Rohit Joshi

Postdoc @Penn # Chromatin remodelling# Nuclear Architecture# Cell mechanics#Stem cell biology#stem cell senescence. GBPUAT || JNU || @iitbombay ||

[Prof. Nikolai Slavov @slavov_n]

If aging is associated with molecular damage, why don't offspring inherit the accumulated damage of their parents?

How does the germline avoid transmitting damage from one generation to the next ?

These questions motivated a causal investigation of aging mechanisms:

The answer involves a rejuvenation program.

As fertilization approaches, sperm-derived signals activate lysosomal acidification in oocytes, triggering the clearance of protein aggregates and restoring proteostasis before the next generation begins.

This work suggests that maintaining a youthful proteome is one of the mechanisms that enables biological rejuvenation:

>  Proteostasis renewal is a core mechanism by which biological age is reset.

Like most good studies, this one also raises many questions about the generality of this observation beyond the studied model systems and the molecular mechanisms by which protein damage is cleared:

⬛ Excitingly, these questions can now be investigated using direct measurements of protein synthesis, degradation, modifications, interactions, and accumulation.

Such investigations demand technologies for scalable and direct protein analysis at high-resolution !

[Cell Reports @CellReports]

Cell size-dependent mRNA transcription drives proteome remodeling https://t.co/lw1Ft5xfvt

[Science Magazine @ScienceMagazine]

How animals sense Earth’s magnetic field is one of biology’s enduring mysteries.

Researchers in Science have now identified superparamagnetic macrophages in the livers of rock pigeons to be crucial for magnetic sensing.

The finding uncovers an unexpected role for immune cells in sensory perception and may fundamentally change our understanding of animal navigation.

Learn more: https://t.co/XZdSRJjSJw

[Science Magazine @ScienceMagazine]

It’s a mystery that stumped Darwin and many researchers since: what exactly drives the snap shut of a Venus flytrap?

Now, researchers in Science have the answer: a rapid, one-second softening of the cell walls on the outer epidermis of the trap.

📄: https://t.co/mw3V6mzgcW
#SciencePerspective: https://t.co/Q7rWJljY6o

[Science Magazine @ScienceMagazine]

It’s a mystery that stumped Darwin and many researchers since: what exactly drives the snap shut of a Venus flytrap?

Now, researchers in Science have the answer: a rapid, one-second softening of the cell walls on the outer epidermis of the trap.

📄: https://t.co/mw3V6mzgcW
#SciencePerspective: https://t.co/Q7rWJljY6o

[Henning Willers, MD, FASTRO @HenningWillers]

🔥Genomics of aging in @Nature !!🔥

https://t.co/gNhZiRo5GP

[Prof. Nikolai Slavov @slavov_n]

Is aging driven by biological processes operating at the wrong speed ?

The study aims to establish a causal link between a fundamental biophysical parameter of gene expression (transcriptional elongation speed) and organismal aging. It suggests a coherent, evolutionarily conserved chain of molecular events impacting aging rate:

👉 chromatin → elongation speed → splicing fidelity → aging

Limitations include the indirect estimates of Pol II velocity, unclear impact of changes in cell type composition, and modest effect size of the changes in elongation rates, despite their statistical significance and conservation.

Still, it offers a remarkably coherent mechanism and raised interesting questions ...

1/

[nature @Nature]

Nature research paper: Mitochondria directly interact with the nuclear pore complex

https://t.co/OkYSywkwSY

[Matthew Taliaferro @JMTali]

New paper! How do RNAs "know" where to go inside a cell? We dug into the sequence elements that route RNAs to the right place. It turns out that, in mammals, they're surprisingly massive (>200 nt), multipartite, and wonderfully complicated. 🧵

[Kaushik Basu @kaushikcbasu]

Congratulations, Jean. So richly deserved.

[Pragnya Gupta @GuptaPragnya]

A Life That Served a Purpose
In a world chasing fleeting applause, some souls choose the long, quiet road of service. Today, welfare economist Jean Drèze has been honoured with a global award for his profound research on poverty and inequality in India.

