Lucas Waltzer

Canada’s Girl Guides Suspend U.S. Trips Amid Trump’s Immigration Crackdown

Headlines like this underscore why @genetics-gsa.bsky.social is looking at sites outside the US for forthcoming #Drosophila research conferences.

“Have passport will travel,” I say.

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/08/w...

🔴🏛️ Loi Duplomb : le Conseil constitutionnel censure la réintroduction à titre dérogatoire de pesticides contenant des néonicotinoïdes, comme l'acétamipride, qui était prévue par la loi agricole Duplomb.
#DirectAN #LoiDuplomb #Duplomb

Chromatin-dependent motif syntax defines differentiation trajectories

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

DNA methylation at retrotransposons protects the germline by preventing NRF1-mediated activation | EMBO reports imageimageIn spermatogenesis, loss of promoter DNA methylation reactivates retrotransposons in patterns shaped by chromatin modifications and the binding of DNA methylation-sensitive transcription fac...

Really beautiful work led by Jessica Leismann in Joan Barau’s lab @imbmainz.bsky.social . If you like elegant mouse genetics, the transposon arms race, and a healthy dose of epigenetics, this one’s for you. www.embopress.org/doi/full/10.... @emboreports.org

Differential regulation of eye specification in Drosophila by Polycomb Group epigenetic repressors Highlighted Article: Distinct gene sets are differentially expressed in response to the knockdown of Polycomb Group (PcG) members, suggesting that multiple avenues may exist for the eye to be transfor...

My lab's newest research paper on the Drosophila eye is published in Development today. Thanks to the editorial staff for writing a research highlight and interviewing us about our work.

journals.biologists.com/dev/article-...

Systematic benchmarking of basecalling models for RNA modification detection with highly-multiplexed nanopore sequencing. #DirectRNAsequencing #DRS #RNAmodifications #Nanopore #Genomics #Bioinformatics #ModelBenchmarking #Basecalling @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

The current Editor-in-Chief of Science Holden Thorp just implemented the first case of a new retraction standard (with which I vigorously disagree).

bsky.app/profile/scie...

2/n

The histone core domain evolves at single-residue resolution to directly orchestrate transcription Nucleosomes are thought to be structural barriers to transcription, establishing a restrictive ground state that must be destabilized for gene express…

Happy to share our new paper out today in @cp-cellreports.bsky.social in collaboration with @tobiaswarnecke.bsky.social @akihisaosakabe.bsky.social about how evolution can do big things with small changes. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Academic poaching: when other PIs steal your trainees There are many toxic behaviors in academia, but one we rarely talk about is #AcademicPoaching. Have you ever been a victim?

I just published: Academic poaching: when other PIs steal your trainees

There are many toxic behaviors in academia, but one we rarely talk about is #AcademicPoaching. Have you ever been a victim?

#AcademicChatter #AcademicSky #phdchat

medium.com/p/academic-p...

Single cell and spatial alternative splicing analysis with Nanopore long read sequencing. #SingleCell #scRNAseq #AlternativeSplicing #LongReads #Sequencing @nanoporetech.com @natcomms.nature.com
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Des arguments contre la loi Duplomb portés par la communauté scientifique :

When is a Monomer not a Monomer? The Top Three Ways Your Favorite Fluorescent Protein Oligomerizes in Cells Many commonly used fluorescent proteins form dimers producing artifacts in a variety of experimental settings. Learn how to avoid these artifacts.

💡 Always a good time to be reminded: "if you fuse your protein of interest to GFP or EGFP to study the protein's behavior ... you are using a tag with a serious drawback."
Same goes for anything that doesn't have 'm' in its name (looking at you, dTomato and StayGold)

#jobAlert We are hiring! If you like #imaging ,gene regulation and a dynamic group please apply. We are looking for a research assistant with a master degree and prior experience in academia.

Image credit: @gloglita.bsky.social‬ @lifescienceeditors.bsky.social‬ captured DynaTag in action: a pA-Tn5 probe (multicoloured) binds an antibody (white), which binds p53 DNA-binding domain (green) on DNA (blue) within 2 nucleosomes

🧪Move over CUT&Tag, there’s a new #TranscriptionFactor mapping method in town.
Our newly developed DynaTag is faster, cleaner, more sensitive than #ChIPseq, #CUT&RUN and #CUT&Tag.
🔗 Our @natcomms.nature.com paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
🧵Let’s break down what makes DynaTag so powerful (1/7)

Could someone ask Mrs von Leyen to hold up the deal, or any piece of paper, to immortalise the moment?

Neuroendocrine control of intestinal regeneration through the vascular niche in Drosophila Robust and controlled intestinal regeneration involves reciprocal interactions between the intestinal epithelium and its microenvironment. Here, we id…

Very happy and proud to share the latest work from our lab.
Neuroendocrine control of intestinal regeneration through the vascular niche.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

‘The doses of rAAV used in clinical trials for DMD have ranged from 5×10^13 to 2×10^14 vector genomes (vg) per kilogram of body weight. After treatment with doses within this range, a number of toxic syndromes have been observed’ www.nejm.org/doi/full/10....

