LabSantama

We are a molecular cell biology research laboratory. We love science, are passionate about our work and driven by curiosity.

[LabSantama @LabSantama]

Good evening Twitter World!
This is the new account of the MBBLab @LabSantama at the @UCYOfficial
Please visit and enjoy our new Website https://t.co/SuOAIWmwNt

[European Research Council (ERC) @ERC_Research]

📣 ERC Plus Grant - New grant scheme 📣

🔸Up to €7 million
🔸Supports transformative research
🔸Aimed at outstanding researchers
🔸Seeks to attract and retain top talent in Europe
🔸~30 ERC Plus Grants each year

More info: https://t.co/oPgqdBJkMi

#ChooseEurope #ERCPlus

[Elisabeth Bik @MicrobiomDigest]

Fabricated citations: an audit across 2·5 million biomedical papers

The fabrication rate increased more than 12 times between 2023 and early 2026.

Possible causes: Paper Mills, AI use etc

https://t.co/ddCHLW6kv7

[nature @Nature]

Experienced researchers are less likely to produce ‘disruptive’ science than are those just starting their careers, finds an analysis of the scientific papers published by 12.5 million researchers over 60 years.

https://t.co/b3L5aP3AWw

[Oded Rechavi @OdedRechavi]

A new mechanism for “RNA memory”! 😱
Thrilled to share another crazy paper from the lab (can’t believe we posted 2 in 2 days!), summarizing >10 years of research:
Work on transgenerational inheritance of small RNAs in the powerful model organism C. elegans changed how we think about what’s possible in inheritance and evolution, because it allows the most heretical thing: inheritance of parental responses to the environment! However, it’s still unclear whether RNAs are inherited across generations in other animals, largely because the RNA-dependent RNA polymerases that amplify heritable small RNAs and prevent their dilution in C. elegans are not conserved in mammals.

In this new work, an amazing collaboration with the Rink and Wurtzel labs, we show that planarians establish long-lasting and heritable small RNA–based gene regulatory states despite lacking canonical RNA-dependent RNA polymerases and nuclear RNAi machinery (that are required in C. elegans).

You might say “they are both worms…” BUT planarians are evolutionarily very distant from C. elegans (flatworms vs. roundworms, diverged more than 500 million years ago), making this particularly surprising. These are totally different animals.

We find that ingestion of double-stranded RNA induces sequence-specific silencing that persists for months and survives repeated cycles of whole-body regeneration. Even more strikingly, RNAi can be transferred between animals, echoing James V. McConnell’s controversial “RNA memory” experiments from the 1970s (his lab was targeted by the Unabomber terrorist Ted Kaczynski, who sent McConnell a bomb. This and other controversies ended this line of experiments…)

Mechanistically, we find that the response transitions from a transient systemic dsRNA-triggered phase to a stable, cell-autonomous post-transcriptional “memory phase” maintained by antisense small RNAs. Using a new luminescence reporter (transgenesis is currently impossible in planarians), we show that silencing spreads along the targeted gene and identify a weird type of planarian small RNAs with untemplated polyA tails.

RNAi inheritance without canonical RdRPs establishes planarians as a powerful system for studying RNA-based regulatory inheritance beyond C. elegans and raises the possibility that RNA-mediated inheritance may be more broadly conserved in animals, potentially even in mammals.

Here’s a video of a planarian that is treated by RNAi against β-catenin and develops multiple heads instead of just one. This is one of the phenotypes that is inherited. Another phenotype is “loss of eyes” (which we show is not only inherited across multiple regeneration cycles, but can also be transmitted between animals in transplantation experiments).

Amazing work led by first authors Prakash Cherian and Idit Aviram (co-supervised by Omri and me).
Please read the preprint, the link is in the next tweet, and share!

[Micah G. Allen @micahgallen]

A recent study in Nature Communications reveals over 250 metabolic enzymes located directly on chromatin, a discovery that vastly expands the previously known count of only about 20.
https://t.co/8ucPDDVX01

[βιος-Society of Biological Sciences in Cyprus @SBSCyp]

The βιος-SBSCy 2nd national conference this Friday 28/11 is not to be missed. A natural history museum in Cyprus?
Open to everybody, free entrance. At the University of Cyprus Library, auditorium LCR 012!

