Johannes Stein

💥I am excited to present our first research paper from the lab about caveolae lipid trafficking 🎉 Led by my fantastic PhD candidate @estherocket.bsky.social

Here we looked into caveolae mediated dietary lipid uptake and how this process is mechanistically facilitated 👇 1/n

Here's another exciting doctoral project led by Research Group Leader Beatrice Ramm at the Friedrich Miescher Laboratory.

Check the list of other available projects on our website:
lnkd.in/gEMXNQY6
The application portal is open so apply now!

#PhD #IMPRS #graduateprogram #maxplanck

Janelia is hiring! "Invent new imaging methods, molecular tools, or protein chemistry approaches"

www.janelia.org/content/lead...

Creation of new junior research groups at the Institut Pasteur - Call for applications 2026 - Research The Institut Pasteur is launching an international call to recruit new junior research group leaders leveraging cutting-edge transdisciplinary approaches to exploring infectious diseases, host-microbe...

🔬 Call to create junior research groups at the Institut Pasteur

Focus: Infectious diseases, host-microbe interactions, vaccines
Special interest: AI methodologies

📅 Deadline: Feb 9, 2026
👥 2-12 years post-PhD

Apply now 📝 research.pasteur.fr/en/call/crea...

#JobOpportunity #Research

Cohesin guides homology search during DNA repair using loops and sister chromatid linkages Accurate repair of DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) is essential for genome stability, and defective repair underlies diseases such as cancer. Homologous recombination uses an intact homologous sequenc...

I am happy to share that my postdoctoral work in the @gerlichlab.bsky.social at @imbavienna.bsky.social is finally out 🎉!
Our study reveals how cohesin guides focused and accurate homology search.
Read more 👉 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Follow along for key insights and updates! 🧵

We developed a 'smart STED microscope' to detect rare objects/events in cells, and unraveled the 3D morphology of a nuclear membraneless organelle (paraspeckle). Amazing collaboration with Sjoerd Stallinga, Bernd Rieger (TU Delft) and @mixmue.bsky.social 🙏 (1/3) www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Synergy between regulatory elements can render cohesin dispensable for distal enhancer function Enhancers are critical genetic elements controlling transcription from promoters, yet how they convey regulatory information across large genomic distances remains unclear. Here, we engineer pluripote...

Bah, who needs cohesin if you're at the right place (near). Grover once taught us the difference between near and far (my favourite Sesame Street piece), and now amazing work from @elphegenoralab.bsky.social led by @karissalhansen.bsky.social shows us how: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Want to analyze the role of endogenous retroviruses in early human development or investigate their regulation in pluripotency and early development for your PhD?

Join the lab of @fueyoraquel.bsky.social via the IMPRS-BAC #gradschool!

👉 www.molgen.mpg.de/5094682/Fuey...

🔬 Hot #PhD topic: Single-molecule fluorescence and super-resolution microscopy! Use quantitative nanoscale imaging to map nuclear organization. Apply by Jan 7 to join Johannes Stein’s Lab @jmstein.bsky.social & #IMPRS-BAC #gradschool!

👉 www.molgen.mpg.de/5098010/stei...

A great opportunity to join our newly established imaging centre in Frankfurt as engineer/technician. If you love light microscopy, please apply!
Please share!

IMPRS-BAC #gradschool: Our new groupleader @sedonamurphy.bsky.social has an open PhD project in her lab. Topic: Spatial feedback between epigenetic regulation and chromatin regulation. Apply by Jan 7, 2026!
👉 www.molgen.mpg.de/5091778/Murp...

Congratulations, Arindam, super happy for you and all the best for your start🥳!

Congratulations🥳!

Synthetic fluorophores for live-cell fluorescence microscopy and biosensing - Nature Chemical Biology Performing live-cell microscopy experiments with high spatial and temporal resolution requires fluorophores with highly optimized properties. This Review examines the progress in developing synthetic ...

🚨Curious how synthetic fluorophores simplify microscopy? Our review covers applications such as super-resolution microscopy and biosensing. 🎉👩‍🔬Congrats to my first PhD student, Agnese Nicoli, for the fearless deep dive! 🔬 ⚗️
D-CHAB @ethz.ch
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Single-molecule friends!

The prelim. program of next year's sm- #Gordon conference in Switzerland is online: www.grc.org/single-molec...
It'll be 3x fantastic: science, people, place in the alps ⛰️. Kevin & I hope to see you all next June:

Have a look, tell your friends, and register!

High-plex spatial RNA imaging in one round with conventional microscopes using color-intensity barcodes - Nature Biotechnology The 64-plex fluorescence imaging of RNA in tissues is achieved in one imaging cycle

@lucianomartelotto, not on Bluesky, on a new Spatial RNA imaging method, PRISM. www.nature.com/articles/s41... Now added to #SingleCell #Spatial #Method bit.ly/scmethodstable

Selective RNA sequestration in biomolecular condensates directs cell fate transitions - Nature Biotechnology Stem cell differentiation is controlled by manipulating RNA condensates.

