Phil Holliger

YouTube video by Cambridge Biomedical Campus Welcome to the Cambridge Biomedical Campus

What do apple trees, Nobel Prizes, cows, and world-changing innovation all have in common? Well, they're all part of a new animated journey across one of Europe’s most extraordinary places, the Cambridge Biomedical Campus.

youtu.be/2K7Txdwb_k4

LMB prize winners with certificates in the Max Perutz Lecture Theatre with clapping audience

Congratulations to the 2025 recipients of the Eileen Southgate Staff Prize which recognises those who have made outstanding contributions to the LMB: Ian Elbrow, Pam Gallacher, Jessica McCool and Alison Turnock.

Read more about their work here: www2.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/lmb-prizes-2...

#LMBNews 👏

LMB prize winners with certificates in the Max Perutz Lecture Theatre with clapping audience

Congratulations to the 2025 recipients of the Perutz Student Prize and the Joan Steitz Postdoc Prize: Claudia De Miguel, @lucaschwarz.bsky.social, Tom Dendooven, Sofia Lövestam, Katerina Naydenva & Tomke Stürner.

Find out why they won here: www2.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/lmb-prizes-2...

#LMBNews 👏

RNA: From the Origin of Life to the Future of Medicine Scientists are exploring how RNA might have jump-started life four billion years ago and how it's now advancing drug development with RNA-based therapies.

www.the-scientist.com/rna-from-the...

Glowing E. coli bacteria in green and blues on a background of DNA bases

Rewriting the language of life: Jason Chin’s group in the LMB’s PNAC Division have synthesised E. coli with just 57 codons instead of the usual 64.
Syn57 required 101000+ codon changes & represents a bold step towards programmable life.
Read more: www2.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/syn57-repres...
#LMBResearch🧪

We are excited to be a part of a collaboration lead by Tarafder and Bharat titled "Targeted disruption of phage liquid crystalline droplets abolishes antibiotic tolerance of bacterial biofilms" - this work has exciting implications for biofilm-targeted therapeutics.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Research Group Leader in Chemical/Synthetic Biology at MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology Start your UK & international job search for academic jobs, research jobs, science jobs and managerial jobs in leading universities and top...

We are looking to recruit a tenure track group leader in the field of Chemical/Synthetic Biology (in the broadest sense) to lead a research program within the Division of Protein & Nucleic Acid Chemistry ( www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DNW809/r... ) at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB).

Excited to be at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) for the first time to present at the Life Sciences Students Symposium. Such impressive venue. No pressure!

Excited to share our latest work! We found transcription factor SPT6 and phosphorylated Pol II CTD help recruit U1 snRNP to elongating Pol II, allowing efficient co-transcriptional splicing.

Glad to be featured in the Editors’ Highlights!

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

#splicing #cryoEM

Highly collaborative efforts that involved 6 lab members and the labs of @yiliangding.bsky.social and @rdaslab.bsky.social. We uncovered a telomerase dimer and its potential role in telomere maintenance.

In the paper, we investigate RNA polymerase ribozymes and their ability to perform rolling circle synthesis (RCS).

We previously showed that RCS is possible, though inefficient. Now, we use cryo-EM and identify a network of unexpected structures (see movie) which affect RCS.

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Andy Fire Stanford University Cellular response to genetic change Monday 30th June at 11am (BST)

Interested in how cells respond to genetic change?
Don’t miss this #LMBSeminar from Andy Fire of Stanford University!
Visit our website for more info on how to join: www2.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/news-and-eve...

Portrait photo of Tanmay Bharat

Congratulations to @tbharat-lab.bsky.social, Group Leader in the LMB’s Structural Studies Division, who has received the Gold Medal from @embo.org for his research on prokaryotic surface molecules.

Read more here: www2.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/tanmay-bhara...

#LMBNews

AstraZeneca, BioNTech and CIC back Sortera Bio's £7.5m pre-seed round Sortera Bio, a Cambridge biotech based on IP developed at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, has attracted big hitting backers for a £7.5m pre-seed round to power AI models for drug discovery. T...

@businessweekly.bsky.social‬ reports that LMB spinout Sortera Bio has raised £7.5m pre-seed investment from AstraZeneca, BioNTech and CIC

Read more: www.businessweekly.co.uk/posts/astraz...

#LMBinthenews

Read this #preprint on @researchsquare: Base modifications reshape RNA folding landscapes and structure–function relationships in synthetic and natural RNAs
www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-6...

Chemists recreate how RNA might have reproduced for first time Chemists at UCL and the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology have demonstrated how RNA (ribonucleic acid) might have replicated itself on early Earth – a key process in the origin of life.

How did life on Earth begin? 🌍🧬
New #LMBResearch from Phil Holliger’s group, including James Attwater (now @uclchemistry.bsky.social‬‬ @uclnews.bsky.social) shows how pH-freeze-thaw cycles enables RNA self-replication, overcoming a key evolutionary hurdle.‬
Read more: www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2025/ma...

Trinucleotide substrates under pH–freeze–thaw cycles enable open-ended exponential RNA replication by a polymerase ribozyme Nature Chemistry - Models of abiotic RNA replication suffer from inherent product inhibition arising from the high stability of RNA duplexes. Now, it has been shown that RNA trinucleotide...

New paper from my group rdcu.be/eoaRr "Trinucleotide substrates under pH–freeze–thaw cycles enable open-ended exponential RNA replication by a polymerase ribozyme" in Nature Chemistry — great collaboration with attwaterlab.uk.