Charles Plessy @charles_plessy@mastodon.technology

This is an article published this week by Nakamori, Panigrahi and their collaborators in Nature Genetics, where they show a small drug designed to force (CAG)n repeats to form stable hairpins, which causes these repeats to reduce their size. This is important because expansion of these repeats is part of the mechanism causing Huntington's disease. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-019-0575-8

In #PNAS today: researchers from Beijing and their collaborators have managed to use the Tn5 transposase to "tagment" #DNA/#RNA hybrids (https://www.pnas.org/content/117/6/2886). When we tried in my previous laboratory, we either could not make it work or did not realise it works, because as seen in the paper's supplemental figures 9 and 10, the difference of the size profile before and after reaction is easy to miss (compared with DNA/DNA tagmentation)...

#Nature published a column about reading or replying to #emails on weekends (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00275-2). In the past years, I started to follow a policy of not sending emails outside business hours (although this gives challenges for intercontinental communications). If I write a reply on weekends, I wait for Monday morning before sending it.

Another step forward #Nanopore #sequencing of #protein molecules: Cardozo and colls., from the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Washington; preprint on #bioRxiv in 2019: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/837542v1

In this #PNAS article, Kriegman and colleagues from the #Vermont and #Tufts universities assembled artificial aggregates of #xenopus cells, and modeled them into shapes that were discovered through a computer screen for various functions. As the aggregates contain muscle cells (cardiomyocytes), some aggregates display locomotor behaviours... https://www.pnas.org/content/117/4/1853.abstract

#Video explaining how my colleagues cultivate our favorite #zooplankton Oikopleura dioica at #OIST. https://vimeo.com/376297883/e161292ddc

You live in #Tokyo and want to know about studying at #OIST, the #Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University? Join the "OIST Café" tomorrow Saturday at 14h, in the #FabCafe. https://groups.oist.jp/grad/event/oist-cafe-10

Press releases should report scientific results in a humble way: a reminder in the journal EMBO reports. https://www.embopress.org/doi/full/10.15252/embr.201949600

Our latest work on the #mitochondrial #genetic #code in #tunicate animals is now on-line in #bioRxiv. In brief, we checked that the genetic code already described in ascidian mitochondria could be the same as for the last common ancestor of all tunicates, and found that in a subset of tunicates, the genetic code of mitochondria might have evolved later. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/865725v1

I often heard that Python is great because in this language, “there is only one way to do it”, which means more readable etc. So I am trying to learn it. Today I read the changelog of Python 3.8, and found the walrus operator and the equal specifier for f-strings, and I feel at home like in the good old days with Perl :)

In EMBO reports this month, Hiraga and collaborators propose to that #synthetic #biology will pave the way for a better #biodegradation of PET, which is a major source of #microplastics.
https://www.embopress.org/doi/full/10.15252/embr.201949365

Ranting again on #PubPeer about authors who publish improvements of our method that are very similar to some of our own improvements that we already published to years ago, without giving us proper credit. https://pubpeer.com/publications/35AD2D17557278284574DF035EA1A1

Swiss researchers from the #EPFL one step closer to #nanopore #sequencing of proteins: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-12690-9

Excellent #BBC #documentary on how the #Tokyo area was prepared to limit #flood damages of typhoons such as the one last week-end. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20181129-the-underground-cathedral-protecting-tokyo-from-floods

Congratulations to my former colleague Nana Tamura of #RIKEN and her co-authors for their article (title above) in PLOS Computational Biology ! https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pcbi.1007292

Organised by my former colleagues in #Yokohama, #Japan, November 6-7: The 6th #RIKEN-KI-SciLifeLab Symposium: Biomedical Data for Artificial Intelligence. https://www.ims.riken.jp/english/?p=3922

Looking for a technical #editor for your #scientific #manuscript ? https://www.sda-technical-editor.org/