Our latest publication is on bioRχiv! — a study of the meiotic double-strand break machinery, focused on C. elegans but using the extensive genomic resources available for the whole genus to learn more about how SPO-11 and its cofactors work together to break DNA www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Multifaceted and evolutionarily dynamic interactions between Caenorhabditis elegans SPO-11 and its cofactors ensure proper formation of meiotic DNA double-strand breaks

DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) generated during meiotic prophase by the topoisomerase-like protein SPO11 are essential to create crossovers between homologous chromosomes. Since crossovers are requir...

biorxiv.org

ZHP-2/HEI10 generates CO precursors and triggers procrossover factor coarsening and CO formation through Polo kinase recruitment https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.07.26.740636v1

Since it's entered the zeitgeist again, I will take a moment to thank Carolyn Dewald who taught me the Odýsseia at USC and inspired me to memorize its first stanzas in Greek, which I still remember. That class continued into the modern age and pretty much established my tastes as a reader.

This is what they took from us (ok, I still have the album, but !) #nusrat #ustadnusratfatehalikhan

I just had this conversarion with an editor yesterday. If you start hedging for imagined bad faith readers, you have stopped writing and started journaling a fan fic to them.

BeijingPalmer@beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 2w ago

there is literally no amount of caveats or careful wording that will protect you from stupidity or bad faith, so you might as well say things straightforwardly and strongly to begin with.

by Jove, I think that's all of them… 30+ more genomes on the way sometime soon, I do hope, but for now here are 54 Caenorhabditis SPO-11s

Does anyone else have songs or albums you can't listen to until a certain obligation is done with? anyway, really eager to submit something to bioRχiv next week.

Crossover: hanging by a COSA-2 thread @ethanewe.bsky.social highlights work from @celjauebel.bsky.social & colleagues demonstrating the complex molecular machinery required to maintain the fidelity of meiotic recombination. #preprint #DevBio #preLight ⬇️ prelights.biologists.com/highlights/d...

Disordered protein COSA-2 maintains crossover-specific repair compartments to ensure meiotic crossover maturation - preLights

Crossover: hanging by a COSA-2 thread

prelights.biologists.com

During my 書道 class I heard from down the hall the unmistakable sound of a group of 20 or so people going through Carmina Burana, and felt a surprisingly strong urge to put down the brush and go join them. Vade retro, for now

Tadasu Nozaki of UMass Amherst and an MBL Whitman Fellow is trying to better understand the complex movements that allow chromosomes to pair. 🔗 Read the full story here: go.mbl.edu/nozaki

Probably too many nuclei are generated in total, but the eggs/apoptosis numbers look good. Here is some simple stem cell lineage tracing - I wonder if this picture is correct, that after a few days all the meiotic cells in a gonad arm descend from a single progenitor?

Messing around with C. elegans gonad arm simulation, with a goal in mind to reproduce things like RAD-51 focus distribution through the germline

The vast array of Unicode glyphs should get more attention in command line tools; this is one good use I've found for the box-drawing characters:

My first PhD paper is out in Nucleic Acids Research! We describe "Ab-trapping" - an antibody artifact that distorts assays relying on antibody diffusion (microscopy, CUT&Tag, CUT&RUN). The revisions made the story much stronger. Check it out! doi.org/10.1093/nar/...

Antibody-trapping presents a widespread pitfall for microscopy and genomics in the nucleus

Abstract. Chromatin has a complex 3D structure and diverse binding proteins that coordinate the genome’s most essential functions. Many microscopy and geno

doi.org

Per fess argent and vert, a gypsy moth larva rampant guardant, armed and langued gules

I spent the last month obsessed with finding colors that can't be displayed on a conventional screen. This is what I found. moultano.wordpress.com/2026/06/19/w...

Where to Find the Colors Your Screen Can’t Show You

An atlas of the vibrance of the real world

moultano.wordpress.com

Just got a notice of award for an R01. I will be hiring. I'll be looking for either a staff scientist or postdoctoral researcher. The project explores the conserved HEATR5 family of proteins. Their roles in AP1 mediated traffic, and links to motors.🎉

Slack webhooks for phenix refinement of alphafold structures, with a unique personality (IYKYK)

The International C. elegans meeting #worm27 is going to Kobe, Japan in 2027! genetics-gsa.org/celegans/ Organizers: Erik Andersen @erikandersen.bsky.social, Johns Hopkins University Kavita Babu @kavita-babu.bsky.social, IISc Bangalore Suhong Xu, Zhejiang University @genetics-gsa.bsky.social

Experimenting with pulling N nearest neighbors (128 here) to a protein of interest in embedding space closer together in 2D UMAP space —the red human dot that approaches SYP-1 is SIX6OS1. The UMAP puts it quite far away to begin with, presumably under the influence of its nearest human neighbors

Which would you want on a desert island: 1 - the mixtape a friend (not even your best friend) made for you when you were young 2 - a "Tailored to your listening history!!" playlist by current AI in 2026 3 - the Ultimate_Agentic_AI "I know EVERYTHING about you and you WILL LOVE THIS" playlist in 2027

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

Chromosome size as a robust predictor of recombination rate: insights from holocentric and monocentric systems academic.oup.com/genetics/art...

Chromosome size as a robust predictor of recombination rate: insights from holocentric and monocentric systems

Abstract. Recombination is a fundamental evolutionary process essential for generating genetic diversity, facilitating adaptation, and driving speciation.

academic.oup.com

This is a great opportunity for anyone interested!

Wataru Kobayashi@wkobayashi.bsky.social · 3mo ago

🚨Pls repost!🚨 I'm looking for a postdoc who will lead the research investigating the mechanisms of epigenetic reprogramming using mouse embryos. Background in chromatin biology and genomics is desirable. The application deadline is 28 May. Please apply here!! www.dundee.ac.uk/work-for-us/...

I've done it again, the computer equivalent of running a gel the wrong way

Please repost! This comes from the good people at ChimeraX, who produce powerful up-to-date software to study protein (etc) structures, which are FREE to the community. 🙏 To stay viable and serve us, they need an experienced structural biologist to assume the leadership role on a funded project.

Faculty Position – In-Residence

University of California, San Francisco is hiring. Apply now!

aprecruit.ucsf.edu

Thrilled that my first new short story in several years, "Constellations," about astronauts crashlanding on a distant planet, has been published by the @technologyreview.com. Acquiring editor Rachel Cortland. Art by Rogan Brown. Free link to avoid the paywall: ter.li/r3tbrsgr

Is someone ever going to put on a real, well-controlled, no-holds-barred Turing Test for the leading LLMs one of these days? Where the judges are philosophers of mind, AI critics, white-hat hackers, some of whom you and I follow here—the very people who are best equipped for the challenge.

A movie couple that would definitely have a podcast

a man and a woman standing next to each other with the words have fun storming the castle written below them

ALT: a man and a woman standing next to each other with the words have fun storming the castle written below them

media.tenor.com

Harmit Singh Malik@harmitmalik.bsky.social · 4mo ago

A movie couple that would definitely have a podcast

Meiosis faces a fundamental problem: It must repair hundreds of DNA double-strand breaks while executing a transcriptional programme essential for gamete development. But many of these breaks occur in genes. So how are these two processes reconciled? www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...