Irma Querques

A Programmable Dual-RNA–Guided DNA Endonuclease in Adaptive Bacterial Immunity A prokaryotic RNA–directed targeting system can be designed to cleave any DNA sequence.

13 years ago, the revolutionary genetic tool #CRISPR/Cas9 was published in Science, work that Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna won a #NobelPrize for in 2020.

On #WorldCRISPRDay, read the landmark paper that describes the discovery: https://scim.ag/42JHuSN

EMBL’s 2025 Kendrew alumni award recipient may know how to make fairy tales come true.

Irma Querques (@irmaquerques.bsky.social) repurposed the ‘Sleeping Beauty’ transposon as a genetic tool for new therapeutics, particularly against cancer.

www.embl.org/news/people-...

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...

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

ZNFX1 compacts and tags RNA to keep immunity in check Tim Clausen’s lab at the IMP and collaborators have uncovered how the ancient immune protein ZNFX1 enables cells to walk the fine line between fighting infection and avoiding autoimmune damage. The te...

Scientists uncovered how the immune protein ZNFX1 enables cells to walk the fine line between fighting infection & avoiding autoimmune damage. ZNFX1 can ubiquitinate & compact host & viral RNA into molecular condensates, extending ubiquitin biology to RNA itself. More: www.imp.ac.at/news/article...

YouTube video by EMBL Alumni Irma Querques - 2025 John Kendrew Award Recipient

Excited to share my talk at the EMBL John Kendrew Award ceremony about what transposons taught me about science, life, and change along the way.

Big thanks to my mentors, the @embl.org Alumni community, and my current scientific home @maxperutzlabs.bsky.social 💛

youtu.be/NwIikKS7EWE?...

Exciting times ahead!

Today marks the first day of the Loeff Lab at Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands 🇳🇱. I’m thrilled to begin this new adventure and continue exploring microbial defense mechanisms and their applications through an integrative structural biology approach.

Thank you Diana!

Congrats to group leader @irmaquerques.bsky.social on receiving the EMBL's John Kendrew Award! 🎉 From left to right: Irma's former advisor Christoph Müller, Irma, and Pavel Tomancak, Chair of the EMBL Alumni Association. (c) @embl.org

last call!
submit your abstract by tonight to be selected for one of the many oral presentations at the leading European Transposon Meeting. We are very much looking forward to your contribution and attendance!

First Ma lab #GMI paper is now online! It‘s a mini-review on insect-induced plant #galls —their coolness and research potential! Plant galls induced by insects: Coordinated developmental reprogramming and defence manipulation www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

The DOC-torate dream team! 🎓 Seven Perutz PhD students just secured @oeaw.bsky.social DOC Fellowships - the most we've ever had in one year! Huge Congrats! 🎉➡️ tinyurl.com/29nvtf7j

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

Pls. share widely

Calling all transposon fans & lovers of genetic innovation

MOBILE GENOME welcomes you in Heidelberg, Nov. 4–7 2025

→ Vibrant & friendly community
→ Cutting-edge talks from mechanisms to physiology
→ Plenty of surprises (TEs never stop innovating)

submit abstract by July 29

My colleagues are awesome!

📢 Open Call! The Max Perutz Labs invite applications for a Full Professorship in Molecular Mechanisms of Disease. More information ➡️ tinyurl.com/3yn883b8

Exclusive: Famed protein structure competition nears end as NIH grant money runs out Agency silent on funding renewal for contest that inspired creation of AIs that predicted how proteins would fold

Exclusive: An international scientific competition widely credited with spurring the development of artificial intelligence for biology appears to be on its deathbed. scim.ag/44ukS90

Evolutionary repurposing of a DNA segregation machinery into a cytoskeletal system controlling cyanobacterial cell shape Bacteria, despite their diversity, use conserved cytoskeletal systems for their intracellular organization. In unicellular bacteria, the ParMRC DNA partitioning apparatus is well known for forming act...

One of the most exciting discoveries from our lab so far is now online as a preprint!

Read a story on how the ParMR and Min systems started to collaborate to create the CorMR cytoskeleton, which now controls cell shape in multicellular cyanobacteria:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

🌞 A warm welcome to our summer school students! We're excited to have eight bright young scientists joining us at the Perutz for the next few weeks – diving into research, discovery, and lab life. Here's to a summer full of science and inspiration!
@vbcscitraining.bsky.social

Full Professorship in Molecular Mechanisms of Disease - Vienna BioCenter, Austria job with Max Perutz Labs, University of Vienna | 12841053 Join theMax Perutz Labs as Full Professor to unravel disease mechanisms—from metabolism and stress to RNA regulation, epigenetics, and immunity.

Exciting and rare opportunity to join the @maxperutzlabs.bsky.social and the @viennabiocenter.bsky.social as a Full Professor!
www.nature.com/naturecareer...

Congrats to Clemens Plaschka, who was selected to become a Member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO bsky.app/profile/embo...), becoming the eighth out of 14 IMP faculty members to receive this honour. More on Clemens Plaschka and his research: www.imp.ac.at/news/article...

Spoke at @viennabiocenter.bsky.social last week about my path from lab bench to newsroom. I talked science journalism (what it is + isn’t), how to talk to journalists, and how to start in #scicomm.
Thanks to @irmaquerques.bsky.social & @vbcscitraining.bsky.social for having me!

Huge congratulations @sramundo.bsky.social So well deserved!

👏 Alwin Köhler, group leader and scientific director, has received an @erc.europa.eu Advanced Grant! His project will explore how nuclear pore complexes remodel nuclear membranes to form functional channels ➡️ tinyurl.com/3wcvexc9

#ERCAdG
@univie.ac.at
@meduniwien.ac.at

What’s it like to be a postdoc at the Vienna BioCenter? Anna Osnato shares her experience from joining the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology.

The VIP³ PostDoc Program call is open – apply now for this unique opportunity! training.vbc.ac.at/post-docs/vi...

#VBCPostDoc

Professional gene editor and professor of Genetics here.
The world does not need more negativity. It does not need more nonscientific hype, either. I will be data-based negative and say to Colossal: give me a double-strand break!! [1/3]

Protein editing using a coordinated transposition reaction Protein engineering through the ligation of polypeptide fragments has proven enormously powerful for studying biochemical processes. In general, this strategy necessitates a final protein-folding step...

Employing engineered split inteins to replace the internal regions of target proteins in a single reaction. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... #NBThighlight

We are seeking a new colleague to join us at the Vienna BioCenter, specifically at my beloved home institution, IMBA @imbavienna.bsky.social

we value collegiality and a passion for curiosity driven science. Being a great and fun human being also helps!

IMBA is recruiting a Junior Group Leader! Are you interested in starting your own lab, pursuing curiosity-driven basic research in the life sciences? Apply now to our group leader position. The deadline is May 28. Link is below.

Very happy to have Iana in our team!

The legendary EMBO Integrative Modeling Course is back! If you want to be in this picture in the 2025 edition, just go ahead and register at meetings.embo.org/event/25-bio...

Organized by myself & @amjjbonvin.bsky.social & @arneelof.bsky.social & @lindorfflarsen.bsky.social