). Despite recent insights into the packaging of newly transcribed mRNAs into ribonucl...

Dream collaboration with the groups of Torben Heick Jensen (@heick.bsky.social; @au.dk) and Clemens Plaschka (@impvienna.bsky.social). Building in part on the incredible work from Ulrich Hohmann on human mRNA export.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

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

How do cells sort which RNAs to keep or destroy? New preprint from THJ, Brenneke and Plaschka labs shows that export and decay machineries (TREX2/PAXT) both recognise UAP56-bound RNAs. Whether they’re exported or degraded depends on where in the nucleus this happens.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Excited to share our recent work about the role of the molecular chaperone TRAP1 as RNA-binding protein! #RBPs #HGSOC

Excited to share my postdoc work, out on bioRxiv today! Histones package DNA into nucleosomes to form the building blocks of chromatin, but how modular and programmable is this system? 1/9

NOT TO BE MISSED. My awesome colleague Rob Brewster may have COMPLETELY upended our understanding of how TFs work ... a must-read for anyone who cares in the slightest about gene regulation

Peptide-RNA photo-crosslinks with tunable RNA chain map protein-RNA interfaces Photo-crosslinking mass spectrometry enables the identification of protein-RNA interactions in living cells, pinpointing interaction interfaces at single-amino acid resolution. However, current isolat...

New preprint: We isolate peptide–RNA photo-crosslinks with tunable RNA chains from living cells for mass spec. This maps over 4,700 crosslinking sites across 744 proteins and offers the first glimpse into the RNA sequences in crosslinks by MS. Read here: doi.org/10.1101/2025...

History of Molecular Biology Collection This unparalleled collection includes Rosalind Franklin's historic 'Photo 51,' which revealed the double-helix structure of DNA.

News in the history of molecular biology. The Science History Institute in Philadelphia has acquired a huge archive of correspondence and other scientific material from the pioneers of molecular biology (Franklin, Klug, Perutz, Delbrück etc, with items from Crick and Watson, too). 1/n