iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Harvard Med Cell Biology @harvardcellbio.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Congratulations to our own Ed Chouchani for receiving the Earl and Thressa Stadtman Young Scholar Award. Well deserved! www.asbmb.org/asbmb-today/...

asbmb.org

ASBMB names 2027 award winners

The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology announced its 2027 award winners.

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Harvard Med Cell Biology @harvardcellbio.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Congratulations to @harvardcellbio.bsky.social faculty member Corey Allard, who has been named a 2026 Vallee Scholar! Well deserved. @valleefoundation.bsky.social

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Harvard Med Cell Biology @harvardcellbio.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

New work from the Gygi and Cantley labs @harvardcellbio.bsky.social provides a unique structure-based protein kinase specificity atlas across the human proteome. An exciting resource for biological discovery! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

nature.com

An AI-enabled structural atlas decodes kinase specificity across the human proteome - Nature Biotechnology

Phosphorylation potential and kinase specificity are assigned for the entire human proteome.

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Harvard Med Cell Biology @harvardcellbio.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

Congratulations to our own Corey Allard @harvardcellbio.bsky.social , who is the recipient of a Klingenstein Fellowship Award in Neuroscience - so well deserved!

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Harvard Med Cell Biology @harvardcellbio.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

Congratulations to our own Rachel Wolfson @harvardcellbio.bsky.social , who is the recipient of a Klingenstein Fellowship Award in Neuroscience - so well deserved!

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Harvard Med Cell Biology @harvardcellbio.bsky.social · 30/05/2026

Collaboration between Schulman lab @mpi-biochem, @harperlabhms.bsky.social & Hanna Lab @BWH/HMS reveals structural basis for Parkinson's risk genes FBXO7 & PI31/PSMF1 interaction with each other & with the proteasome core particle. @asapresearch.parkinsonsroadmap.org www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

biorxiv.org

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Harvard Med Cell Biology @harvardcellbio.bsky.social · 09/02/2026

Exciting work from @lucas.farnunglab.com & @voslab.org report structures of CTCF-nucleosome complexes, revealing that CTCF dimers promote oligomerization of nucleosomes into defined higher-order assemblies involving specific histone-histone and CTCF-CTCF interactions. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

biorxiv.org

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Harvard Med Cell Biology @harvardcellbio.bsky.social · 28/01/2026

New work from our own Liberles Lab (liberles.hms.harvard.edu) demonstrates that vagal mechanoreceptors monitor the cardiac cycle and initiate a blood-volume-dependent reflex that defends the constancy of circulation www.nature.com/articles/s41...

nature.com

Vagal blood volume receptors compensate for haemorrhage and posture change - Nature

A vagal reflex to blood volume changes in the heart involves PIEZO2 and helps to stabilize blood pressure in an upright posture and after blood loss.

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Harvard Med Cell Biology @harvardcellbio.bsky.social · 02/10/2025

Historically, viruses were thought to primarily use host cell's translational machinery. New work from @harvardcellbio.bsky.social faculty Amy Lee reveals that a giant DNA virus encodes its own IF4F initiation complex, suggesting an unexpected evolutionary innovation. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

biorxiv.org

Giant DNA viruses encode a hallmark translation initiation complex of eukaryotic life

In contrast to living organisms, viruses were long thought to lack protein synthesis machinery and instead depend on host factors to translate viral transcripts. Here, we discover that giant DNA virus...

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Harvard Med Cell Biology @harvardcellbio.bsky.social · 17/09/2025

New work from our own Chouchani Lab finds that LRRC58 is the substrate adaptor of an E3 ubiquitin ligase that mediates proteasomal degradation of CDO1, the rate-limiting enzyme of the catabolic shunt of cysteine to taurine in response to altered Cysteine levels. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

nature.com

Covariation MS uncovers a protein that controls cysteine catabolism - Nature

A mass spectrometry-based approach globally identifies protein regulators of metabolism and reveals the role of LRRC58 in controlling cysteine catabolism.

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Reposted by Harvard Med Cell Biology

Cole Sitron @pelletfraction.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

Why are α-synuclein aggregates in Parkinson’s disease (PD) toxic at the cell biological level? Our new study shows that α-syn fibrils hijack the ESCRT membrane repair system, triggering a feedback loop that worsens aggregation. You can find it at: authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...

authors.elsevier.com

ScienceDirect.com | Science, health and medical journals, full text articles and books.

