Pim Huis in 't Veld

A week ago, we had an open conversation amongst senior academics in leadership roles and their use of LLMs (in both their leadership capacities and individually). Small group, not representative, but it already taught me a great deal about the diversity of perspectives (& their consequences). 1/

Lees Huxley.

Ancient co-option of LTR retrotransposons as yeast centromeres - Nature Evolutionarily related ‘proto-point’ centromeres providing resolution to the evolutionary origins of point centromeres are identified in yeast, and comparison shows they evolved in an ancestor with re...

Our paper is now out in Nature:

“Ancient co-option of LTR retrotransposons as yeast centromeres”

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

A short thread on how retrotransposons helped give rise to yeast point centromeres.

1/14

If you’ve not stopped using Meta products (Facebook, Instagram, etc…), now is a really good time to stop.

This is viscerally horrifying.

Let's try this #AcademicSky

1 fav, 1 funny, strange, or unexpected scientific anecdote about a paper, a scientist, a fact, hoping that some will be new to you.

favourite paper of 2026 🤩 congrats to all!

🧪🧬New preprint We present cryo-EM structures of reconstituted CTCF–nucleosome complexes, showing CTCF dimerization drives nucleosome oligomerization into defined higher-order assemblies. Disrupting CTCF–CTCF interfaces in mESCs reduces looping and impairs differentiation. tinyurl.com/CTCF-nucleos...

amazing!

European Scientists who said NO to Epstein-funding are the heroines of this hour🦸‍♀️

They show: It was your choice to SAY NO to Epstein's $ as scientist- you just had to have ethics & a spine

Kudos to Physicist IVETTE FUENTES who said NO

She was working at @quantumunivie.bsky.social @univie.ac.at

PhD position in my lab!

“An Abomination”: Yanis Varoufakis on Trump’s “Board of Peace” & Threat to Democratic World Order We speak to Greek economist Yanis Varoufakis about the United States under Donald Trump and its attempts to reshape the post-World War II international consensus. “Trump has all his work done for him ...

We speak to Greek economist Yanis Varoufakis about the United States under Donald Trump and its attempts to reshape the post-World War II international consensus.

www.democracynow.org/2026/1/22/ya...

Globally, no single day in 2025 was cooler than its 1991-2020 average.
climate.copernicus.eu/global-clima...

Wunderbar! Das schätze ich als niederländischer Wiener sehr. Noch viel mehr davon bitte!

Ziel sollte sein, dass auch Schüler und Senioren sicher, vielleicht sogar plaudernd, von A nach B radeln. Radwege verbessern ist relativ billig (vgl. Öffi und PKW Infrastruktur) und bringt langfristig alle was!

Israel Is Banning the 'Last Foreign Witnesses' to Its Genocide in Gaza In a likely deadly move, the Israeli government told 37 foreign aid groups, including Doctors Without Borders, they could no longer operate in Palestine. Where is the outrage?

"Israel Is Banning the 'Last Foreign Witnesses' to Its Genocide in Gaza"

In a likely deadly move, the Israeli government told 37 foreign aid groups, including Doctors Without Borders, they could no longer operate in Palestine. Where is the outrage, asks Diana Buttu for Zeteo?

Abolish and prosecute ICE. They did a murder in broad daylight today. Imagine what they're doing in the closed facilities we're somehow not even allowed to see.

What in the Gestapo is going on in Grand Rapids?

Watch this activist get arrested *mid-interview* for speaking out against U.S. action in Venezuela.

“For too long, those fluent in the good grammar of civility have deployed decorum to mask agendas of cruelty.”

On Trump being a fascist👇

Video: Aaron Rupar via X (@atrupar)

Big news! Group leader Sascha Martens has been awarded a prestigious @erc.europa.eu Synergy Grant for the collaborative project DegrAbility to explore how cells can better recycle harmful protein aggregates linked to diseases like Alzheimer’s ➡️ tinyurl.com/2zuz9jcf

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

Saruman talking. Palantir running.

Please help everyone around you to stop paying attention to him and X! If within reach, please alarm employers, politicians, and news agencies (again and again)..

📢 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

PhD student position in the Cell Signaling and Cell Cycle group at the Danish Cancer Institute. The Cell Signaling and Cell Cycle group, headed by Prof. Jakob Nilsson, is looking for a highly motivated and enthusiastic PhD student to establish novel CRISPR

I have a PhD opening in my lab for an exiting project using base editor screens to find novel drug targets. Please help spread the word. candidate.hr-manager.net/ApplicationI...

Early career group leaders We appoint researchers from across biology and biomedicine to set up their first groups at the Crick.

The @crick.ac.uk is recruiting Early Career Group Leaders

- Lab set-up, research costs, salaries for up to 5 researchers
- Support for up to 12 years
- Access to our core facilities
- Competitive salary
- Fantastic colleagues
- All areas of biology

Deadline 27 Nov

www.crick.ac.uk/careers-stud...

WHAT THE F*CK‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️
Chicago’s Reverend David Black of First Presbyterian has been assaulted multiple times by ICE agents during peaceful protest in the city‼️They shot a some kind of non lethal bullet at his head‼️
#PepperBall

Donald Trump Truth Social Post: Chicago Mayor should be in jail for failing to protect Ice Officers! Governor Pritzker also.

I will not back down.

Trump is now calling for the arrest of elected representatives checking his power.

What else is left on the path to full-blown authoritarianism?

Independent research fellowships leading to tenured positions at the John Innes Centre.

Repost = nice. Thank you very much!!!

I can’t quite put it into words yet, but something is happening, a kind of global singularity—a fusion of tech/media/news/government/employment which allows the global elite to push single agendas: “You WILL care about Charlie Kirk. You will NOT care about Palestine. You WILL fear cancel culture.”

DNA methylation influences human centromere positioning and function - Nature Genetics Genome-wide and targeted perturbation of DNA methylation at centromeres affects CENP-A positioning and centromere structure, resulting in aneuploidy and reduced cell viability.

#1 Centromeres are epigenetic loci defined by CENP-A, positioned in unmethylated DNA flanked by highly methylated regions. Our work, published in @natgenet.nature.com in collaboration with @naltemose.bsky.social investigates the role of DNAme at human centromeres www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Exciting FULL PROFESSORSHIP at the Vienna BioCenter - Molecular Mechanisms of Disease Mechanisms: www.maxperutzlabs.ac.at/news/open-po... Come be our colleague!