PomBase: The S. pombe knowledgebase

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And just when you thought things were settling down, the enigmatic Asgard archaea have another surprise in store! Cell cycle/life cycle stage-specific internal compartments with almost no eukaryote-derived clues as to how they might function.

Beautiful tomography and microscopy - congrats all 🤩

This is a glimpse of the cytoskeletal structures we found doing U-ExM in more than 200 species, now in Cell🤩: shorturl.at/6oHvi
Amazing collaboration between @centriolelab.bsky.social , @dudinlab.bsky.social and @gautamdey.bsky.social labs.
I believe last one is a 🕷️
#FluorescenceFriday
#Microscopy

Congrats!

Happy 40th birthday Yeast: Yeast: Vol 42, No 11 Yeast is a microbiology journal for research in the rapidly moving field of yeast biology. We publish the most significant developments in unicellular fungi.

The new issue of #Yeast of 2025 (Volume 42, Issue 11, November 2025) is out! It includes papers about new yeast genomes, the biodiversity of yeasts in dough, polyphosphate accumulation and even a new #FantasticYeasts species 😃

You can browse it at this link:

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/10970061...

More great work on mitochondrial dynamics from ‪@leeba.bsky.social‬
et al!

Enjoyed three days at #EMBOMobileGenome —fantastic talks and inspiring discussions on TE regulation across diverse model systems, great community! Excited to share our recent work on solo LTR silencing in S. pombe via talk and poster by @vishnuss.bsky.social. @pombase.bsky.social @embo.org

The Piwi-piRNA complex initiates transposon silencing via transcription termination factors PNUTS and Senataxin Wu et al. reveal that the SFiNX complex triggers transposon silencing through the association of Sov with two transcription termination factors, PNUTS and Senataxin, leading to RNA Pol II stalling. Th...

Interesting to see new papers connecting Pol II stalling to heterochromatin formation.

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

Reminiscent of our work in S. pombe:
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

Regulation of cell proliferation by a novel feedback system on Cdk function The proliferation of eukaryotic cells is regulated by a complex network of regulatory systems that promotes efficient cell cycle progression and ensures proper responses to the environment. Despite th...

Minimal CDK continues delivering 💥

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

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Working model for the major pathways of plasma membrane deposition and septum formation during cytokinesis. The septum is illustrated asymmetrically intentionally. The top half septum shows septum formation and digestion of the primary septum; the bottom half shows septum formation. (1) F-BAR protein Cdc15 (and others) anchor the contractile ring to the plasma membrane, which recruits the β(1,3)-glucan synthase Bgs1 and its adaptor Sbg1 for primary septum formation. (2) Association of the F-BAR protein Rga7 and coiled-coil protein Rng10 with the Munc13/UNC-13 protein Ync13 recruits the TRAPP-II complex along the cleavage furrow, which tethers vesicles and primes the SM protein Sec1 and its binding partner Mso1 for the SNARE complex assembly to trigger vesicle fusion with the plasma membrane. This pathway maintains normal levels and distribution of gluacan synthases Bgs4/Smi1 and Ags1 for secondary septum formation. (3) The anillin Mid2 and septin rings restrict most of the exocyst complex to the rim of cleavage furrow to tether secretory vesicles loaded with the glucanases Eng1 and Agn1 and other cargos for digestion of primary septum to trigger daughter-cell separation.

How is #cytokinesis coordinated to ensure successful #CellDivision? Jian-Qiu Wu @sophiemartinlab.bsky.social &co show that the Ync13-Rga7-Rng10 module coordinates selective tethering & fusion of vesicles containing glucan synthases at the division site @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/43zJ35Z

Every funder and policy-maker should take note, as we burn through our scientific capital, "the incandescent lamp did not emerge from the continuous improvement of candles”.

Very excited that my final postdoctoral work is now online in Cell @cellpress.bsky.social.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Using 16 (!) cryo-EM structures, we uncovered how the three proteins coronin, cofilin and AIP1 work together to rapidly disassemble actin filaments.

Sustainability During Instability: Long-Lived Life Science Databases and Science Funding Outlook in the United States For decades, life science researchers have had cost-free, unrestricted access to data through online databases. However, the sustainability of even well-established resources was already tenuous, and ...

This article captures the critical need for deliberate, coordinated support of scientific databases such as #BHL @biodivlibrary.bsky.social. Scientific information must be recognized as core infrastructure, not a peripheral project. 🧪
Article: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

A response from MIT rejecting "The Compact"...

orgchart.mit.edu/letters/rega...

