Iain Cheeseman

In Memoriam: R. Bruce Nicklas (1932-2025). Leocadia Paliulis commemorates the life of Dr. Nicklas who was a mentor, a polymath with a great sense of humor, and a link to the beginnings of chromosome research. rupress.org/jcb/article/...

#CellDivision #Chromosomes

I am excited to share our review on the mechanistic basis and functional consequences of cell cycle-specific mRNA decay and translational control. Fun work with Cheese lab's (@iaincheeseman.bsky.social) grad students Katya Khalizeva and Yi Fei Tao!
rnajournal.cshlp.org/content/earl...

Recruitment for the EMBL International PhD Programme is officially open! 🔊

At EMBL, we train young scientists to become skilled and creative future leaders in academia, industry and other sectors. Start your career in the life sciences with us!

🔎 Read more here:
tinyurl.com/4jdt2ra5

First preprint of the year! New work from @jimmy-ly.bsky.social revealing unexpected roles for 5' UTR length in controlling alternate translational isoforms - important implications for both physiological cell function and rare disease. Small changes -> big impacts.

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

Thrilled to start my lab at the @whiteheadinstitute.bsky.social @mit.edu and to join such a special community of creative and inspiring colleagues. The Sullivan Lab asks (1) how and (2) why infections make us sick, bridging immunology and neuroscience to understand host defense at the organism scale

I'm sorry that last sentence is nonsense. There are PIs who are only PIs because they couldn't get jobs as Nature editors, and there are some very editors there with less bias than academics. I won't defend the profits or many aspects of their process but it's just not true they're all failed PDs.

The Vienna BioCenter Summer School 2026 call is open for talented undergrads, it's a great opportunity for students who are interested in graduate study in the life sciences. Hannes Zuber from the IMP is recruiting!
https://training.vbc.ac.at/summer-school/

For me, the holidays are about food, family, and random traditions. This is our family's Sour Cream Coffee cake. The recipe comes from a "cookbook" typed (on a typewriter!) by my mother in 1976 as a Christmas present for relatives. I still have an original copy.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS TO ALL OF YOU!🎄✨

The Reck-Peterson lab at Weill Cornell Medicine is seeking a technician or staff scientist to work on Aspergillus projects. Broad background in fungal biology and techniques required. Bioinformatics skills preferred. Find out more at: reckpetersonlab.org.

Photo of a PowerPoint slide that reads: “what is ‘physiological cell biology’?” Underneath is a depiction of (left to right) gears, gears in a cell, a highlighted green cell in a liver. The corresponding words above it say molecular function <-> cellular organization <-> organismal context

Photo of a PowerPoint slide that reads “traders between simplicity and fidelity in cell biology” Underneath is a graph with simplicity on the X-axis and fidelity on y-axis. 4 points are within this space: 2D cell culture is high simplicity low fidelity, unicellular eukaryotes are high simplicity high fidelity, mammals are low simplicity high fidelity, and 3D cell culture is mid simplicity mid fidelity

First science session of #CellBio2025! 🧫🧪

Co-organized by @iaincheeseman.bsky.social and @abbybuch.bsky.social on the importance of the physiological context on studying cell biology. As a big fan of the ECM, I couldn’t agree more!

It's an amazing time to be a cell biologist, as new tech makes probing cellular processes in physiological contexts more tractable. This is the theme of a Special Interest Subgroup that @iaincheeseman.bsky.social and I are hosting at #cellbio2025. Join us on Saturday 12/5! @ascbiology.bsky.social

The #cellbio2025 is starting this week! I’ll be giving a talk on the first 1st day, in the session organized by @iaincheeseman.bsky.social and @abbybuch.bsky.social (Thx for the invitation!). If you’re interested in #oocytes, #proteostasis, and #aging come by to attend! @ascbiology.bsky.social

I have found it useful to have default specific instructions for each prompt to include the PMID for each citation and have it indicate the specific data in a paper that addressed a point, not just a summary of conclusions (etc). I always check the paper, but haven't found it to be quite accurate.

I view this like a new search tool - I still read these papers with my own judgment - but it is accelerating my literature discovery. For example, it helped me find a key paper that used an alternate name for a protein I had just missed (not in the databases and other people didn't use this name).

I spend a lot of time reading papers (PubMed searches, Google Scholar, searching bioRxiv, journal TOCs, citations in other papers). I compare the results in each case. My experience thus far is that the Claude PubMed MCP is finding things that I just wouldn't have come across otherwise.

