Chhabi Govind, PhD

I remember when Alan was hosting Kevin at NIH he couldn’t take him out for lunch.

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

I think submitting the final version of accepted manuscript along with figures and supplementary materials satisfies the requirements.

Max Fels @mfels.bsky.social from our lab discovers giant DNA viruses that infect amoeba encode eIF4E and the entire suite of 4F complex proteins to control mRNA translation, including beautiful crystal structures of viral 4E bound to modified mRNA 5' caps:

www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Excited to share our latest study in Nature Communications ✨

We map how cells clear DNA damage–stalled RNA polymerase II using a stepwise TFIIH → ubiquitin/VCP mechanism, keeping transcription and genome stability on track.

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

#Genomics #DNADamage #CellBiology

Articles in our latest collection focus on the roles of ATG9 and LC3 interacting regions, plus mechanisms of selective #autophagy involving Rab GTPases, #mitophagy, and #pexophagy. 👉 rupress.org/jcb/collecti...

Interesting work suggesting the need for different mechanisms on the establishment of patterning www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... that echo some ‘old’ ideas along similar lines and also involving #Wnt
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
www.nature.com/articles/nrg...

Interested in antisense oligonucleotides?
Check our story about downstream-of-gene ASOs (DG-ASOs)!
Together with the Roche Innovation Center we
identified transcription termination windows of protein-coding genes as ASO target regions.

link to BioRxiv:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Gladys Mae West obituary: mathematician who pioneered GPS technology She made key contributions to US cold-war science despite facing huge barriers as a Black woman.

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Thank you for explaining!

Thank you, very relieved.

Received NoA today!

Nice. Congrats

Congratulations 🎉🎊

The sequence context of RG/RGG motifs determines condensate formation, transportin-1 binding and chaperoning www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

🧬 20 years ago, discovery of the EGO complex in #Yeast revolutionized understanding of nutrient signaling. New review explores how Rag GTPases link amino acids to TORC1 growth control, establishing blueprint for cross-species nutrient sensing
🔬 #YeastResearch #SGD
www.yeastgenome.org/reference/S1...

For those who are interested, here’s a great thread on what’s in the 2026 NIH budget that was released today 👇🏽

Mistook it for 2026.

Hopefully it catches up. Some of this maybe due to the government shutdown.

Limit on multiyear funding of NIH grants is a sticking point in Senate budget talks A clause limiting the use of multiyear NIH grant funding has become a sticking point as the Senate appropriations panel finalizes the HHS spending bill.

Limit on multiyear funding of NIH grants is a sticking point in Senate budget talks www.statnews.com/2026/01/16/n... #nih #grants

Cryo–electron microscopy visualization of RAD51 filament assembly and end-capping by XRCC3-RAD51C-RAD51D-XRCC2 Homologous recombination repairs DNA double strand breaks and protects stalled replication forks, but how the five RAD51 paralogs contribute to these processes remains unclear. Mutations in the RAD51 ...

We thought we knew how DNA repair worked. We were wrong.

See the new publication from @science.org shifts the paradigm: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

See comment for our digest:

Mitochondrial presequences harbor variable strengths to maintain organellar function. New study from Youmian Yan, Natalie Niemi (@nieminm.bsky.social) et al. @washumedicine.bsky.social: rupress.org/jcb/article/...

@ianofbristol.bsky.social
#Biochemistry #CellMetabolism #Organelles #Mitochondria

Want to get the data out of a PDF figure? As in, the actual data – not a rough trace-along-the-lines version?

I made an app you might like: adamkucharski.github.io/pdf2plot/

It all started a few years ago... 🧵

Energy-landscape model of RF2 activation. Comparison of termination complexes (TC), wild-type ArfA-bound nonstop elongation complexes (nsECs), and loss-of-function ArfA mutant-bound nsECs reveals that wild-type ArfA promotes RF2 docking to nsECs by reshaping the conformational cascade.

Slightly overdue article highlight!

In PNAS, we use smFRET to reveal how polypeptide release factor 2 (RF2) undergoes a cascade of structural changes to catalyze polypeptide release during translation termination and ArfA-mediated ribosome rescue.

🧵⬇️
doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

Anyone running a genomic CURE want to collaborate with Dr Abbey to sequence blue beans?

H4K16 acylations destabilize chromatin architecture and facilitate transcriptional response during metabolic perturbations Nitsch et al. show that short-chain acylations of histone H4K16, acetylation (C2), propionylation (C3), and butyrylation (C4) modulate chromatin structure in vitro. These effects can translate in vivo...

Nice paper from @robertife.bsky.social on how metabolism-induced H4K16 acylations correlate with (and may cause) chromatin opening through disruption of tail-acidic patch internucleosomal interactions.

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

1/ 🎄 We got our Christmas present today: "Two distinct chromatin modules regulate proinflammatory gene expression" is now published @natcellbio.nature.com doi.org/10.1038/s415.... Our study introduces a scATAC-seq-based framework for genome-wide analysis of gene regulation features.

DNA polymerase I is an efficient reverse transcriptase that mediates RNA-templated DNA repair synthesis https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.22.696026v1

Applications for our international #PhD program open until 11th Jan. Come work with us @uoe-igc.bsky.social and @hannahlong.bsky.social to understand DNMT3B in ICF syndrome or with our wonderful colleagues.
Details here:
institute-genetics-cancer.ed.ac.uk/igc-graduate...
#epigenetics Please repost 🙏

I have been in meetings whole day-:(