Online Now: Coordination of ALT telomere maintenance across the cell cycle Online now:

Coordination of ALT telomere maintenance across the cell cycle

Alternative lengthening of telomeres (ALT) counteracts telomere shortening independently of the activity of the enzyme telomerase. ALT uses telomere sequences for recombination-based telomere extension, and recent work has started to reveal how this pathway works across the cell cycle and even across cell divisions.

dlvr.it

1/ Delighted to share our paper out today in Nature: ZFP36L2 orchestrates stress-adaptive plasticity in regeneration and cancer. We found the switch that lets differentiated cells rewind into stem cells — in gut repair, and in metastasis. 🧵 doi.org/10.1038/s415...

ZFP36L2 orchestrates stress-adaptive plasticity in regeneration and cancer - Nature

The RNA-binding protein ZFP36L2 mediates stress-adaptive plasticity in intestinal regeneration and colorectal cancer metastasis.

doi.org

New paper out in Nature Communications! 🥳🧬🔬 We map the earliest DNA strand separation during MCM2-7 helicase activation at near base-pair resolution, revealing where origin melting begins and how DNA is routed through the Mcm2/5 gate. doi.org/10.1038/s414... #DNAReplication

new out in Nature www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Genetic background sets the trajectory of experimental cancer evolution - Nature

Experimentally replaying tumour evolution in divergent mouse strains reveals the importance of interactions between genetic ancestry and acquired cancer-driving mutations in shaping the earliest stage...

nature.com

Our latest is now out in @nataging.nature.com giving reason to celebrate! Led by talented Spiros Palikyras, it improves our preprint (posted 2 years ago!) dissecting the mechanism and functional consequences of CTCF clustering upon senescence commitment of human cells. www.nature.com/articles/s43...

Senescent cells cluster CTCF on nuclear speckles to instruct an alternative splicing program - Nature Aging

Palikyras and colleagues investigate chromatin reorganization upon senescence induction, reporting that components of nuclear speckles coordinate chromatin rewiring and a senescence-associated splicin...

nature.com

mtDNA deletions cause incurable diseases. Our CRISPR screen found a fix: deleting MTERF1 restores mitochondrial function, not by clearing bad genomes, but by making the healthy ones work harder. Simple Biology! New preprint 👇 @tatakavlashvili.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

MTERF1 loss buffers against pathogenic mtDNA deletions through transcriptional regulation

Large-scale mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) deletions cripple oxidative phosphorylation once they exceed a critical heteroplasmy threshold, causing incurable mitochondrial pathologies. Using a genome-wide C...

biorxiv.org

Missed it? Our March preprint shows how endogenous oxidative base damage drives the PARPi response in ATM-deficient cells. In working this out we uncovered a role for ATM in safeguarding replication through damaged DNA and discuss what this could mean for Ataxia-Telangiectasia.

MRC Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine@imm.ox.ac.uk · 4w ago

#WIMMReads🧪 From the Chapman Group: a new preprint offers a potential explanation for why ATM deficient cancers respond to PARP inhibitors, with implications for cancer treatment and Ataxia Telangiectasia. #CancerResearch #AcademicSky @rdm.ox.ac.uk @medsci.ox.ac.uk @rosschapmanlab.bsky.social 🧬

We just preprinted Marianna’s PhD work in which we asked: How does non-coding DNA affect cell physiology? And why do some organisms have so little of it while other genomes are 99% non-coding?

bioRxiv Cell Biology@biorxiv-cellbio.bsky.social · last mo.

Non-coding DNA dictates cell size and impairs fitness by sequestering RNA polymerase https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.07.10.737727v1

📣 Tracking cells through time – including divisions – is a core problem in live-imaging microscopy. We built HOCT, an edge-centric Transformer that hits state-of-the-art on the Cell Tracking Challenge without a pretrained image encoder. Work led by @jookuma.bsky.social arxiv.org/abs/2607.11754 🧪🔬💻

1/ 🧬🧪 New preprint! Do you actually need a biology-specific foundation model to predict how cells respond to perturbations? Surprising answer: a general-purpose tabular model - never trained on a single cell - matches or beats the specialists. 🧵 📄 doi.org/10.64898/2026.06.28.735106 @biohub

🚀Excited to share our latest efforts in bringing highly multiplexed whole-mount imaging to intact multicellular systems! Shield-4i: an integrated platform to study multi-scale information flow in 3D embryos and embryo-like systems. Kudos to @rhornb.bsky.social for this major milestone in the lab!🚀

Very excited to share our new Nature study! We discovered that replication stress stabilizes CTCF-dependent chromatin loops enclosing stressed nascent DNA, where G9a-mediated heterochromatin protects it from nucleolytic degradation. rdcu.be/frzLg Huge thanks to all our collaborators and co-authors!

Replication-stress-induced chromatin loops protect fork stability - Nature

Replication stress induces the formation of transient chromatin loops that enclose de novo heterochromatin-enriched stalled replication forks.

nature.com

🧬 Our new paper is out in @natsmb.nature.com! ATRX is one of the most mutated genes in cancer, and linked to the rare ATR-X syndrome. We ran genome-scale CRISPR screens to map how it protects the genome, and found it is doing two separate jobs... 🧵 (1/4) nature.com/articles/s41594-026-01827-2

Distinct ATRX functions cooperate with 9-1-1 and CST complexes to safeguard replication and telomere integrity - Nature Structural & Molecular Biology

Segura-Bayona et al. uncover genetically separable ATRX functions that independently safeguard telomeres and genome replication, revealing how CST and 9-1-1 pathways suppress accumulation of toxic sin...

