Sebastian Falk

A strong Perutz presence in a new @fwf-at.bsky.social consortium: @elifkaragoz.bsky.social will coordinate the Emerging Fields project 'Translating the Ribosome Code of Pediatric Cancers' 🤝 The team includes @sebastianfalk.bsky.social and @marco.heinlab.org ➡️ tinyurl.com/3d6z3ry5

We are excited to share our new preprint: iCLIP3 — an improved protocol for transcriptome-wide mapping of protein–RNA interactions at single-nucleotide resolution.

This is a video summarizing our recent paper (www.nature.com/articles/s41...)

youtu.be/eNY2CRlYTRo

Biased statistics: graf was so long number 1 herself that she had few opportunities 🫠

A comprehensive view on r-protein binding and rRNA domain structuring during early eukaryotic ribosome formation Abstract. Formation of the eukaryotic ribosomal subunits follows a strict regime to assemble ribosomal proteins (r-protein) with ribosomal RNAs (rRNA) whil

And the 4th paper in this week contribution from our lab tells about ribosome biogenesis in yeast. A follow-up story from our wonderful collaborators in Graz - the Bergler Lab. Structural work was again done by the amazing @lgrundmann.bsky.social: academic.oup.com/nar/article/...

LLOMe has long been used to study lysosomal damage, yet how it works has remained a mystery.
Using cryo-electron tomography, we show it forms amyloid structures inside lysosomes that mechanically rupture membranes – revealing a new paradigm for lysosomal failure.

🔗 doi.org/10.64898/202...

#CryoET

GERMAN PRESIDENT STEINMEIER:

“.. the United States has broken with the values that it helped to establish ..

“.. we have now moved beyond the stage where we can lament the lack of respect for international law or the erosion of the international order; we are far beyond that, I believe.”

Interested in the unexpected? How about a link between piRNAs and maternal histone mRNAs … Great collab with @sebastianfalk.bsky.social, @koenig-lab.bsky.social and Florian Steiner.

#piRNA #histone #mRNA #maternal #RNAbiology #RNASky

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Intrigued by a long-standing conundrum in small RNA biology—how nuclear Argonaute proteins silence transposons when they *need* target transcription for their own recruitment—we studied the piRNA pathway.

And found a hidden RNA-decay axis from Piwi to the RNA exosome.

RNA decay via the nuclear exosome is essential for piwi-mediated transposon silencing https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.16.694471v1

RNA decay via the nuclear exosome is essential for piwi-mediated transposon silencing https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.16.694471v1

Tenure Track Professorship (W1 with Tenure Track to W3) in “Molecular Biology" (f/m/d) - Heidelberg job with Universität Heidelberg | 12850668 The Center for Molecular Biology of Heidelberg University (ZMBH) and the Faculty of Biosciences invite applications for a   Tenure Track Professors...

Please RT‼️ #TenureTrack position @zmbh.uni-heidelberg.de one of the best #proteostasis research centres in the world. www.nature.com/naturecareer...

Structures from AlphaFold3 - while often impressively good - tend to fail representing the dynamic ensembles accurately. And often parts of the structure are not correct. Adding experimental data, directly in AlphaFold's diffusion step, provides physically realistic protein ensembles. This image shows two cases where AlphaFold3-only structures were largely improved by guiding with experimental data.

📢 New preprint:
Experiment-guided AlphaFold3 resolves accurate protein ensembles.
doi.org/10.1101/2025...

AlphaFold3 is incredible, but has crucial limitations: it typically collapses to a single conformation, ignoring the inherent dynamics of proteins. And it can be wrong. Here's a solution. 🧵👇

As 2025 comes to an end, it’s time for me to say good bye to my postdoc home during the past 6 years – the Pauli lab @pauligroup.bsky.social @impvienna.bsky.social

Come discuss recent breakthroughs in RNA biology, from molecules to organisms, at the EMBO | EMBL Symposium 'The complex life of RNA'! 👉 s.embl.org/ees26-12-bl

Submit your abstract by 7 July and present your research at #EESRNA 🥼

📢 Open Call! The Max Perutz Labs invite applications for a Full Professorship in Integrative Structure Biology with a focus on in situ structural biology using cryo-electron tomography (cryo-ET) and related methods. More details ➡️ tinyurl.com/brswbymu

