iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Colin M. Hammond @needfuzz.bsky.social · 12/11/2025

The caterpillar, an epigenetic wonder! Recent birthday celebrations in the lab.

Colin M. Hammond @needfuzz.bsky.social · 01/11/2025

12 and a bit 5km runs in October, challenge complete! Thanks for all the sponsorship. £585 raised for Cancer Research, and almost £1M nationally - which is amazing! @cancerresearchuk.org fundraise.cancerresearchuk.org/page/colins-...

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Colin M. Hammond @needfuzz.bsky.social · 30/10/2025

Very excited to receive this Spatial Biology in Neuro-Oncology Grant to pump-prime our studies into histone supply biology in high grade glioma patient samples! Thanks to @standardbiotools.bsky.social and @eanoassociation.bsky.social for your generous support!🙂 🥳🧬🙌Exciting times ahead!! 🤸🧬🥳

Spatial biology in neuro-oncology award certificate for Michael Müther and Colin Hammond. Awarded by standard biotools and the european association of neuro-oncology.

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Colin M. Hammond @needfuzz.bsky.social · 27/10/2025

That's £10 per km. Thanks a lot for all the donations!

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Colin M. Hammond @needfuzz.bsky.social · 25/10/2025

Thats me finished my 10th 5k in October! My best time yet, 26 min 40s. Sponsorship goes to @cancerresearchuk.org £355 raised so far, please sponsor it all goes to a good cause. fundraise.cancerresearchuk.org/page/colins-...

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Colin M. Hammond @needfuzz.bsky.social · 14/10/2025

Latest run is in....28m15s....6/10 5ks in October! £290 raised so far for @cancerresearchuk.org. Thanks for the support 🥳 fundraise.cancerresearchuk.org/page/colins-...

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Colin M. Hammond @needfuzz.bsky.social · 11/10/2025

27m20s. 5/10 5k runs for Cancer Research UK. Please sponsor me: fundraise.cancerresearchuk.org/page/colins-...

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Colin M. Hammond @needfuzz.bsky.social · 06/10/2025

As of this lunch time, 3/10 5k runs in October are now complete and £200 raised for Cancer Research UK. Thanks for all of the donations, please sponsor my efforts! @livunicancer.bsky.social fundraise.cancerresearchuk.org/page/colins-...

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Colin M. Hammond @needfuzz.bsky.social · 18/09/2025

That was quick. I have reached the £50 mark - sufficient to buy enough glass slides for a scientist to examine 1,470 tumour samples through a microscope. A little goes a long way!! fundraise.cancerresearchuk.org/page/colins-...

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Colin M. Hammond @needfuzz.bsky.social · 13/09/2025

Debatably, the first red brick university. Thanks to the organisers for a great conference!

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Colin M. Hammond @needfuzz.bsky.social · 07/07/2025

Landmark! Last week we had the inaugural new group leaders and lab members day out @ New Brighton's Championship Adventure Golf Course 😎. New annual tradition? I will try not to win every year 🫣😅

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Colin M. Hammond @needfuzz.bsky.social · 03/06/2025

Interested in the interplay between histone supply, epigenetics and cancer biology? This research intensive Masters (MRes) course at the University of Liverpool could be for you! Apply by 29th August 2025. www.liverpool.ac.uk/courses/biol...

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Colin M. Hammond @needfuzz.bsky.social · 21/05/2025

"Why do they call it a standard 'curve'?"

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Colin M. Hammond @needfuzz.bsky.social · 08/05/2025

Congrats to Daisy and Jenny on completing their final year projects in my lab - it was a pleasure to have worked with you and good luck for the future! 🙌🍀

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Colin M. Hammond @needfuzz.bsky.social · 08/04/2025

Just back from Sopot, Gdansk - the Polish Riviera. Fantastic conference and location. ⛱️ Thanks to all the organisers and sponsors for the invite. 50 years of J domain protein research highlighted with a keynote from Betty Craig, amazing! 🤩 @stresscell.bsky.social

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Colin M. Hammond @needfuzz.bsky.social · 28/03/2025

R script needs a bit of optimisation 😂

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Colin M. Hammond @needfuzz.bsky.social · 17/01/2025

How nice is this? Stratech planted a tree for my placing an order with them for antibodies! 🌳

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Colin M. Hammond @needfuzz.bsky.social · 23/11/2024

Me and a couple of legends at the Merseyside against blood cancers (Bloom appeal) winter ball. Bloom supports families DURING their treatments, and research for future cures🩸🤞 Cancer costs lives, and so does blood cancer. 💪 Never forget. thebloomappeal.org.uk

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Colin M. Hammond @needfuzz.bsky.social · 21/11/2024

Best feedback ever received after another big grant rejection...from my PhD student 🚑

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Colin M. Hammond @needfuzz.bsky.social · 14/11/2024

Fantastic talk today by Claire Wilson - who is on the look out for PI positions. High level bioinformatician *AND* wet lab genomics *AND* physiologist. Sign her up. Her paper "Investigating the role of CpG island DNA methylation at 3’UTRs in cancer" is on BioRXIV: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

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Colin M. Hammond @needfuzz.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

5/Once refolded these histones can be delivered by DNAJC9 to other histone chaperones like MCM2, CAF1, TONSL, SPT2 and SPT6 for 🪀 assembly. Thus, histones that would otherwise be wasted 🗑️ get recycled ♻️, which is good for the cellular environment ✅.

