Aydogan Lab

Oxidative phosphorylation complexes contain subunits encoded by both the nuclear and mitochondrial genomes. How do cells coordinate the synthesis and assembly of these complexes at the inner membrane? We teamed up with Martin Ott (@mitolab.bsky.social) to address this in two recent papers.

Rapid compensatory evolution within a multiprotein complex preserves telomere integrity Intragenomic conflict with selfish genetic elements spurs adaptive changes in subunits of essential multiprotein complexes. Whether and how these adaptive changes disrupt interactions within such comp...

How to keep in step when your (protein) partner speeds up…

Here we investigated the adaptive remodeling of a protein-protein interaction surface essential for telomere protection.

Congrats to whole team!

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

Summer Undergraduate Research Experience | HHMI The Cech Fellows Program is a paid, nine-week summer research experience empowering the next generation of scientific leaders.

@hhmi.org Summer Undergraduate Research Experience - #CechFellows named in honor of Prof Tom Cech
Deadline to apply: 12/22/2025
Spend 9 weeks in a paid, mentored biomedical research experience in an HHMI lab. See you next summer!!!
www.hhmi.org/programs/cec...

SAVE THE DATE! Stoked to organize the 2026 Santa Cruz Developmental Biology Meeting with @rashmi-priya.bsky.social, @lowelab.bsky.social, and Shelbi Russell. Come learn about Biomedicine, Biomechanics, and the Biosphere, August 24-28, 2026. Registration dates, etc., coming soon! Please RT

Dylan, such a stunning video! Do you know if a portion of these cardiomyocytes are binucleated like you'd see postnatally in heart formation?

DNA REPAIR/GENOME STABILITY CONFERENCES

🧬 List of 2026 DNA repair and genome stability conferences, now updated. Please let me know if there is anything missing!
docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

Adipogenin promotes the development of lipid droplets by binding a dodecameric seipin complex The microprotein adipogenin (Adig) is predominantly expressed in adipose tissues. Here, we found that Adig interacts with seipin to form a stable, rigid complex. We present the structure of the seipin...

New paper in Science identifying adipogenin as a critical seipin regulator in LD biogenesis. So glad our lab could help a little in this monumental study. Congrats to all authors!

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

Happy Halloween! 🎃 Continuing my tradition of Nobel-prize-winning discoveries, this year's costume is Ubx!!!
It honors Edward B. Lewis, Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard, & Eric Wieschaus's work on the genetics of development 🧬🪰
(Please clap for the accuracy of those wing veins on *both* pairs of wings.)

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...

Still so much to learn!

So exciting!!! I hope all goes well Monica!

📣 We are moving to Barcelona to join the amazing @crg.eu and explore how centrosomes & cilia work, evolve & respond to the environment. We are looking for
PhD students www.crg.eu/en/content/t...
Postdocs gimm.pt/jobs/postdoc...
Other calls to open, also for an experienced lab manager.
Get in touch!

love these on the subway

Reaffirming the value of model organisms in training scientific minds - Nature Cell Biology As biomedical research prioritizes human models and translational promise, classic model organisms are increasingly dismissed. Here we argue that they have a lasting value, both in enabling discovery and in cultivating scientific thinking, by training researchers in systems reasoning, integrative thinking and independent inquiry.

PREACH!

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

Senior Director - Scientific Officer Primary Work Address: 4000 Jones Bridge Road, Chevy Chase, MD, 20815 Current HHMI Employees, click here to apply via your Workday account. The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) advances the disco...

Great Job - Great Colleagues - Great Science👍
Help us pick the next generation of @hhmi.org Investigators, Freeman Hrabowski Scholars, Hanna Gray Fellows, Gilliam Fellows
Relocation to DC is required, perfect for academic PIs looking for their next chapter
hhmi.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/External/job...

🥳🥳 Massive congrats, Ishmail!!

I’m extremely honored to be a recipient of the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award!

Sperm sequencing reveals extensive positive selection in the male germline - Nature A combination of whole-genome NanoSeq with deep whole-exome and targeted NanoSeq is used to accurately characterize mutation rates and genes under positive selection in sperm cells.

