Majumdar Lab @ UVM

New from our lab in @narjournal.bsky.social:
We dissect the folding dynamics of a fundamental element of RNA secondary structure—a stem-loop—at single-molecule and microsecond resolution.
doi.org/10.1093/nar/... 1/5

SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH SAVE LIVES: Last Thursday night, I was talking on the phone with my 87-year-old mother, and she had a SEIZURE WHILE ON THE PHONE! Rushed to the ER, had stroke symptoms that were reversed by a dose of the latest version of tissue plasminogen activator (clot-dissolving drug). 1/2

Wadsworth is awesome - if this describes you, strongly consider applying

YouTube video by Core Memory Priscilla Chan's Multi-Billion Dollar Quest to End Disease

If we are all just NPCs living in the world of billionaires, the glass half full view is that one of them truly values basic science. Howard Hughes couldn't tell you about CD47. Good interview. @ashleevance.bsky.social

SPIDR enables multiplexed mapping of RNA-protein interactions and uncovers a mechanism for selective translational suppression upon cell stress SPIDR, a massively multiplexed method that simultaneously maps dozens of RNA-binding proteins to their RNA targets at single-nucleotide resolution, uncovers new RNA-protein interactions and provides c...

www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Tour de force spearheaded by brilliant Marko Jovanovic and colleagues!

I used Veo 3 to solve Shakespearean tragedies as pictured in classical art. (sound on)

Publish the data, overlook the code? Glam gonna glam.

Molecular cat tweezers? 😺

🧬 Sharing an exciting new pre-print from the team! We stimulated healthy blood cells with 11 different treatments used in immunology research & created single-cell profiles to compare responses. Hopefully an invaluable resource for immunology/disease researchers 📖 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

New paper that looked at 15 million biomedical abstracts and found specific words that abruptly increased in frequency in 2024, likely due to the authors using LLMs.

Take home message: don't use the word "Delve"

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

Defining and benchmarking open problems in single-cell analysis - Nature Biotechnology Nature Biotechnology - Defining and benchmarking open problems in single-cell analysis

New OpenProblems paper out! 📝

Led by Malte Lücken with Smita Krishnaswamy, we present openproblems.bio – a community-driven platform benchmarking single-cell analysis methods.

Excited about transparent, evolving best practices for the field!

🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Post from Lois Mac: I don't want a business that scales. I want a body of work that haunts everyone who ever doubted me

OMG yes, this, so much this

Two-thirds of cats prefer a leftward sleeping position, giving their left visual field and thus their right brain half a privileged view of approaching animals without being obstructed by their own body.

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

Morning rabbit hole: the origin of "diploma"
A roman bronze tablet conferring citizenship to soldiers.
Notably, "Down the middle of the second tablet is a compartment with a slide-out lid where the wax seals of five of the witnesses are contained."

www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/69461

Excited to share our new paper in @cellreports.bsky.social that reshapes our understanding of chromosome organization's deep evolutionary roots! Our work dives into the origins of the machinery that structures our very genomes.

🔗: doi.org/10.1016/j.ce...

#Genomics #Evolution #CellBiology #LECA

Excited to share our latest where we describe a gene editing method termed prime assembly that enables RNA programmable targeted integration of gene-sized DNA sequences in nondividing cells without dsDNA or nuclease-driven DSBs. See thread by incomparable @Seb. Also complementary work Sontheimer/Xue

Latest preprint from the lab, many years in the making!

By combining #cryoEM with #AlphaFold3 modelling, we propose that norovirus NS3 forms a transmembrane RNA translocase.

This could have big implications for our understanding of viral replication & assembly (🧵)

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

Structural and mechanistic analysis of covalent ligands targeting the RNA-binding protein NONO https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.10.658857v1

The design, manufacture and LNP formulation of mRNA for research use Nature Protocols - This protocol describes simple, small-scale laboratory production of mRNA for research and preclinical use. This includes sequence design, DNA template production, mRNA synthesis...

To accelerate #mRNA vaccine and therapy research, we're excited to share our end-to-end protocol for mRNA design, synthesis and encapsulation in @natprot.nature.com.

Protocol development led by @laura-leighton.bsky.social, Natasha Chaudhary and Tim Mercer.@basemrna.bsky.social

rdcu.be/eqiF1

Multiple models of TBI in Drosophila yield common and unique genetic, physiological, behavioral outcomes Traumatic brain injury is a significant public health problem, but the complex pathology of TBI has posed a barrier to a molecular understanding of th…

Ever wondered how to give a fly a traumatic brain injury? Whether you want to bop a fly on the head yourself or contrast to vertebrate models, this review (first-authored by one of my grad students) is for you! #drosophila 🧪 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

How to train your model An advanced protein design Bootcamp / Hackathon software developer event Summer RosettaCon 2025 – Bootcamp / Hackathon – Application is open, apply here This immersive, hands-on event i…

How to train your model.

This immersive, hands-on, advanced-level event is designed for researchers who are ready to move beyond “out-of-the-box” machine learning models for protein design. Join us for this Summer RosettaCon 2025 workshop/hackathon, more here: rosettacommons.org/2025/05/30/h...

An Il12 mRNA-LNP adjuvant enhances mRNA vaccine–induced CD8 T cell responses IL-12 is dispensable for CD8 T cell responses to mRNA vaccination, but an Il12 mRNA-LNP enhances CD8 T cell memory and protection.

We're not the first to use IL-12 as an adjuvant - but having worked on IL-12 for >30 years this was still a surprise at how much this study taught us about mRNA vaccines and their utility. Here are two others below:
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
@cytokinesociety.bsky.social

Best unintentional slogan for bsky comes from from nyt today: "The sparring swiftly devolved into threats on their respective social media platforms."

RNA binding regulation is a new dimension in the type I IFN response The type I interferon (IFN-I) response shapes the intracellular environment to supress virus infection. Historically, this remodelling has been linked to the transcriptional induction of interferon st...

Proud of Louisa Iselin for this work. Not only a covid baby but had both of her supervisors move lab (@alf-castello.bsky.social and me). The works is a meticulous analysis of the interferon pathway and specifially how RNA binding of proteins are modulated by PTMs.

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

Proud to announce our new technique for tracking relative B cell clonality in situ with B Cell Receptor MERFISH (BCR-MERFISH)! Congratulations to Evan Yang and our colleagues in the Carroll laboratory! Check out our bioRxiv: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 1/9

Same for ELAV/Hu RNA binding protein sites - they diverge rapidly, though regulation remains conserved.
academic.oup.com/genetics/art...

We are #hiring! Please help share!

Postdoc in #Immunology; B-cell biology

We are recruiting a postdoc to lead projects on human B cells and plasma cells funded by the Gates Foundation and the NIH (The position is fully funded and not dependent on future grants).

ghosnlab.science/join-us

"Just like our genome is dominated by junk DNA, our cells are full of meaningless molecular encounters. Natural selection is simply too weak to weed out spurious interactions that have only mildly deleterious effects on fitness" 🔥

<em>Immunology & Cell Biology</em> | ASI Journal | Wiley Online Library In this article for the Highlights of 2024 series, we review the latest advances in the biology of the germinal center response. These discoveries provide key insights into germinal center function a...

Our @immunolcellbiol.bsky.social "Highlights of 2024: Germinal Centers" is now out. Led by Theresa Pankhurst, we discuss some (there's never enough space for all!) neat germinal centre papers that were published in 2024, and whose findings are moving the field forward. doi.org/10.1111/imcb...

Evangelizing for your favorite mechanisms will never quite be the same. (Flow/Veo 2).