Dominique Vanhecke

A small polymerase ribozyme that can synthesize itself and its complementary strand The emergence of a chemical system capable of self-replication and evolution is a critical event in the origin of life. RNA polymerase ribozymes can replicate RNA, but their large size and structural ...

How could a simple self-replicating system emerge at the origins of life? RNA polymerase ribozymes can replicate RNA, but existing ones are so large that their self-replication seems impossible. Could they be smaller?

Excited to share our latest work in @science.org on a new small polymerase.
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Anthology of Tom Waits.

The role of metabolism in shaping enzyme structures over 400 million years - Nature By combining structural biology and evolutionary genomics analyses, the evolution of enzymes over 400 million years is shown to be governed by catalytic function, metabolic network architecture, cost ...

In our today's journal club, we discussed this impressive work by the Ralser Lab appearing this month in Nature:

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

Our Brain—Immune Axis Gets A Jolt Facts, data and analytics about biomedical matters

A rundown on the big advances we’re seeing on the brain-immune axis

erictopol.substack.com/p/our-braini...

New Implant Offers Hope for Easing Rheumatoid Arthritis

Controlling the immune system and inflammation through stimulating the vagus nerve. FDA approval of an implant for refractory rheumatoid arthritis that is also being studied for various autoimmune diseases.
Front page NY Times www.nytimes.com/2025/07/31/h...

Moss Medicines: The Next Revolution in Biotech? Plant biotechnologists are favoring moss factories over other models to produce certain valuable proteins.

Moss Medicines: The Next Revolution in #Biotech?
Plant biotechnologists are favoring #moss factories over other models to produce certain valuable #proteins.
Great article based on an interview with yours truly.
www.the-scientist.com/moss-medicin...

Multitasking.. 😅

The immunoproteasome disturbs neuronal metabolism and drives neurodegeneration in multiple sclerosis Neuronal proteasomal dysfunction is a hallmark of neuroinflammatory and neurodegenerative diseases. This study reveals that the interferon-induced immunoproteasome drastically decreases proteasomal ac...

Our latest work:
The immunoproteasome disturbs neuronal metabolism and drives neurodegeneration in multiple sclerosis: Cell www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Why are there intronic reads in your bulk RNA-seq data?
You're not alone—it's common, and the reasons are more layered than you think.
Let’s break it down. 🧵

Starter packs BIOLOGY Ecology Macroecology https://go.bsky.app/GBn9pNZ Global ecology https://go.bsky.app/V6tN4cv Trait based ecology and evolution https://go.bsky.app/PThMXeX Invasion biology https://go.b...

hey everyone! i made a list of some useful starter packs (primarily biology/earth sciences with a few bonus things thrown in) to share with friends who have joined bsky in the last week and thought it may be useful for some people here too! 🌍🧪 #SciSky #BioSky docs.google.com/document/d/1...

What are we looking at?

So beautiful, congratulations!

Two?

Hot take: the only true metric of human progress is the global reduction of suffering. Any technological advancement that does not work in service to this is a lateral step, not forward progress. I don't care if we get to Mars, when rampant famine and disease and poverty remain unsolved for.

We've known about the gut-brain axis.
Now we're learning about the gut-brain-lung axis whereby food intake can trigger an immune response in the airway. www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...

The molecular mechanisms of hair greying and how to prevent it

"Dedifferentiation maintains melanocyte stem cells in a dynamic niche"

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

Feeder-cell-free system for ex vivo production of NK cells from cord blood hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells
doi.org/10.3389/fimm...

Science must step away from nationally managed infrastructure Scientific data and independence are at risk. We need to work with community-driven services and university libraries to create new multi-country organizations that are resilient to political…

Important article on the urgent question how to upkeep key information platforms for science

Women are under-represented at senior levels in #academia globally, & across all #science 🧪 disciplines, as shown by these "scissor-shaped curves" ✂️

So how can we ever achieve #gender #equality?

We discuss various strategies in this #Cell Commentary

#WomeninSTEM

www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...
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A big day of output for the Human Cell Atlas, a global collaborative project with 100 countries to understand our ~37 trillion cells
A Wikipedia of our cells, a "remarkable achievement"
nature.com/articles/d41...
nature.com/immersive/d4...

Impaired ketogenesis ties metabolism to T cell dysfunction in COVID-19 - Nature The ketone body β-hydroxybutyrate can be used as an alternative carbon source by T cells to maintain their function during severe respiratory viral infections, including infection with&...

Ever wondered how fasting is benefiting the adaptive immune response? In @Nature we show that #ketogenesis promotes the function of #tcell in severe respiratory viral infections by providing #ketonebodies BHB as carbon source. Final edited version: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Mind blown🤯

Just playing around with Google's NotebookLM.
notebooklm.google

You upload a PDF of your favourite paper and it spits out a great podcast 🎧

Enjoy a 60s snippet about our recent work in Nature on γδ T cells.

The level of understanding is amazing!

Paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Proximity-dependent labeling identifies dendritic cells that drive the tumor-specific CD4+ T cell response This study characterizes the dendritic cells that present antigen to tumor-specific CD4+ T cells in the tumor and tumor-draining lymph node.

Last month in #ScienceImmunology, Alex Chudnovskiy,
@victora.bsky.social, & al. used proximity-based labeling in combination with single-cell transcriptomics to characterize antigen-presenting dendritic cells in tumors and their draining lymph nodes.

Beautiful paper from Burkhard Ludewig’s group showing the importance of immunoregulatory stroma to support anti-tumour immunity.

www.cell.com/action/showP...

Bluesky now has over 20M people!! 🎉

We've been adding over a million users per day for the last few days. To celebrate, here are 20 fun facts about Bluesky:

Started one
go.bsky.app/G1DPArc
Then found more
bsky.app/starter-pack...