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Harvard Med Cell Biology @harvardcellbio.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

New insights into transcriptional elongation by IWS1 from the @lucas.farnunglab.com lab. This work establishes IWS1 as a scaffold to organiz the elongation complex, illustrating how disordered regions regulate transcription elongationhttps://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.08.28.672863v1

biorxiv.org

Structure and function of IWS1 in transcription elongation

Transcription elongation by RNA polymerase II is a tightly regulated process that requires coordinated interactions between elongation factors. IWS1 (Interacts with SPT6) has been implicated as a core...

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Harvard Med Cell Biology @harvardcellbio.bsky.social · 29/07/2025

Thoughts from our own Tom Rapoport on the role of basic science in curing disease. magazine.hms.harvard.edu/articles/rev...

magazine.hms.harvard.edu

“Revolutionary Science Comes from Unexpected Angles”

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Harvard Med Cell Biology @harvardcellbio.bsky.social · 08/07/2025

Impact of federal funding cuts on science, the progress of knowledge, and our future - an essay by our own Steve Liberles: magazine.hms.harvard.edu/articles/i-t...

magazine.hms.harvard.edu

“I Think the Entire Future of the United States Is at Stake”

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Harvard Med Cell Biology @harvardcellbio.bsky.social · 25/06/2025

Work from our own Corey Allard allardlab.hms.harvard.edu & Nick Bellono reveals a process by which foreign chloroplasts (derived from algae food sources) are incorporated into novel, host-derived organelles termed “kleptosomes". \https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867425006373

sciencedirect.com

A host organelle integrates stolen chloroplasts for animal photosynthesis

Eukaryotic life evolved over a billion years ago when ancient cells engulfed and integrated prokaryotes to become modern mitochondria and chloroplasts…

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Harvard Med Cell Biology @harvardcellbio.bsky.social · 18/06/2025

Congratulations to our own Lucas Farnung @lucas.farnunglab.com who has been named as one of 30 Freeman Hrabowski Scholars for 2025 by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). So well deserved deserved !! www.hhmi.org/programs/fre...

hhmi.org

The 2025 Freeman Hrabowski Scholars | HHMI

Freeman Hrabowski Scholars are outstanding early career faculty who have the potential to become leaders in their research fields.

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Harvard Med Cell Biology @harvardcellbio.bsky.social · 03/06/2025

Questions and answers from our own Corey Allard allardlab.hms.harvard.edu on his labs quest to discover new biology and reveal conserved and fundamental principles that operate across biological systems and impact human health. hms.harvard.edu/news/fish-le...

hms.harvard.edu

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Harvard Med Cell Biology @harvardcellbio.bsky.social · 13/05/2025

Questions and answers from @harvardcellbio.bsky.social faculty member Rachel Wolfson concerning her work on interoception and how our brain and gut communicate with each other. hms.harvard.edu/news/investi...

hms.harvard.edu

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Harvard Med Cell Biology @harvardcellbio.bsky.social · 06/05/2025

New work from @lucas.farnunglab.com reveals multiple states of the CHD1 chromatin remodeler and mechanisms of remodeler recruitment!

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Harvard Med Cell Biology @harvardcellbio.bsky.social · 23/04/2025

CONGRATULATIONS!! to @harvardcellbio.bsky.social faculty member Tommy Kirchhausen for his election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. So well deserved! www.amacad.org/new-members-...

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Harvard Med Cell Biology @harvardcellbio.bsky.social · 23/04/2025

Another outstanding study by @sshaolab.bsky.social reveals the structures of prohibin and erlin assemblies. Could also be a hat, it seems.

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Harvard Med Cell Biology @harvardcellbio.bsky.social · 15/04/2025

In parallel with the updated Harvard website, there is also a new page on the Harvard Med website providing some of the important discoveries of our dedicated community, including the CellBio faculty and trainees. One can only ask “Why?” hms.harvard.edu/about-hms/hi...

hms.harvard.edu

Timeline of Discovery

1799Smallpox vaccineBenjamin Waterhouse introduces the smallpox vaccine to the United States and helps gain acceptance for the new procedure.1843Puerperal fever Oliver Wendell Holmes identifies the ca...