Cell cycle duration determines oncogenic transformation capacity Danian Chen, Suying Lu, Katherine Huang, Joel D. Pearson, Marek Pacal, Phillipos Peidis, Sean McCurdy, Tao Yu, Monika Sangwan, Angela Nguyen, Philippe P. Monnier, Daniel Schramek, Liang Zhu, David Santamaria, Mariano Barbacid, Nagako Akeno, Kathryn A. Wikenheiser-Brokamp & Rod Bremner https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-08935-x

A recent paper reveals a surprising insight. The length of the cell cycle in a particular tissue determines the oncogenic transformation capacity of particular oncogenes, with tissues with shorter cell cycles most susceptible 3/n

The length of the G1 phase is an essential determinant of H3K27me3 landscapes across diverse cell types Stem cells have lower levels of facultative heterochromatin, defined by deposition of the H3K27me3 histone mark, compared to differentiated cells, but why is this? By artificially lengthening the G1 p...

Could it be linked to Polycomb (or other epigentic enzyme complexes) needing time to reestablish the proper epigenetic landscape ?

The length of the G1 phase is an essential determinant of H3K27me3 landscapes across diverse cell types | PLOS Biology journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

Over the past 2 weeks, our Scientific Officers walked you through the key aspects of your ERC grant application, in our brand new "ERC Classes" videos.

Now the complete playlist is available to view.

Watch and learn how to best prepare your proposal for ERC research funding 🎥 👉 bit.ly/3GJjwiO

#FlyCROSS mentee surveys are open for #earlycareer #Drosophila scientists. If you're a #gradstudent #postdoc or pretenure faculty or equivalent - fill up the survey by Sept 1 to participate & be matched by #mentor of your preferences to gain guidance to your unique needs. @flybase.bsky.social

Non-canonical functions of DNMT3A in hematopoietic stem cells regulate telomerase activity and genome integrity Challen and colleagues show that the clonal expansion of Dnmt3a-null HSCs in serial bone marrow transplantation assays is not dependent on the loss of DNA methylation functions of Dnmt3a. They identif...

Really fascinating work from Grant Challan's group reporting that increased HSC self-renewal seen with Dnmt3a knockout is potentially due to non-methyltransferase roles.

Another nice piece of work from @frankschnorrer.bsky.social team #Drosophila !

Rémi Mounier, Bénédicte Chazaud @benchazaud.bsky.social ‬ @inserm.fr at Université Claude Bernard Lyon and co-workers show that immune #aging impairs #muscle #regeneration via #macrophage-derived anti-oxidant selenoprotein P.

-> www.embopress.org/doi/full/10....

So excited to share my 1st paper !!🌞
Co-authored with @jules-vanaret.bsky.social @dunsingvalentin.bsky.social, we developped an integrated pipeline for imaging, segmenting and analysing cell-scale patterns in gene expression + tissue properties in complex 3D tissues
elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre...

Higher resolution pooled genome-wide CRISPR knockout screening in Drosophila cells using integration and anti-CRISPR (IntAC) - Nature Communications Genome-wide CRISPR screens map how genes support survival and contribute to diverse biological functions. Here, the authors use antiCRISPR to enhance genome-wide CRISPR screening in Drosophila and gen...

Pooled #CRISPR screens are a staple of functional genomics in mammalian cells. Yet somehow in the best genetic model™ no equivalent system was available. Until now! The @perrimonlab.bsky.social lab now presents efficient pooled CRISPR screening in #Drosophila cells.

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

Multi-omic mapping of Drosophila protein secretomes reveals tissue-specific origins and inter-organ trafficking
#Drosophila

Long-read RNA sequencing of transposable elements from single cells using CELLO-seq - Nature Protocols Single-cell long-read RNA sequencing enables the high-fidelity mapping of single-cell expression data from highly sequence-similar transposable elements to unique genomic loci by correcting errors fro...

Very happy to share our protocols paper for CELLO-seq. This will make single cell long read RNA-seq more accessible and provides analysis guidelines. We hope this helps the #transposon #TEsky community and folks working on #singleCell isoform and allelic #gene expression. doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Giant study finds a research field that’s mostly reproducible Researchers assessed more than 1,000 results from fruit-fly immunity research published between 1959 and 2011. The majority of findings look verifiable.

A huge project has analysed more than 1,000 claims about the immunity of Drosophila fruit flies in scientific papers published over some 50 years

go.nature.com/4lxhwJB

Majority of fruit fly immunity studies can be replicated, huge analysis finds Verification of 50 years of data bolsters immunology research, but identifies “suspicious” papers that don’t hold up

Comment on our @Reproducibility project in @Drosophila immunity. It is a normal that findings—however exciting and important at the time—may later prove to be more complex than initially believed. Re-evaluations is essential to the self-correcting nature of science. www.science.org/content/arti...