Last month’s Lab Retreat at Gustav Ammerer’s castle 🏰🌿 Hiking, cooking together, personality tests, TED-style talks, and a very intense round of Blood on the Clocktower. A lovely few days of science, reflection, games, food, and getting to know the lab beyond work and the bench.

Congratulations again, Max! 🎉 We’re so proud of you and grateful to have had you in the lab. Wishing you all the best for the exciting next chapter! 👏

Max Spicer@mfdspicer.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Chuffed to have defended my PhD thesis! Big thanks to @danielgerlich.bsky.social for all his support and guidance; and to the wonderful @gerlichlab.bsky.social, @imbavienna.bsky.social & @viennabiocenter.bsky.social for being an incredible scientific home these past few years. On to the next :)

The Gerlich lab recently attended the International Symposium on Chromosome Dynamics: from Structure to Cellular Function in Awaji, Japan 🇯🇵 A really nice chance to share our work, exchange ideas, and catch up with the chromosome dynamics community. 1/3

Congratulations to Max @mfdspicer.bsky.social on completing his PhD! 🎉 Yesterday, he successfully defended his thesis, “Electrostatic control of apoptotic chromatin compaction.” The lab is very proud of you, Max! 👏 1/2

Welcome to the Gerlich Lab, Valerio! 🎉 We’re excited to have you on board and look forward to the great science ahead together. 🧬

Valerio Sorichetti@vsorichetti.bsky.social · 3mo ago

I'm happy to share that I have started a new position in the Gerlich Lab (@gerlichlab.bsky.social) at IMBA (@imbavienna.bsky.social) as Senior Bioinformatician. Looking forward to contributing to the great science developed in the group! 😊🧬

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

Congratulations to Caelan on completing their PhD! 🎉 Last week, they defended their thesis, “Unravelling the Surface Localisation of Centromeres on Vertebrate Chromosomes in Mitosis.” The lab is very proud of you, Caelan! 👏 1/2

Last week, the Gerlich lab went to Prein an der Rax for a writing retreat, or as we liked to call it, a “storython” ✍️🏔️ Led by Iain Patten, it was a chance to step away from day-to-day experiments and focus on building clearer, more coherent stories around our research. 1/4

1/New preprint just dropped! 🔥🔥 We investigate how the genome is destroyed in apoptotic cells in a way that prevents DNA fragments from spreading beyond the dying cell 🧬⚰ Done here at @imbavienna.bsky.social & in the super @rcollepardo.bsky.social & Rosen labs: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

The Vienna BioCenter Summer School 2026 call is now open for talented undergrads, it's a great for those interested in graduate study in the life sciences. Daniel Gerlich from Institute of Molecular Biotechnology is recruiting! Please share https://training.vbc.ac.at/summer-school/

Excited to share our latest fully in-house paper! 🎉 We show how cohesin integrates loop extrusion with sister tethering to guide the homology search during DNA repair. Huge congratulations to all authors, and to @fedeteloni.bsky.social for leading this work 👏 We’re excited to see his next steps!

Federico Teloni@fedeteloni.bsky.social · 8mo ago

I am happy to share that my postdoctoral work in the @gerlichlab.bsky.social at @imbavienna.bsky.social is finally out 🎉! Our study reveals how cohesin guides focused and accurate homology search. Read more 👉 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... Follow along for key insights and updates! 🧵

🚨 New Science paper from the Gerlich lab! The team shows how cohesin helps broken DNA find the right template: by opening local DNA loops to shrink the search area and by keeping the damaged strand close to its sister copy: science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adw0566

Huge congratulations to @mfdspicer.bsky.social, PhD student in our lab, for winning the Best Poster Prize at the 2nd Spatial Genome Organization Conference! 🎉 A proud moment for the lab and well-deserved recognition for his creativity and dedication. 👏 @fusionconf.bsky.social #SGO25

1/ New preprint alert! In collaboration between the Rosen, Redding, Collepardo-Guevara & Gerlich labs, we uncover a surprising principle of chromosome organisation: electrostatic repulsion positions centromeres at the chromosome surface during mitosis. 🔗 doi.org/10.1101/2025...

An electrostatic repulsion model of centromere organisation

During cell division, chromosomes reorganise into compact bodies in which centromeres localise precisely at the chromatin surface to enable kinetochore-microtubule interactions essential for genome se...

doi.org

Our lab is now on Bluesky! 🚀 Kicking things off by sharing @fedeteloni.bsky.social latest preprint on the role of cohesin in homology search. Check out the thread for more details!

Federico Teloni@fedeteloni.bsky.social · last yr.

New preprint from the @gerlichlab.bsky.social @imbavienna.bsky.social! How do DNA breaks locate homology sites in the vast space of the human genome? We show how cohesin guides homology search for faithful repair! Read more 👉 https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.02.10 Follow along for key insights! 🧵