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Harvard Med Cell Biology @harvardcellbio.bsky.social · 15/04/2025

Check out the updated Harvard University website, which speaks to the breadth and depth of the research we do and its contributions to human health and beyond: www.harvard.edu

harvard.edu

Harvard University

Harvard University is devoted to excellence in teaching, learning, and research, and to developing leaders who make a difference globally.

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Harvard Med Cell Biology @harvardcellbio.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

We are so happy for our own Spyros Artavanis-Tsakonas who today was the co-recipient of the Gairdner Award from his work on the Notch pathway! Congratulations!! www.youtube.com/watch?v=hA6d...

youtube.com

2025 Canada Gairdner International Award Drs. Spyros Artavanis-Tsakonas, Iva Greenwald & Gary Struhl

YouTube video by CanadaGairdnerAwards

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Harvard Med Cell Biology @harvardcellbio.bsky.social · 07/04/2025

Ever wonder how the human replisome engages the nucleosome? New work from the @lucas.farnunglab.com provides a striking visual tour of the process with reconstituted components!

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Harvard Med Cell Biology @harvardcellbio.bsky.social · 26/02/2025

Work from @harvardcellbio.bsky.social faculty Brad Bernstein reports microglial inflammatory immunosuppressive programs unique to primary brain tumours, & systemic inflammatory and complement immunosuppressive programs, which are also expressed by non-brain tumours. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

nature.com

Programs, origins and immunomodulatory functions of myeloid cells in glioma - Nature

A study of myeloid cells in gliomas, a type of brain tumour, used a factor-based computational framework to reveal four immunomodulatory gene-expression programs that are expressed across myeloid cell...

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Harvard Med Cell Biology @harvardcellbio.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

Congratulations to our own Spyros Artavanis-Tsakonas for recieving the Wiley Prize for his work on the Notch Signaling pathway! We deserved recognition for a pioneer in developmental biology. newsroom.wiley.com/press-releas...

newsroom.wiley.com

The 23rd Annual Wiley Prize in Biomedical Sciences Awarded for Research in Notch Signaling

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Harvard Med Cell Biology @harvardcellbio.bsky.social · 22/01/2025

New work from Coon Lab (Wisconsin), @harperlabhms.bsky.social & Gygi Lab @harvardcellbio.bsky.social reports global proteomics/lipidomics of > 2 dozen Lysosomal Storage Disease mutant cells & reveals iron defects associated with mitochondrial defects in NPC2 mutants www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

science.org

Global cellular proteo-lipidomic profiling of diverse lysosomal storage disease mutants using nMOST

A nanoflow multiomic workflow reveals how lysosomal dysfunction disrupts autophagy and mitochondrial homeostasis in LSD mutants.

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Harvard Med Cell Biology @harvardcellbio.bsky.social · 20/01/2025

New paper from @ppuigserverb.bsky.social - uncovering more phenotypes for complex I deficiency!

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Harvard Med Cell Biology @harvardcellbio.bsky.social · 03/01/2025

Another supercool paper from the Puigserver Lab @harvardcellbio.bsky.social reveals mechanism underlying chaperone assisted TOMM70 insertion into mitochondrial outer membrane.

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Harvard Med Cell Biology @harvardcellbio.bsky.social · 25/12/2024

New work from Tommy Kirchhausen's lab @harvardcellbio.bsky.social uses 3D EM to visualize tiny perforations in endosomes, allowing access of cytosolic alpha-synuclein to endocytosed alpha-synuclein pre-formed fibrils, thereby triggering further alpha-synuclein aggregation rupress.org/jcb/article-...

rupress.org

Neuronal constitutive endolysosomal perforations enable α-synuclein aggregation by internalized PFFs

This study reveals inherent perforations in neuronal endolysosomal membranes, facilitating cytosolic α-synuclein’s access to internalized fibrils and trigg

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Harvard Med Cell Biology @harvardcellbio.bsky.social · 12/12/2024

Yet another super cool study on cotranscriptional chromatin modification from @lucas.farnunglab.com in our department!

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