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Colin M. Hammond @needfuzz.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

1/First a bit of intro. Histones are extraordinarily long-lived proteins that wrap our DNA🧬 into super cool 😎 structures called nucleosomes 🪀. There are around 30 million 🪀 in each cell in our bodies. P.s. don’t call the #nucleosomepolice 🪀.

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Colin M. Hammond @needfuzz.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

Danish design unravelling nuclesomes since 1932

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Colin M. Hammond @needfuzz.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

Flashback 2022: Happy to announce that I will be giving a talk tomorrow (Tuesday 31st May at 10:15 CET) at the Cellular and Protein Homeostasis Webinar series online, hosted by Paolo De Los Rios

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Colin M. Hammond @needfuzz.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

2022 Flashback: Imagine being next to Henikoff and @durocher1 in the alphabet! First invited talk and US debut 🥹 - September #epigenetics in Seattle. Thanks Jess Tyler for the invite. 🤩. Looking forward! ✈️🌍👨‍🔬

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Colin M. Hammond @needfuzz.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

8/Yes, we find DAXX stimulates H3.3K9me3 catalysis by SETDB1! Together, we conclude that H3K9me3 is established on de novo synthesized histones in a DAXX-dependent manner.

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Colin M. Hammond @needfuzz.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

7/Turns out histones chaperoned by DAXX have high levels of H3K9me2/3 and are also newly synthesized (unmethylated at histone H4 lysine 20) - histone PTM analysis by EpiQMAx. Is DAXX part of the catalytic mechanism for the establishment of H3K9me3 on new H3.3–H4?

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Colin M. Hammond @needfuzz.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

6/So what makes DAXX so special, so particular? Well, DAXX forms many histone-dependent interactions with readers and writers of H3K9me3, a post-translational modification key to heterochromatin establishment:

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Colin M. Hammond @needfuzz.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

5/By the way we also found TONSL-MMS22L to be H3.1 specific, like the plant homologue TONSUKU - see tinyurl.com/msfh3ufv, and CAF-1 was also still specific for soluble H3.1 in our hands.

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Colin M. Hammond @needfuzz.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

4/Meanwhile the histone dependent interaction network reveals a high level of functional connectivity between histone H3–H4 chaperones, apart from DAXX who is not so collaborative (and we think we know why).

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Colin M. Hammond @needfuzz.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

3/Post-transcriptional regulation, splicing, protein quality control, protein degradation, mitotic chromatin, DNA damage response, nuclear import, ubiquitination. And that’s just the start.

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Colin M. Hammond @needfuzz.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

2/We reveal that histone chaperone functional specialization is encoded in their histone independent interactomes. A life beyond histones? Don’t be silly, rather histone chaperones are so important they directly interface with many more biological processes than once imagined.

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Colin M. Hammond @needfuzz.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

1/Here we expand the exploration of histone chaperone space, orbiting the histone dependent interactomes of known histone chaperones to reveal the topology and connectivity of the histone H3–H4 chaperone network.

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Colin M. Hammond @needfuzz.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

2023 flash back: Hammond has histone lab! I am happy to announce that next month (September 2023) I will be starting a group at the Department of Molecular and Clinical Cancer Medicine which is part of the Institute for Systems, Molecular & Integrative Biology at the University of Liverpool.

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Colin M. Hammond @needfuzz.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

2023: Flash back to this fantastic introduction to the J domain protein community in Gdansk. My 1st publication @ the University of Liverpool, what a great way to start! Thanks to the organisers, authors and Cell Stress Society International for the invite. 🫂🤩📖#chaperone_life 🧬🥼🌍 tinyurl.com/JDP-23

Photo of research scientists with an interest in J domain containing proteins that are linked to protein folding

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Colin M. Hammond @needfuzz.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

DNAJC9 prevents CENP-A mislocalization and chromosomal instability by maintaining the fidelity of histone supply chains - Balachandra et al EMBO J 2024 www.embopress.org/doi/full/10....

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Colin M. Hammond @needfuzz.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

DNAJC9 depletion leads to chromosomal instability phenotypes linked to CENP-A mislocalisation - phenotypes that are also prevalent in cancer.

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Colin M. Hammond @needfuzz.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

Fantastic CUT&RUN data, generated whilst the manuscript was in revision, demonstrated that CENP-A is mislocalised broadly on chromatin upon DNAJC9 depletion.

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Colin M. Hammond @needfuzz.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

Co-depleting DNAJC9 and MCM2 reversed CENP-A mislocalisation phenotypes.

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Colin M. Hammond @needfuzz.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

This is where our proteomic assays came in, we identified that when DNAJC9 is depleted, the association of CENP-A with MCM2 in the soluble and chromatin fraction is enhanced. At the same time centomeric proteins are depleted (consistent with CENP-A mislocalisation).

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Colin M. Hammond @needfuzz.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

Our new study demonstrated how these observations are linked🔗. Genome-wide siRNA identified that loss of DNAJC9 causes CENP-A, which guides mitotic spindles, to be mislocalised on chromatin at non-centromeric sites. But if DNAJC9 doesn't bind CENP-A, how does this happen?🤔

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Colin M. Hammond @needfuzz.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

Our latest publication on the multi-talented J-domain protein and histone chaperone DNAJC9 is open for access📖Balachandra et al EMBO J 2024! 🧵 #JDP #histone_chaperone @UCPH_CPR @LivUniISMIB @NCIResearchCtr tinyurl.com/DNAJC9-CENPA

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