Luisa Cochella

Recurrent evolution of selfishness from an essential tRNA synthetase in Caenorhabditis tropicalis - Nature Ecology & Evolution In Caenorhabditis tropicalis, three toxin–antidote elements arose via gene duplication from the essential tRNA-synthetase subunit FARS-3. The ancestral antidote probably acquired affinity for FARS-3, ...

Recurrent evolution of selfishness from an essential tRNA synthetase in Caenorhabditis tropicalis

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

Poster with QR code linking to the position

I'm very excited to announce that UNC Biology has 6 faculty positions open this year! The first is for an Asst Professor who studies organismal resilience using an integrative approach 1/n
unc.peopleadmin.com/postings/307...

Thrilled to share that I’ll be joining @imbmainz.bsky.social in February 2026 to start my own group!
We will explore new mechanisms in eukaryotic gene expression, leveraging ‘evolutionary play’ to uncover how regulation, repurposing, and hijacking shape RNA biology.
PhD positions available!

Congrats to the winners! Its notable that Omar Yaghi was a refugee. Refugees and immigrants once again making American science great!

It is with great sadness that we share the news of the death of our founder, colleague, mentor and friend, Professor Sir John Gurdon. His vision and dedication will continue to inspire generations of scientists.
🔗 www.gurdon.cam.ac.uk/nobel-laurea...

NIH races to spend its 2025 grant money — but fewer projects win funding Despite political obstacles, officials are on track to disburse all of the research funds allocated to US biomedical behemoth.

Staff members at the NIH seem to have done the impossible: spend the agency's $48 billion budget.

“Everyone has been rallying together to clean up the mess, but it’s a mess that did not need to be made,” an NIH program officer told me.

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

Thank you all the program officers at NIH that persisted through the 2025 fiscal year and were able to fund 99% of the total FY2024 budget. I know this has take a toll on everyone at NIH. Thank you for supporting important health and behavior science and helping to keep the U.S. a leader in science.

Gut epithelium modifies enteric behaviors during nutritional adversity via distinct peptidergic signaling axes Gut epithelium modulates output from distinct enteric circuits by altering secretion of insulin and noninsulin peptides.

Very excited to share this finding from my postdoctoral work that is now published in #ScienceAdvances. We show how the gut’s epithelium modifies enteric behaviors during nutritional adversity via distinct peptidergic signaling axes.

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

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Thanks for highlighting - thread to follow. Mini-summary: beyond assigning oscillatory genes expression by scRNA-seq to individual cell types, we also show that chromatin opens rhythmically and that we can predict this (and gene expression) with a small set of TFs in a mathematical model.

a bunch of clocks are hanging on a wall including one that says ' 3:00 ' on it ALT: a bunch of clocks are hanging on a wall including one that says ' 3:00 ' on it

New preprint!

How are developmental cycles coordinated across cell types?

It turns out that, like Geppetto's cuckoo clocks in the GIF below, individual cell types are each performing their own little crazy routine, but all in sync with each other.

David Baltimore, giant of molecular biology, has died.

Go Mei!

We are all super happy and proud to see our work on the function and evolution of the #cephalic #furrow published in @nature.com. Let me say a few things about the background and history of this work on the #Evolution_of_Morphogenesis (1/12)

Thanks Eric!
Made possible by CRISPR technology, Emilio's expert design and injection skills, and loads of Cas9 purified and gifted to us by Geraldine Seydoux's lab... and a pinch of craziness : )

Thanks, Andi : )

We loved working with you Ralf! We gave you a little shoutout in the acknowledgements, but we always remember that you were the one who noticed the kal-1 reporter under the microscope : )

Lots more to dig into in the paper : )
Congrats Emilio and everyone involved!!!

In a tour de force experiment, Emilio made a worm strain with 13 variant 3'UTRs, mutating the miR-51/miR-100 binding sites in high confidence targets. This phenocopies some of the defects observed upon loss of the miRNA, providing causality between modest derepression of many targets and phenotype!

An ancient and essential miRNA family controls cellular interaction pathways in C. elegans A microRNA that arose at the origin of eumetazoans regulates cell adhesion and signaling in C. elegans through conserved targets.

Our work on the function of miR-51/miR-100 is out! miR-100 is widely conserved across eumetazoans but its function has been mysterious. Emilio Santillán found in worms it regulates signaling and extracellular matrix genes, some of which seem to be conserved targets! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Amazing! And the jokers are 🔥😂

The Argonautes 2025 - we made a special gift for participants - a card set with 32 different Argonautes + an extension pack with four Nobel prize winners from the small RNA field. Mello, Fire, Ambros & Ruvkun as jokers :-) #argonautes2025

Huge thanks to Cathy Savage-Dunn @cswormlab.bsky.social and Baris Tursun @baristursun.bsky.social for an amazing #worm25 !!

I want to call out the OUTSTANDING meeting they created! Talks and posters were A+++. Most of all they brought us together in one of the most challenging times we've had.

Special thanks to Ahna Skop, Morris Maduro, and Curtis Loer for bringing so much joy to the meeting!
Also, big thanks to GSA and Anne Marie Mahoney for making #worm25 happen despite the challenging times. Thank you also to USDavis for hosting us and the delicious food.

We are looking forward to the Worm Meeting 2027 and thank
Suhong Xu(Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou, China),
Kavita Babu (Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India), and
Erik Andersen (Johns Hopkins
University Baltimore, USA)
for organising. #worm25

Congrats to all, including Lo-Yu Chang from our lab 😁

New paper out in @natcomms.nature.com! A surprising story of a "non-conserved" protein that's vital for human cell fitness! Fantastic work by Alexandra Shulkina in collaboration with the @lcochella.bsky.social & @clausenlab.bsky.social labs.

Our dean is taking the message to where it needs to hit.

www.foxnews.com/opinion/cutt...

"Funding from the NIH was contributed to 354 of 356 drugs (99.4%) approved from 2010 to 2019 totaling $187 billion"

Reference: jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Much will be written about how 4 PhD students and a PhD –Colette Delawalla, Sam Goldstein, Emma Courtney, Leslie Berntsen & JP Flores – organized @standupforscience.bsky.social to
unite scientists in the US and worldwide. Now let's keep the momentum going to defend science!
bsky.app/starter-pack...

Of course times are tough, but is anyone (or does anyone know) of anyone in the DC-VA-MD area with openings for a masters-level researcher with experience in molecular biology, RNA and DNA work, transcriptomics, and specific experience with both plant and nematode genomics?