Marcin J. Suskiewicz

✨New preprint!

🧵1/4 Excited to share our work on AI-guided design of minimal RNA-guided nucleases. Amazing work by @petrskopintsev.bsky.social @isabelesain.bsky.social @evandeturk.bsky.social et al!
Multi-lab collaboration @banfieldlab.bsky.social @jhdcate.bsky.social @jacobsenucla.bsky.social🧬

🔗👇

Congratulations to @fraenzehana.bsky.social and all the other authors on this work! Franze is currently on the job market, and she would love to help build a structural proteomics facility 🤗

Multiscale structure of chromatin condensates explains phase separation and material properties The structure and interaction networks of molecules within biomolecular condensates are poorly understood. Using cryo–electron tomography and molecular dynamics simulations, we elucidated the structur...

@science.org 🧬🔬 Multiscale structure of #chromatin condensates explains phase separation and material properties | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... @janhuemar.bsky.social et al.

A three-column infographic showing that simple arrows are ambiguous because people interpret them in many different ways. The left column displays nine identical right-pointing arrows. The middle column lists possible interpretations: “First this, then that,” “Zooming in,” “Zooming out,” “This is the range,” “This element’s name is,” “The trajectory,” “All of this,” “Things come together,” and “Things split apart.” The right column offers visual alternatives for each meaning: numbered steps for sequence, magnification insets for zooming, a 0–100% bar for range, a label pointing to an element for naming, a dotted path for trajectory, a bracket for grouping “all of this,” a merging fork for things coming together, and a branching fork for things splitting apart.

Arrows are tricky. For us, as the designer of the visual, it will be super clear what it means. But for someone looking at our visual for the first time, it can be highly ambiguous. Depending on the reader, the same arrow can mean sequence, zoom, range, label, movement,...

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I've never developed a method but that seems to fit. Just yesterday I looked for the followup on one specific method and indeed the later papers I found where refering to it just as a method that performs poorly ;)...

That's true. And it extends to journals that publish methods. Good luck with method development or usage, whichever applies!

It's a bit like there being so many writers of books but not that many readers for some of them...

We’ve made some new tools to manipulate N-recognins. Check them out in our preprint.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Happy to share that my PhD project is finally published!🪱✨
Selfish genes are found across the tree of life. They can disrupt inheritance patterns and at the same time act as units for molecular innovation. Here we tried to answer one big question: how do selfish genes emerge in the first place?

Very interesting studies on the transcription factor SALL4, including the demonstration of the essential role of its multimerisation (tetramerisation).

The epitranscriptome formed by the growing number of modifications occurring within mRNA transcripts.

We have been mapping mRNA modifications for over a decade.

=> Characterizing their functions -- especially on translation -- is a research frontier.

Structural insights into autophosphorylation-mediated heat shock response by the protein-arginine kinase McsAB https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.26.690658v1

Lucija, the first PhD student with whom I had an honour to work, will defend on 15th December!

@cbm-upr4301.bsky.social

🧪 Geometry beats chemistry: we show that self-assembly can be controlled by tuning large-scale geometric parameters rather than molecular binding energies.
PNAS: doi.org/10.1073/pnas...
Video summary: www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FS3...
#SelfAssembly #Biophysics #PhysicsOfLife

Really neat and elegant Virology by @samjwilsonphd.bsky.social and team ! Watch out for these avian PB1 pol subunits ! Congrats to all co-authors ! @science.org

🧬🛡️How are new immune mechanisms created?

We show how Lamassu antiphage system, originated from a DNA-repair complex and evolved into a compact and modular immune machine, wt Dinshaw Patel lab in @pnas.org.
👏 @matthieu-haudiquet.bsky.social, Arpita Chakravarti & all authors!

doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

I really like the new summary representation Airlie has come up with for the self rotation function!

Atomic mechanisms of full-length ASC-mediated inflammasome assembly @natcomms.nature.com
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Thermodynamic principles link in vitro transcription factor affinities to single-molecule chromatin states in cells In vitro-derived insights into features that drive transcription factor binding to DNA, including motif-adjacent sequence, enable prediction of chromatin states and transcription factor occupancy in cells.

Now online! Thermodynamic principles link in vitro transcription factor affinities to single-molecule chromatin states in cells

Tagging @smissoury.bsky.social who has just joined bluesky.

A great read! Fleming's discovery of the antibacterial properties of Penicillium mould cannot have happened as he described.

@kevinsblake.bsky.social rounds up the evidence.

Spoiler: no sign of foul play, but certainly the canonical story is almost certainly distorted.

Is 'transmitted' really crossed out in the second letter, though? Doesn't look like it is to me. Which is interesting given the otherwise perfect delivery.

I wrote recently two blogs on 'AI', provoked by too frequent incentives to believe it's a great thing and use it - linking my blog in case it interests anybody, though the topic is perhaps all too present already.

An archaeal genetic code with all TAG codons as pyrrolysine Multiple genetic codes developed during the evolution of eukaryotes and bacteria, yet no alternative genetic code is known for archaea. We used proteomics to confirm our prediction that certain archae...

Some archaea—an ancient group of microorganisms—have an entirely novel genetic code, according to a new study in Science.

The findings expand our understanding of how alternative genetic codes evolve and hint at new molecular tools for biotechnology applications. https://scim.ag/4omApQ7

Our new preprint is online! Viruses, bacteria and parasites use effector proteins to evade immunity and rewire host cell pathways. Together with @AlexanderStark8, we wondered if we could systematically map what these effectors, regardless of their origin, do in human cells. 1/8

New preprint! We measured temperature- and pH-induced aggregation for over 18,000 natural and de novo designed protein domains!

🪱 Selfish genes are everywhere and drive some of biology’s biggest innovations (CRISPR, antibody recombination, epigenetics). Yet almost no one asks the obvious question: how does a selfish gene begin? Our new manuscript uncovers how selfishness can emerge directly from the host genome.

Frontier structural biology chases low occupancies: weak binders in drug discovery & fleeting intermediates in time-resolved studies. When squeezing SNR, confirmation bias looms – you can see what you hope to see in the noise! Enter METEOR ☄️, our denoising+phasing framework! 1/8

ZAK activation at the collided ribosome - Nature The kinase ZAK is activated at collided ribosomes to mediate the ribotoxic stress response.

Nature research paper: ZAK activation at the collided ribosome

go.nature.com/4a9cika