Now published! Our paper on:
(1) Accurate sequencing of sperm at scale
(2) Positive selection of spermatogenesis driver mutations across the exome
(3) Offspring disease risks from male reproductive aging
[1/n]
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Looks very useful indeed! Thank you for sharing!

On the left - western blot of B16F10 cells wt and KO for CDK8. Our in house produced antibodies give a lot of unspecific bands. On the right same probes with antibodies preincubated with fixed CDK8 KO cells - there is a specific band and faint unspecific bands, which can be probably eliminated with increase of amount of KO cells.

Neat trick if you polycolonal ab's suck. Incubate them with fixed cells with a KO of your protein of interest, then spin. Protocol here: www.med.upenn.edu/markslab/ass...
I was amazed how well it worked on first try (I'm sure that I can completely eliminate unspecific bands)
#WesternBlot #cellsky

What if the legendary psychologist and grandfather of behavioral economics, Daniel Kahneman took a sabbitical in a fly lab? How would the lab culture change?

Explored this imaginary scenario in a blog post @the-node.bsky.social
thenode.biologists.com/the-kahneman...

Great read Sameer! Kahneman’s thinking fast and slow is the first book we recommend to our newly minted PhD students in the lab (System 1 vs 2 interpretation of the data) :))

It used to be a massive pain before every paper submission! xD

Figure 1: Fluorophore intensity in the Drosophila blastoderm (n.c. 14). Comparison of (A) green and (B) red fluorescence intensity using the same intensity scaling in n.c. 14. The fluorescence signal did not saturate. Shown are single imaging planes. Normalised histograms of fluorescence intensity for green (C) and red (D) fluorophores averaged across at least n=3 embryos per line. Scale bars = 20 μm

Identification of optimal fluorophores for use in the Drosophila embryo by Timothy E Saunders and team: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Cardiolipin dynamics promote membrane remodeling by mitochondrial OPA1 - Nature Communications This study reveals how cardiolipin governs mitochondrial morphology by modulating the activity of human OPA1 and how its replacement by monolyso-cardiolipin, as observed in Barth syndrome, impacts mitochondrial membrane-shaping mechanisms.

Excited to share that our paper on mitochondrial cardiolipin dynamics is published in @natcomms.nature.com today! We provide molecular explanations for unique aspects of mitochondrial morphology and the mechanisms underlying cardiolipin-related Barth Syndrome.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

We are hiring an Assistant Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics at Weill Cornell Medicine. Come join our collaborative research environment with state-of-the-art facilities in NYC! Application review starts Oct 22.
biochem.weill.cornell.edu/join-our-fac...

Towards a unified framework for the function of endoplasmic reticulum exit sites Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology, Published online: 29 September 2025; doi:10.1038/s41580-025-00899-0Endoplasmic reticulum exit sites (ERES) are specialized ER subdomains that regulate the export of secreted cargo. This Roadmap explores how ERES integrate biochemical and mechanical signals to coordinate trafficking and proposes a multidisciplinary strategy to investigate their function, including in disease.

New Online! Towards a unified framework for the function of endoplasmic reticulum exit sites

Dynamic cell fate plasticity and tissue reintegration drive functional adult synovial joint regeneration after complete resection - Nature Communications Joint injury and disease are leading causes of disability, with mammalian joints exhibiting poor regenerative capacity. Here the authors showed that after loss of a whole joint, adult zebrafish regenerate de novo articular cartilage, ligament, and synovium into a complex joint organ.

📣🧪 Read our latest #research on joint regeneration in #zebrafish, published today in @natcomms.nature.com www.nature.com/articles/s41... @columbiauniversity.bsky.social

🤩🤩🤩🤩

Are you excited?? Because I am!

25 years ago I was 10 and had just started secondary school yet our journal was already covering groundbreaking science, long before I'd even heard of molecular cell biology 🧐
Safe to say I'm fairly familiar with it now 🤭

Enjoy our issue!!!!!!!!!!!