Proud to be an MIT alum today.

Model organism databases face budget cuts and closures Beyond the crucial data they contain, these digital archives have provided an important space for academic communities to exchange ideas and resources.

Nature has published an article on the crisis facing MODs
Model organism databases face budget cuts and closures www.nature.com/articles/d41...
@zfinmod.bsky.social @xenbase.bsky.social @yeastgenome.bsky.social @mousegenome.bsky.social @ratgenome.bsky.social @geneontology.bsky.social @nature.com

Their potential loss would be a profound setback for the global scientific community. The staff who maintain them bring decades of expertise that cannot simply be replaced. These databases are not just helpful—they are the very foundation on which most basic biological research depends.

Model organism databases face budget cuts and closures Beyond the crucial data they contain, these digital archives have provided an important space for academic communities to exchange ideas and resources.

An important new item on the status of model organism databases: these resources, built and refined over decades, are at risk. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Super excited that this story by @borissieber.bsky.social is now on BioRxiv!

For decades, we thought there was no MAPK scaffold for the ERK-like cascade that promotes sexual reproduction in fission yeast ... until Boris found it !

See the thread 👇 and enjoy the paper!

doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Discrete Subdomains Establish Epigenetic Diversity in Subtelomeric Heterochromatin Subtelomeres are imperfect repeats adjacent to telomeres that are repressed by heterochromatin. Although essential for genome integrity, their repetitive nature has thwarted dissection of local hetero...

This one feels special: our latest work on subtelomeric heterochromatin is now on www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1....
This story was driven by the virtuoso PhD work of Agnisrota Mazumder @agnisrota.bsky.social, co-mentored with @al-sadylab.bsky.social, and grew out of our #MSCA Cell2Cell network.

So for >30y, it was thought that #MAPK cascade in #fission #yeast lacked a scaffold ! Like in #animals, or #budding yeast.

Well this changes today !

All hail #Sms1

Congrats @borissieber.bsky.social @sophiemartinlab.bsky.social and Team !!

We have an open post-doc position in my group to study mRNA cleavage and polyadenylation using biochemical reconstitution and cryoEM.

Please get in touch if you are interested in joining this amazing team! 🔬🧬🤩
#RNA #cryoEM

Nuclear mechanics as a determinant of nuclear pore complex plasticity - Nature Cell Biology In this Review, Lusk et al. discuss emerging insights into nuclear pore complex variability with regard to composition and dilation state, and propose nuclear mechanics as a key determinant of driving...

Did you know that all nuclear pore complexes (NPCs) are not the same? @luskinglab.bsky.social propose a new hypothesis for how nuclear mechanics may impact the compositional plasticity of NPCs with implications for tissue-specific diseases caused by NPC dysfunction.

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

PomBase introduces two new interactive views for GO-CAM pathway models: Summary Maps (high-level, visual overview) and Mega-Models (connected models). Check them out here: lnkd.in/gfxNRdua

Exomer cooperates with Ryh1RAB6 in regulating TORC2 activity Exomer is a trans-Golgi protein complex involved in multiple biological processes, including lipid homeostasis and stress response. We have found that in fission yeast, the absence of exomer leads to ...

@pombase.bsky.social Dear all, Kaz and I submitted this manuscript to make it accessible. We don't have active labs now, so we will not submit it to any journals. We hope that some of you will find these data interesting and can complete the work, or use them as a starting point for future projects.

The oncogene SLC35F2 is a high-specificity transporter for the micronutrients queuine and queuosine | PNAS The nucleobase queuine (q) and its nucleoside queuosine (Q) are micronutrients derived from bacteria that are acquired from the gut microbiome and/...

Latest paper from the de Crecy lab is out!
A finding that answers a ~40 year old question: a eukaryotic high-specificity transporter for Q/q

Drosophila Genetic Database The Drosophila Genetic Database, FlyBase, is on the brink of collapse due to the sudden termination of the FlyBase NIH grant, which includes salaries for 5 literature curators based at the University ...

European-based researchers can help support future #flybase curation by donating at this site: www.philanthropy.cam.ac.uk/give-to-camb...

We currently have a call for support that has gone out to European labs, to support FlyBase-UK. We are asking our colleagues from labs in the US and other countries to wait for a similar call to them that will go out in the near future, to support the US sites. We thank you for your patience.