Congrats to my @berkeleymcb.bsky.social colleague Andy Martin, who just received the Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin Award of the @proteinsociety.bsky.social. Andy's studies have made the proteasome one of the best understood molecular machines in biology. Well deserved!!
An honor to share the closing Keynote session @CellBio2025. Thank you American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) and EMBO for an amazing meeting and for making us feel part of a community of inspiring scientists.
Excited to share our new preprint in collaboration with Ahmet Yildiz's lab. Check out how our team uncovers a novel binding footprint and motor regulation mechanism for MAP9 Congrats to Burak Cetin and @aryantaheri.bsky.social
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Delighted to present my trajectory and research to audiences ranging from high school students to researchers at Hong Kong Universities and Science Centers. Special thanks to my local ambassadors Zhoe and Emi for making my visit so special 🥰🥰
An honor and pleasure to be at the @HKLaureatesForum, a “meeting of inspirational minds” gathering @ShawPrize recipients 🏅 and young scientists. Inspirational to hear other laureates and interact with promising researchers curious about the world around them, big 🪐 & small 🧬
Thrilled to share our new cryo-ET preprint on astrocytes, a collaboration with @mengmengfu.bsky.social here at @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social, revealing the nm-scale cytoskeletal architecture of ramified astrocytes reminiscing in vivo morphology. Check out the cytoskeleton compartmentalization!
A unique honor to become a Foreign Member of the @royalsociety.org, together with my @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social colleague Stuart Russell and old friends like John Briggs, Asia Akhtar, Patrick Cramer or Ruth Lehmann. Learning about great science and science history was a real treat.
Very grateful to the Menéndez Pelayo International University for awarding me an honorary doctorate last Tuesday, July 8th, in the incomparable setting of the Magdalena Palace (Santander). On Monday I enjoyed a conversation with those interested in my career and science.
Our work, co-led by @alfredo0712.bsky.social and @nlue8.bsky.social is out in @natsmb.nature.com Shout out to coauthors P.Grob, B. Kaeser, J.Fang, and S. Kassube for their contributions and thanks to the reviewers for the suggestions that led to the final work.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
So proud of the smashing success of the International Course in Biophysics co-organized with my @berkeleymcb.bsky.social colleague Carlos Bustamante and University of Salamanca @usaloficial.bsky.social
biophysal.org
Course ends with a Keynote from Nobel Laureate Richard Henderson🥇
Yesterday I had the pleasure to visit the Institute for Material Science in Madrid @icmm-csic.bsky.social. Thank you to Dr. Pedro Serana for his invitation to talk about cryo-EM and our latest microtubule studies 🧩🔬🧬
I spent a wonderful day in the Universidad de Córdoba at an interactive breakfast with faculty and students and giving a science presentation. Lovely to meet its Chancellor, Manuel Torralbo, and my friend and past collaborator Prof. Tina Domínguez-Martín.
It was an absolute pleasure to visit the IBiS, to meet its scientists, interact with its students, and visit beautiful Sevilla 🥰
Excited to have participated in the Third Symposium of Physical Chemistry in the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid @uam.es last week and honored that the Prizes for best student talk and best posters carried my name 🥰☺️
Que día tan emocionante volver a mi colegio en Colmenar Viejo y recibir el calor de sus profesores y sus alumnos. Gracias por darle mi nombre a vuestra biblioteca! 🥰
Deeply touched and honored by the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, my alma mater, (@uam.es) making me Doctor Honoris Causa. Thank you to the Department of Physical Chemistry for nominating me for this recognition. It was a memorable day for me and my family👩🎓
Like a dream, my name next to that of @isabelallende.com, and to be recognized by Universidad Internacional Menéndez Pelayo UIMP. Soon after, Irene Vallejo @irenevalmore.bsky.social will receive the same honor. I feel proud to be linked to these truly inspiring, talented women! Thank you UIMP!
This week our lab had a double celebration: 1) Eva’s election into the @royalsociety.org and 2) Zhenlin’s new job in Southern University of Science and Technology, China. He will be missed but we wish him success and joy in his independent career!
Check out our review article on the structural and functional studies of retrotransposon proteins by @akankshathawani.bsky.social together with Kathy Collins' lab.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
A huge shoutout to our former grad student Susanne Kassube (now PI) for leading our lab’s original study back in 2013 and setting the stage for this work. If you’re interested, check out our preprint for more details and stay tuned for the full paper! 7/7
Beyond a role in slowing down Pol II elongation, RECQL5 is known to decrease transcription stress. We propose that RECQL5 may help restart transcription from stalled Pol II by allosterically modulating Pol II’s translocation state. 6/7
Nucleotide binding (AMPPNP or ADP) causes the RECQL5 helicase domain to undergo a conformational change, pulling on the DNA to induce Pol II to shift to a post-translocation state. Meanwhile, the IRI module seems to serve as a stable anchor for RECQL5 binding. 5/7
The high resolution of our structures also enabled us to ask how RECQL5 affects Pol II, in particular its translocation state on a DNA/RNA scaffold. We found that Pol II occupies different translocation states when RECQL5 helicase is in its apo vs. nucleotide-bound form. 4/7
We report high-resolution structures of Pol II elongation complexes with RECQL5, visualizing interactions between RECQL5, Pol II, and DNA, confirming its role as a transcriptional roadblock. This required extensive data processing, as RECQL5 is very flexible! 3/7
RecQ helicases help safeguard genome stability. In this family, RECQL5 stands out as the only one to interact with and inhibit RNA Pol II, and it’s been shown to help decrease transcription stress. We used cryo-EM to investigate the molecular basis for this mechanism. 2/7
Check out our lab’s latest work on the regulation of transcription by RECQL5 helicase! This work was co-led by @alfredo0712.bsky.social and @nlue8.bsky.social, with contributions from Patricia Grob, Ben Kaeser, Jie Fang, and Susanne Kassube. 1/7
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
I encourage you to apply and join us at @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social !
Our microtubule team at lunch with @ruizhangmt.bsky.social, who gave a spectacular seminar at UC Berkeley on his work on axonemes
The Cryo-EM: the next 50 years Symposium held yesterday at @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social was a smashing success!!
