Fadel Fakih
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fakih98.bsky.social
Fadel Fakih
@fakih98.bsky.social
63 followers 140 following 30 posts
PhD student at Julius Lukes Lab @BiologyCentre
Studying tRNAs and translation in protists.
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fakih98.bsky.social
Fadel Fakih @fakih98.bsky.social · Nov 15
Check out our scientific blog.
Here, we discuss #RNA #biology, #science, and our ideas concerning its philosophical aspects.
#Phd #phdlife
rnastuff.com
RNA Stuff
rnastuff.com
fakih98.bsky.social
We just got an ERC synergy to work on our beloved tRNAs and see what nature could tell us!
Very happy and excited to be part of this mission! Congratulations to all the 4 labs!
More in this link: erc.europa.eu/news-events/...
#ERC #synergy_grants #RNA #rnasky
November 6, 2025 at 12:27 PM
fakih98.bsky.social
Day 2 of #EMBLProtein meeting in Heidelberg, great talks and discussions with pioneers in the field. Also, if you're interested in tRNAs and their role in codon re-assignment visit my poster (nb 108)
#rnasky
September 4, 2025 at 3:25 PM
fakih98.bsky.social
You can go your own way: The targeting signals of trypanosomatid parasites
journals.plos.org/plospathogen...
journals.plos.org
August 6, 2025 at 10:40 AM
fakih98.bsky.social
A preprint from Paris lab showing a novel layer of gene expression regulation in leishmania.
#rna #rnasky
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Codon biased translation mediated by Queuosine tRNA modification is essential for the virulence of Leishmania mexicana
The complex life cycle of the human parasite Leishmania mexicana requires rapid translational adaptation for survival in two distinct environments: the insect vector and the mammalian host. These medi...
www.biorxiv.org
July 31, 2025 at 3:05 PM
fakih98.bsky.social
Blastocrithidia-A Genetic Alien from the Planet Earth
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40721315/
Blastocrithidia-A Genetic Alien from the Planet Earth - PubMed
The standard genetic code, which applies almost without exception, is the key to our understanding of molecular biological processes. Although it is close to impossible to imagine that sparse code cha...
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
July 31, 2025 at 3:02 PM
Reposted by Fadel Fakih
natbiotech.nature.com
Massively parallel ribosome profiling allows the investigation of open reading frames in viral sequences, a tool that could be used to expand the repertoire of vaccine targets www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... #NBThighlight
Pan-viral ORFs discovery using massively parallel ribosome profiling
Defining viral proteomes is crucial to understanding viral life cycles and immune recognition but the landscape of translated regions remains unknown for most viruses. We have developed massively para...
www.science.org
June 19, 2025 at 2:22 PM
Reposted by Fadel Fakih
sergeymelnikov.bsky.social
Here, we show that bacterial ribosomes—often viewed as conserved drug targets—actually vary across species due to extensive sequence variation in their drug-binding residues. In some cases, this divergence may lead to intrinsic drug resistance in certain bacterial clades: doi.org/10.1016/j.ce...
June 19, 2025 at 7:32 AM
fakih98.bsky.social
Blastocrithidia nonstop on the cover of Molecular Microbiology!
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/13652958...
Molecular Microbiology: Vol 123, No 6
Molecular Microbiology is a broad-scope microbiology journal for basic and translational research that contributes to understanding molecular principles in microbes.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
June 11, 2025 at 9:00 AM
Reposted by Fadel Fakih
narjournal.bsky.social
📣 A new #Breakthrough article published in NAR reveals how ribosomes in eukaryotes maintain high levels of accuracy during translation compared to prokaryotes. 👉 Read the full article here: academic.oup.com/nar/article/... #Ribosomes #RNA #Translation
June 3, 2025 at 7:17 AM
fakih98.bsky.social
DNA Replication: A Tale of Two Worlds.
#DNA #phdlife #Evolution
rnastuff.com/2025/04/30/d...
DNA Replication and Convergent Evolution: How Life Reinvented a Core Process
Since the very beginning of life, organisms have needed a way to store and pass on information. Current knowledge suggests that the first form of genetic information was stored in ribonucleic acid …
rnastuff.com
May 1, 2025 at 9:54 AM
fakih98.bsky.social
An across-genome comparison between Blastocrithidia and Obscuromonas species highlights the dynamic interplay between genome evolution and the emergence of deviations from the standard genetic code.
#Biology #RNAsky #Evolution
journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...
Comparative genomic analysis of trypanosomatid protists illuminates an extensive change in the nuclear genetic code | mBio
The genetic code, assigning amino acids to codons, is almost universal, yet an increasing number of its alterations keep emerging, mostly in organelles and unicellular eukaryotes. One such case is the...
journals.asm.org
April 29, 2025 at 9:00 AM
Reposted by Fadel Fakih
cp-trendsbiochem.bsky.social
Available now - the Feature Review "Emerging mechanisms of human #MitochondrialTranslation regulation" from Antoni Barrientos and co (@brischigliaro.bsky.social).