🌍Open call: Junior Group Leader positions!

Join a world-class biomedical research institute at the heart of the Vienna BioCenter, where curiosity drives discovery.

Lead your own lab, pursue bold ideas, and shape the future of science at the IMP: www.imp.ac.at/career/open-...

a cartoon says hey everybody an old man 's talking while bart simpson looks on ALT: a cartoon says hey everybody an old man 's talking while bart simpson looks on

Bluetorial-Jim Watson

I met Jim Watson a few times but did not know him well. However, I was greatly influenced by his book “The Double Helix”. He was a complicated human being with some very, very bad features, but some good contributions.

What follows is my personal perspective.

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4. A new publication in @natsmb.nature.com from ACS postdoctoral fellow Dr. Eric M. Smith and past ACS grantee Dr. @iaincheeseman.bsky.social at the #WhiteheadInstitute revealing two newly identified, unique subunits of the RNase MRP complex.

Read the paper here: lnkd.in/eTNkJhBW

I'm honoured to be working with some very smart people at #WhiteheadInstitute! Research from @iaincheeseman.bsky.social, @jimmy-ly.bsky.social and co. shows proteins from the same gene can act very differently - shaping health and rare disease in unexpected ways.
#Genetics #CellBiology #ResearchSky

Alternate proteins from the same gene contribute differently to health and rare disease | Whitehead Institute Iain Cheeseman and colleagues reveal the underappreciated role of single genes producing multiple proteins in atypical presentations of rare disease, and present case studies of affected patients thro...

From an accidental discovery of hidden biology to a new framework to understanding and diagnosing rare disease. Thrilled to share the most recent work from our lab and the amazing Jimmy Ly.

wi.mit.edu/news/alterna...

Personal good news alert: I’ve been promoted to associate professor and it’s time to update the ol’ bio! Launching my lab at UCSF has been a privilege + I’m so grateful to my team and community here. More exciting science ahead! 🚀

Candid photo of Zara Weinberg. She has short red hair, bangs and glasses. She is laughing.

The Leading Edge Fellows gathered this week to celebrate Zara Weinberg, a beloved member of our community. Our 7th cohort of Leading Edge Fellows (2026) will be named in her honor.

The Zara Weinberg Leading Edge Cohort application is now open! Due Feb 2.

www.leadingedgesymposium.org/apply/

YouTube video by PBS NewsHour Top researchers consider leaving U.S. amid funding cuts: 'The science world is ending'

Well reported story on the PBS News Hour about science cuts and the ongoing and potential brain drain.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLvO...

Thanks to Terrance Tao and other scientists at various career stages for having the courage to speak out.

Watch and share!

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a cartoon says hey everybody an old man 's talking while bart simpson looks on ALT: a cartoon says hey everybody an old man 's talking while bart simpson looks on

A short Bluetorial on the dismantling of the National Center of Research Resources

A demonstration that my email's to Director Bhattacharya is not new behavior.

elmo from sesame street is standing in front of a wall and saying at least i tell the truth . ALT: elmo from sesame street is standing in front of a wall and saying at least i tell the truth .

This was not the first example of writing to my bosses or other leaders to express my candid views that they were making or were about to make a serious mistake (nor will it be the last).

As a leader, I have also appreciated it when others did the same to (for) me.

/fin

I believe that this is only possible for open access or PMC deposited papers - a limitation for our world in general. Regardless of this tool, I do hope that the world continues to move to a more open publication environment with a continued plug for preprinting all work.

I really value this discussion and dialogue as we all work to consider the impacts (good and bad) of these new capabilities. One minor clarification. The new PubMed integration is not for training data. Instead, it is essentially a tool that gives Claude the ability to search PubMed and access info.

Evaluation of large language models for discovery of gene set function - Nature Methods Large language models show potential in suggesting common functions for a gene set.

It was actually my deep frustration with GO terms and their limitations that caused us to move in this direction. We were inspired by this work from Ideker/Pratt. Ultimately, these are starting points for us to help guide choices for downstream experiments.

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

For me, the most critical use case has been our large-scale cell biology screens. Data on 5k genes. 250 clusters that group functionally related proteins (novel players, new connections). But which do we pursue? Easy for me for mitosis, but it takes me hours to decide for Golgi function, etc