1/ Excited to share our new study with @brumbaugh-lab.bsky.social, out in @natbiotech.nature.com! P-bodies selectively sequester RNAs encoding cell fate regulators, often from the preceding developmental stage. Releasing these RNAs can drive changes in cell identity. 🧵 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Really excited to present the results of a fantastic collaboration with Jesse Veenvliet @jesseveenvliet.bsky.social @mpi-cbg.de @poldresden.bsky.social 🤩

We find a unique mechanism for body axis elongation in mammals, different from other vertebrate species

➡️ www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

A Photoswitchable HaloTag for Spatiotemporal Control of Fluorescence in Living Cells Photoswitchable fluorophores are critical for advanced bioimaging. Here, we develop a photoswitchable self-labeling HaloTag that can reversibly modulate the emission of a bound fluorogenic dye via a ....

Our photoswitchable HaloTag is out in Angewandte Chemie @angewandtechemie.bsky.social ! We now also show that this system can be used to control emitter density in SMLM. Congrats to Franzi, Bego, and our amazing collaborators. Check it out: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

[2026] – Endogenous retroviruses in human embryogenesis

My lab is seeking two PhD candidates to investigate the function and regulation of endogenous retroviruses in the early stages of human development 🦠👩‍🔬. Apply through the International Max Planck Research School (IMPRS) program: www.molgen.mpg.de/IMPRS/applic.... www.molgen.mpg.de/5094682/Fuey...

My new lab at the @molgen.mpg.de will be following up on some of the nuclear organization aspects of ecDNA so please do reach out if this is of interest :)

Enhancer activation from transposable elements in extrachromosomal DNA - Nature Cell Biology Kraft, Murphy, Jones et al. identify extrachromosomal DNA (ecDNA)-interacting elements (EIEs) enriched for transposable elements within ecDNA in colorectal cancer cells. They show that EIE 14 integrat...

Here, we show that the unique regulatory landscape of ecDNA enables an ancient LINE to resurrect and act as an enhancer of Myc. This was so fun with @katerinakraft.bsky.social and @mattjones.bsky.social and others. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Mechanisms of Messenger RNA Packaging and Export The packaging and export of messenger RNA (mRNA) are essential cellular pathways that bridge the nuclear and cytoplasmic phases of eukaryotic gene expression. During their nuclear maturation, mRNAs ar...

what you always wanted to know about the molecular choreography of nuclear mRNA packaging and export.

thought-provoking review by our colleagues (local or in the RNA community).

@plaschkalab.bsky.social
@rupertfaraway.bsky.social
@thezenklusen.bsky.social

www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

SynapseNet is a deep learning based software tool that automates the segmentation of vesicles, mitochondria, synaptic compartments, and the active zone. This is visualized in three panels. On the left, a section of an electron tomogram with a synaptic compartment densely filled with vesicles, which appear as round structures with dark boundary and light body in the image, is shwon. The top right panel shows the segmentation result of vesicles, visualized by masks with an individual color per vesicle and outlines for the segmented compartment (red) and active zone (blue). The bottom right panels shows a 3D rendering of the segmentation with vesicles shown as yellow spheres.

Are you studying synapses in electron microscopy? Tired of annotating vesicles? We have the tool for you! SynapseNet implements automatic segmentation and analysis of vesicles and other synaptic structures and has now been published:
www.molbiolcell.org/doi/full/10....

Enhancer-promoter compatibility is mediated by the promoter-proximal region Gene promoters induce transcription in response to distal enhancers. How enhancers specifically activate their target promoter while bypassing other promoters remains unclear. Here, we find that the p...

What is a promoter? And how does it work?

We very happy to share our latest work trying to understand enhancer-promoter compatibility.
I am very excited about the results of @blanka-majchrzycka.bsky.social, which changed the way I think about promoters

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

Reporter CRISPR screens decipher cis-regulatory and trans-regulatory principles at the Xist locus - Nature Structural & Molecular Biology Here Schwämmle et al. develop CRISPR reporter screens to map transcription-factor-regulatory element interactions at the Xist locus, revealing a two-step mechanism integrating developmental and X-dosage signals to initiate X-chromosome inactivation.

⚠️ Paper alert: Using a novel CRISPR screening approach, we mapped the entire regulatory network controlling Xist—key for X-chromosome inactivation.
👉 We discover how sex and development signals are decoded at a single gene locus.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
👇 Bluetorial

A human-specific regulatory mechanism revealed in a pre-implantation model Nature - Genetic manipulation of blastoids reveals the role of recently emerged transposable elements and genes in human development.

Today in @nature.com, we present our work leveraging functional genomics and human blastoids to uncover a human-specific mechanism in preimplantation development driven by the endogenous retrovirus HERVK.
Special thanks to the reviewers whose comments improved our manuscript a lot! rdcu.be/eI3tD

Highly efficient 12-color multiplexing with speed-optimized DNA-PAINT. We are excited to share our latest paper in @natcomms.nature.com, using left-handed DNA to extend speed-optimized DNA-PAINT to 12 targets in a simple and straightforward way! 🧬👈🚀https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-64228-x

Functional maps of a genomic locus reveal confinement of an enhancer by its target gene Genes are often activated by enhancers located at large genomic distances, and the importance of this positioning is poorly understood. By relocating promoter-reporter constructs into thousands of alt...

Our reporter hopping scaled up to thousands of integrations in a single locus, to produce high-resolution functional maps, with plenty of interesting insights: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Kinetic organization of the genome revealed by ultraresolution multiscale live imaging Genome function requires regulated genome motion. However, tools to directly observe this motion in vivo have been limited in coverage and resolution. Here we introduce an approach to tile mammalian c...

Congrats to my friends in the Boettiger lab for this really beautiful live imaging work. A big leap forward in understanding the dynamic side of genome organization. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...