Born in Belgium, he made India his home and its people his purpose. With a scholar’s rigour and a revolutionary’s heart, he stood beside the forgotten—documenting their struggles, amplifying their voices, and shaping policies that reached millions.

His tireless advocacy helped birth two landmark legislations that still stand as lifelines: the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), which offered dignity through work to the rural poor, and the National Food Security Act, which sought to ensure no one sleeps hungry in a land of plenty.

This is not just an award. It is recognition of a life lived in radical empathy. Of choosing dusty villages over ivory towers. Of measuring success not in citations or comfort, but in the quiet lifting of human suffering.

Jean Drèze reminds us that the highest calling is to use one’s intellect, privilege, and time in the service of those who have the least.

In an age of cynicism, his journey is a living ode:
To knowledge that heals. To scholarship that serves. To a life that mattered.

Congratulations and Thank You Professor Drèze.
India is better because you walked among us.
May your example inspire a new generation to stop performing compassion and start practising it—with depth, persistence, and love.
🧡 🙏
#JeanDreze #ServiceAboveSelf #India #SocialJustice

[Shekhar lab @sshekhr]

My Dispatch published today in @CurrentBiology!
https://t.co/8TWzVzDh8v

In 1950, Bruno Straub described depolymerization as the great unsolved problems of actin biology. A beautiful new cryo-EM study from Dominguez lab at @PennMuscle now reveals the answers! @EmoryUniversity

[Biophysical Journal @BiophysJ]

New study combining microscopic imaging, AFM, and mass spectrometry reveals hypoxic pancreatic tumors that induce cytoskeletal and nuclear mechanical changes that promote cell invasion, opening new avenues for therapeutic strategies that target mechanics. https://t.co/6IvvkZG8tV

[TheLiverDoc™ @theliverdoc]

This is the silent part that people wouldn't know.

Behind closed doors inside a medical conference, a large group of clinicians and researchers giving a standing ovation to another group of clinicians and researchers who found a way to increase survival in patients suffering from one of the, if not the, worst cancer in humans.

Metastatic pancreatic cancer.

They'll do this and then be on their way to see their patients the next day as if nothing happened.

And then work on something new to better what they did in this room.

That is how medical science works.
Value it and value its practitioners.

[Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz @ZernickaGoetz]

New idea: multicellularity may have begun not when cells stuck together — but when a single cell became unequal inside itself. Introducing the Asymmetric Initiation Hypothesis, with @QiChenUtah

[David Sinclair @davidasinclair]

New! What if aging is a symptom of cells losing the ability to read their genome - and there’s a reset switch?

That’s the idea behind the Information Theory of Aging (ITOA)

A new paper @NatureComms by Cohen et al provides strong support for the model & its reversibility 🧵👇

[ESC & iPSC News @ESC_iPSC_News]

Dr. Jan Jakub Żylicz (@JZylicz) and colleagues show that TCA cycle rewiring drives histone acetylation and cell fate transitions as stem cells exit naïve pluripotency.

Read more via @CellStemCell:
https://t.co/j9OeAMchSb

[Nature Reviews Cancer @NatureRevCancer]

#REVIEW 🚨

This Review examines how microenvironmental cues, epigenetic programmes & immune interactions govern disseminated cancer cell dormancy + how this may guide the development of biomarkers & therapies to prevent metastatic relapse.

📖 👇
https://t.co/zwaYDopcZ6

[Prof. Nikolai Slavov @slavov_n]

https://t.co/WtFGKsDfPl

[Penn Medicine CSO @PennMedCSO]

ft. Minh Than, Rina Sor, Shreya Nair, Nune Markosyan, Chenghua Yang, Courtney Ray-Fofana, Cole Edwards, Connor Hennessey, Austin Good, Liz Quinones, Cynthia Clendenin, Robert Vonderheide @BenStanger01 (@PennCancer) & @emma_furth (@PennPathLabMed) @PennPCRC https://t.co/8oHioLkOVi