Graphical abstract: The Drosophila OSC Genome as a resource for transposon and piRNA biology. The figure illustrates the workflow and key findings. Left: De novo genome assembly using Oxford Nanopore Technologies (ONT) long reads and Hi-C data generates a phased assembly distinguishing unique (blue) and repetitive (orange) sequences. Dot plot comparison between OSC-r1.01 and dm6 reference genomes shows overall synteny with extensive structural variation. Middle: A freely accessible UCSC genome browser session displays multi-omics data tracks including gene models, transposon insertions, chromatin accessibility, transcription, small RNAs, and histone modifications. Right: New insights into flamenco piRNA cluster biology reveal >730 kb transcribed from a single promoter without major splicing. Tethering assays demonstrate long-range silencing effects across the locus, and genome browser tracks show coordinated regulation of piRNA production, transcription, and chromatin state. This resource enables comprehensive studies of transposon regulation and piRNA pathway function in a widely-used Drosophila cell line.

When transposons jump, genomes diverge - even in cultured cells.
I am happy to share our new preprint: a chromosome-scale genome assembly for Drosophila OSC cells, one of the key model systems in the piRNA field, especially for nuclear piRNA biology. 🧬🧵 (1/12)

Professorship in plant genetics.
The Botanical Institute at Kiel University is advertising a W2 professorship. Great opportunity to do plant research in the north of Germany. See:
www.berufungen.uni-kiel.de/de/dateien/o...

PIWI clade Argonautes are essential for transposon silencing. Without them, animals are sterile due to massive transposon activity.

But how does piRNA-guided target interaction translate into silencing?

PhD student Júlia Portell Montserrat has an intriguing answer

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

I am excited to announce that I will be moving to IMB Mainz next year! The Winter call for the IPP PhD program is now open; if you are interested in maternal #mRNA regulation and #translation in early vertebrate development, please apply! Deadline: 16 October.

More info: www.imb.de/students-pos...

Join us for the Austrian Cryo-EM Symposium Nov 11–12 at @istaresearch.bsky.social!

Top speakers, cutting-edge cryo-EM, and a chance to explore Vienna & the ISTA campus.

Register now 👉 cryoem-symposium.pages.ist.ac.at #cryoEM #teamtomo

Multi-scale Simulations of MUT-16 Scaffold Protein Phase Separation and Client Recognition Phase separation of proteins plays a critical role in cellular organisation. How phase separated protein condensates underpin biological function and how condensates achieve specificity remain elusive...

🎉 Congrats to @kgaurav.bsky.social, Lukas Stelzl & @reneketting.bsky.social (SFB1551) on their new Biophysical Journal paper! #MUT16 #PhaseSeparation #MutatorFoci #SmallRNA #GeneRegulation #Celegans #ProteinAssembly #RNAResearch #MultiscaleSimulations Great teamwork👏👏👏 www.cell.com/biophysj/ful....

Intracellular pathogen effector reprograms host gene expression by inhibiting mRNA decay - Nature Communications Intracellular pathogens hijack host gene expression to subvert cellular processes. Here, the authors show that Legionella pneumophila’s PieF effector inhibits the human CCR4-NOT deadenylation machiner...

Happy to share the latest work on a bacterial protein that inhibits human mRNA decay machinery, in collaboration with @smlea.bsky.social #RNAsky

www.nature.com/articles/s41... Intracellular pathogen effector reprograms host gene expression by inhibiting mRNA decay | Nature Communications

This guy…..

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...

Congratulations Marco and team. Great to see it published 🎉

Sequence-based prediction of intermolecular interactions driven by disordered regions Intrinsically disordered regions (IDRs) in proteins play essential roles in cellular function. A growing body of work has shown that IDRs often interact with partners in a manner that does not depend ...

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

🚀 Group leaders Peter Schlögelhofer, Robert Konrat, and @sebastianfalk.bsky.social have secured @fwf-at.bsky.social projects, bringing in nearly €1.5 million. Their projects span mRNA processing, novel NMR methods, and chromosome architecture ➡️ tinyurl.com/3a6j3pw8

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

If only funders saw the bigger picture… The obsession with medical research has come at a cost: plant biology has been sidelined, with countless discoveries stalled. Just look at Barbara McClintock, who discovered mobile genetic elements—only to be dismissed at the time of her groundbreaking work.

Reisen mit Deutschen Bahn; immer wieder ein Erlebnis, leider selten ein schoenes. ICE228 von Wien nach Wue; 5 h Fahrt und nur drei funktionierende Toiletten im ganzen Zug. Der Zug ist voll.. mehr als 20 minuten Anstehen fuer menschliche Beduerfnisse. @deutsche-bahn.bsky.social @bahn.bsky.social