[Oded Rechavi @OdedRechavi]

Read this inspiring perspectives coauthored by the Worm Resource directors and worm Nobel Laureates! 4 Nobel Prizes and how they were enabled by major NIH-supported research resources (the Caenorhabditis Genetics Center, WormBase, and WormAtlas)
https://t.co/dinysHC5DT

[Nicholas Fabiano, MD @NTFabiano]

In 1992 Peter Ratcliffe received this rejection letter from Nature.

His findings were not "a sufficient advance in our understanding".

27 years later he won the Nobel Prize for the same discovery.

Don't lose faith in the things you believe in.

[LabSantama @LabSantama]

And this tells you all you need to know about the status of manuscript review these days….😟

[Sholto David @addictedtoigno1]

Recent MDPI paper including diagram of a bacterial cell with a mitochondrion 🤦‍♀️ The authors propose a mechanism for the toxicity of silver nanoparticles: "Ag+ ions in AgNPs bombard the bacterial mitochondria’s electron transport chain, resulting in cell death".

[Oded Rechavi @OdedRechavi]

"Republic has no need for savants and chemists"

(the political court that sentenced Antoine
Lavoisier to the guillotine, 1794)

*from Paul Nurse's new book

[nature @Nature]

The rest of the world is not following the US government’s dangerous path, and will stick with the technology that helped us out of the COVID-19 pandemic
https://t.co/s7gnejbECB

[Rottweiler Français 🇬🇷🇪🇺🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @MeKulukulu]

🧵Βασικής έρευνα, ποίηση κ ατομική ευθύνη: Το 1906 ο Andrey Markov ανακάλυψε αυτό που ονομάζουμε Μαρκοβιανές αλυσίδες. Δεν είχε κάποια πρακτική εφαρμογή στο μυαλό του, αντίθετα το έκανε για να τα «χώσει» σε ένα ανταγωνιστή μαθηματικό, τον Νεκράσωφ. Μάλιστα, έγραψε ρητά, ότι >

[LabSantama @LabSantama]

👇

[Niovi Santama 🧬 @n_santama]

..αποτελεσματική κ ορθή δουλειά, παρόλο που επενδύονται σημαντικοί πόροι. Η δε αλλεργία σε κάθε προσπάθεια καλόπιστης κριτικής κ υποβολής εισηγήσεων (ειδικά από «ενοχλητικές γυναίκες») είναι χαρακτηριστική κ αποκαρδιωτική. Άλλο μέγα πρόβλημα:αναξιόπιστη κ φθίνουσα αξιολόγηση 2/2.

[Niovi Santama 🧬 @n_santama]

Το πρόβλημα είναι διαχρονικό κ εδράζεται στις εκάστοτε ηγετικές πυραμίδες των κύριων φορέων σχεδιασμού πολιτικής κ χρηματοδότησης της έρευνας. Όταν δεν υπάρχουν οι προσλαμβάνουσες παραστάσεις ούτε πρόθεση ουσιώδους συνεργασίας με την ερευνητική κοινότητα δεν μπορεί να γίνει…1/2

[Constantinos Christofides @ChristofidesCY]

Πήγε – λέει – να φέρει πίσω νέους επιστήμονες στην Κύπρο, την ώρα που η Έρευνα και η Καινοτομία στον τόπο καταρρέουν.
Ερευνητικά κέντρα παλεύουν να επιβιώσουν, η κρατική χρηματοδότηση εξαφανισμένη, και ευρωπαϊκά προγράμματα χάνονται γιατί δεν θέλουν να τα συγχρηματοδότησουν.

[Niovi Santama 🧬 @n_santama]

My worst recurring nightmare is that I have a Maths school exam for which I am not prepared and I walk to school in pyjamas!🤨😳

[Marc Johnson @SolidEvidence]

Last month there was an announcement that I thought was a major advancement in world health, but it got little attention.
I thought I would tell you all a little bit about it and why it is so important.
1/25

[Itai Yanai @ItaiYanai]

Science is under threat.