Flyer advertising the PhD thesis defense of Molecular Biology student Charlie Moffatt
Congratulations to Molecular Biology student Charlie Moffatt of Matt Taliaferro's lab @jmtali.bsky.social for a successful PhD defense!
With apologies to Ben Folds
In this time of introspection
On the eve of study section
I say to my reflection
God, please spare me more rejection
My reviewers criticize me
And my colleagues all despise me
Try to put it all behind me
But that funding cliff is nipping at my heels
20 years ago are you serious?
Maybe I’ll keep tidying my own dataframes a little while longer.
The registration deadline for this wonderful meeting is approaching! Be sure to reserve your spot before March 10!
We’re excited to kick off 2026 with a joint meeting with the London RNA Club, featuring Mary Ann Allen and
@loverna.bsky.social!
🗓 Wednesday, February 25, 2026
⏰ 10:00 AM MST
📍 Zoom: please RSVP here for link: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
Supported by @rnasociety.bsky.social
Excited to share that this work is now published in its final form!
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
A mechanism for controlling mRNA localization to neuronal projections:
Daniel Dominguez, Matthew Taliaferro @jmtali.bsky.social and collaborators implicated ALS-linked TDP-43 as inhibitor of mRNA accumulation in neurites, possibly by promoting their decay
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Join us in Porto for the forefront of RNA localization & local translation research! Registration is live!
My favourite meeting! Highly recommend registering for this one...
Registrations are due March 10, and both travel grants and dependent care grants are available. We look forward to seeing you in Portugal next summer!
meetings.embo.org/event/26-rna...
Announcing the 2026 edition of the EMBO workshop on RNA localization and local translation! This meeting will be held June 30 - July 4 near Porto, Portugal. Come for exciting updates in the field from both established investigators and trainees. See the link below for details!
How does one review his paper if he’s infallible?
New @prelights.bsky.social post ! I'm happy to highlight @jmtali.bsky.social lab latest preprint prelights.biologists.com/highlights/t...
We received notice that two F31s were terminated and submitted another F31 application two hours later. We keep on trucking, I guess.
Thanks Junjie!
Two updates with this project! First, this work is now published here: academic.oup.com/nar/article/...
Second, our software for identifying 8-oxoguanosine via RNAseq, PIGPEN, is now installable via bioconda: anaconda.org/bioconda/pig...
Thanks Mike! I looked into this a while back, and I am a direct patrilineal descendant of this guy: www.findagrave.com/memorial/133.... Blacksmithing skills got lost somewhere along the way though.
Thanks Manny!
...the unnecessary loss of time, expertise, and money. In short, it is the opposite of increased efficiency.
...from the people in the lab doing the experiments to the staff that oversee compliance with regulations to ensure thoughtful stewardship of hard earned taxpayer money. Wild, unpredictable changes to the system result in turnover of these key personnel, resulting in...
Finally, one more comment given recent events. All this work, which may one day lead to cures for ALS, relies not just on federal funding, but on a *stable* funding system, including indirect costs. Those funds pay the salaries of people that are indispensable to this effort...
If we replace wildtype TDP-43 with an ALS mutant TDP-43, we again see that the same RNAs become aberrantly neurite-enriched. So this could be happening in ALS patient cells, but whether it makes contributions to patient phenotypes is another question for another day.
Does any of this have anything to do with ALS? Maybe. We see the same RNA localization defects happening in primary mouse motor neurons and human iPS-derived motor neurons upon TDP-43 loss.
260mers that drove TDP-43-dependent localization and were bound by TDP-43 in vitro also showed TDP-43-dependent changes in stability, directly linking all three processes. All of these qualities were eliminated if TDP-43 motifs in the 260mers were eliminated.
OK, so *how* is TDP-43 doing this? TDP-43 negatively regulates RNA stability and recent work has linked RNA localization and stability. So is this what's going on? To test this we measured the stability of the same ~10k reporters with and without TDP-43 using SLAM-seq.
Sure enough, 260mers that have TDP-43-dependent localization activity are directly bound by TDP-43, and mutation of TDP-43 motifs within them abrogates both binding and activity.