nature.com

Excited to share that our work on ‘How the gut gets patterned during regeneration’ is out now cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(26)00696-3 Thanks a lot to @priscaliberali.bsky.social @silviabarbiero.bsky.social @davidbrueckner.bsky.social @ehannezo.bsky.social and all co-authors! 🧵

Multiscale integration of tissue and chromatin context converts cell heterogeneity into stable intestinal patterning

During regeneration, tissues must translate transient cellular variability into stable spatial organization. Tissue architecture generates a density-dependent window of heterogeneity in the mechanosen...

cell.com

New review in NAR! We connect the two halves of the DNA replication field — single-cell microscopy and genome-wide sequencing to show how each method’s strengths build one picture: from DNA fibers → replication foci → origin & timing maps. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkag550 @narjournal.bsky.social

Spatial organization and dynamics of genome replication: from forks to foci

Abstract. Genome replication is without doubt the most complex and critical activity of all living cells. Any error may not only affect the cell itself but

doi.org

Excited to finally share our preprint on mapping the genetic interaction network of the DNA damage response with combinatorial knockout screens led by Sam Hayward, Alina Vaitsiankova, and Tomas Lama-Diaz! www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...

Mapping the genetic landscape of the DNA damage response with Cas12a-based combinatorial knockout screens

The DNA damage response (DDR) is a complex network of cellular pathways that ensures the faithful maintenance of our genomes upon a wide array of genomic insults. To elucidate the functional architect...

biorxiv.org

📣 new preprint multimodal atlas. Imaging + scRNA, 57M cells. 🧬🔬 Cells are complex dynamical systems — but most ways we measure them destroy them. We asked: how does live imaging compare to scRNA-seq, the field’s gold std? The answer surprised us 🧵 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

📣New Postdoc and Technician opportunities in out lab!📣 We are currently looking for a postdoc interested in telomeres, aging and innate immnuity, and with experience in high-end microscopy. Application details at gimm.pt/jobs/express...

New preprint from our lab! We've been working out how the CMG replicative helicase gets built. 🧵 1/3

It's time to rewrite reviews-aKG doesn't just regulate demethylation. Work from my lab and @mzspectrum.bsky.social demonstrates a new role for aKG in promoting histone acetylation and DNA repair through regulating carnitine synthesis. Congrats Apoorva Uboveja! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

αKG-mediated carnitine synthesis drives DNA repair via histone acetylation - Nature

The metabolite αKG promotes carnitine synthesis and increases site-specific histone acetylation, thereby promoting homologous recombination-mediated DNA repair, which has potential implications f...

nature.com

Interested in DNA damage and the mechanisms of mutagenesis? We are hiring post-doctoral scientists as part of the amazing CAUSE Cancer Grand Challenge team. Biochemistry, genomics and computational biology... tinyurl.com/yc5xs3wa tinyurl.com/4unu5uu9 CAUSE www.cancergrandchallenges.org/cause

Happy to share our collaborative project with Stephane Marcand, on the protective role of Rap1 at telomeres. It turned out that our favorite protein, MRX, has the ability to measure telomere length, and activate response pathways when telomeres become too short. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Excited to share our latest paper! We found that large pieces of the human genome can transfer between cells upon direct contact, endowing recipient cells with heritable phenotypic changes. @cp-cell.bsky.social (1/7) www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Excited to share our RegVelo paper in Cell www.cell.com/cell/fulltex... We unify RNA velocity + GRNs into one model → better OOD prediction of perturbations (e.g. gene KOs), with examples incl. neural crest KO predictions 🔬 Big thanks to W Wang, Z Hu & T Sauka-Spengler 🙏

If you are interested in PARP inhibitors and history, this might be of interest to you. www.nature.com/articles/s41.... An attempt to cover the work of thousands and their immense contributions to the development of a targeted approach to treating cancers.

Two decades of PARP inhibitor synthetic lethality in cancer - Nature

The past two decades of PARP inhibitor synthetic lethality in cancer is explored.

nature.com

New preprint out!🧬 How do cells keep replicated sister chromatids linked for DNA repair while folding 3D loops for gene expression? Extrusion folds DNA but separates sisters, while cohesion connects them, risking mutual interference. How do they coexist?🧵👇 🔗 doi.org/10.64898/2026.05.02.722390 1/6

Happy to share our new review in @annualreviews.bsky.social on abasic sites and their impact on DNA replication written by @angelotaglialatela.bsky.social. www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

Endogenous Sources of Abasic Sites and Implications for DNA Replication: Mechanisms of Fork Stalling and Recovery

Apurinic/apyrimidinic (AP) sites, also known as abasic sites, are among the most frequent DNA lesions, arising spontaneously or as intermediates in base excision repair. Their structural impediment to...

annualreviews.org

Tumor promotion through the lens of evolution This review grew out of many long conversations, shared ideas, and lively discussions It has been a real pleasure to think together with Allan, Paul, Eve, and Abel about how tumours develop and how carcinogens shape cancer risk rdcu.be/fdC2J

Tumour promotion through the lens of evolution

Nature - This Review revisits tumour initiation and promotion in light of clonal diversity and the presence of cancer driver mutations in normal tissues, aiming to understand mechanisms that enable...

rdcu.be

How does a cell learn? In our new perspective in @nature.com we propose a model where the properties of the AP-1 family of transcription factors – stress-induced feedback, regulatory combinatorics and cellular memory – encode a mechanism for cellular learning. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Pleased to share our review on chromosomal instability (CIN) and aneuploidy in cancer, led by Amanda Mennie. Now out @annualreviews.bsky.social! www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

Impact of Chromosomal Instability and Aneuploidy in Cancer Development

Somatic human cells contain a diploid genome consisting of 23 pairs of chromosomes. The maintenance of this diploid state is essential across all layers of biological organization, ranging from the ph...

annualreviews.org