#Mitoribosome #ProgrammedFrameshifting #RibosomeStalling #RibosomeRecycling

Read it here: authors.elsevier.com/a/1kv-f3S6Gf...
April 17, 2025 at 3:33 PM
fakih98.bsky.social
Blastocithidia nonstop, a trypanosomatid with a non-canonical genetic code, is now genetically tractable! In this work, with the Yurchenko lab in Ostrava, we successfully modified B. nonstop by tagging its endogenous catalase gene and knocking it out.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
Converting Blastocrithidia Nonstop, a Trypanosomatid With Non‐Canonical Genetic Code, Into a Genetically‐Tractable Model
Blastocrithidia represents a very small group of species, in which all 3 stop codons are reassigned to encode amino acids with only one of them serving a dual role of a sense and a stop codon simulta...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
April 10, 2025 at 7:52 AM
fakih98.bsky.social
Precision-edited histone tails disrupt polycistronic gene expression controls in trypanosomes.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Precision-edited histone tails disrupt polycistronic gene expression controls in trypanosomes
Transcription of protein coding genes in trypanosomatids is atypical and almost exclusively polycistronic. In Trypanosoma brucei, approximately 150 polycistrons, and 8000 genes, are constitutively tra...
www.biorxiv.org
March 26, 2025 at 2:20 PM
Reposted by Fadel Fakih
kacarlab.bsky.social
🚨New paper!🚨

A comprehensive take on the origins and evolution of translation factors & how these essential players evolved across the tree of life. 🌍🧬

Led by Evrim Fer @uwmadisonmdtp.bsky.social grad student! 👏

Free access: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... @cp-trendsgenetics.bsky.social
March 24, 2025 at 2:46 PM
fakih98.bsky.social
Have you caught a cold recently? Check out the latest post on RNA Stuff to uncover how #viruses are experts in genetic engineering.
#phd #phdlife #evolution
rnastuff.com/2025/03/23/v...
Viruses: The Ultimate Genetic Engineers
You probably had a common cold sometime in the last three months. Surely, you wondered which of your close contacts was the origin of the infection. I will give an answer, but I will start from the…
rnastuff.com
March 24, 2025 at 2:55 PM
Reposted by Fadel Fakih
zeynepbaharoglu.bsky.social
"these approaches estimate the number of ribosomes on a transcript, the translation initiation rate, and the overall number of translation events before its decay, all in a genome-wide manner" #rnasky #ribosome www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Calibrated ribosome profiling assesses the dynamics of ribosomal flux on transcripts - Nature Communications
Ribosome profiling faces issues with rRNA contamination and measurements of ribosome numbers on transcripts. Here, the authors develop Ribo-FilterOut and Ribo-Calibration, methods which can be used to...
www.nature.com
March 15, 2025 at 7:53 AM
Reposted by Fadel Fakih
kurianlab.bsky.social
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Tour de force by Barna Lab
A subcellular map of translational machinery composition and regulation at the single-molecule level
Millions of ribosomes are packed within mammalian cells, yet we lack tools to visualize them in toto and characterize their subcellular composition. In this study, we present ribosome expansion micros...
www.science.org
March 7, 2025 at 7:57 PM
fakih98.bsky.social
Visualization of mRNA Translation Within Germ Granule Biphasic Organization in Drosophila Early Embryo
bio-protocol.org/en/bpdetail?...
bio-protocol.org
March 4, 2025 at 6:47 AM
fakih98.bsky.social
“… the groundbreaking discovery of RNAi was initiated by a failed control experiment demonstrating that the straightforward concept behind antisense inhbition could not explain the observed results.”
www.embopress.org/doi/full/10....
The controls that got out of control: How failed control experiments paved the way to transformative discoveries: EMBO reports: Vol 26, No 3
EMBO Press is an editorially independent publishing platform for the development of EMBO scientific publications.
www.embopress.org
February 19, 2025 at 10:38 AM
fakih98.bsky.social
An engineered compressed genetic code in E. coli uses UAA as the sole stop codon while repurposing UAG and UGA for synthetic amino acids.
#RNAsky #genetics #molecularbiology
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Engineering a genomically recoded organism with one stop codon - Nature
Ochre, a strain of Escherichia coli engineered to have a single stop codon, enables reassignment of four codons for non-degenerate functions, such as incorporation of non-standard amino acids into pro...
www.nature.com
February 6, 2025 at 7:07 AM
Reposted by Fadel Fakih
liamfaller.bsky.social
Amazing stuff from @marvintanenbaum.bsky.social!

Long-term imaging of individual ribosomes reveals ribosome cooperativity in mRNA translation: Cell www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...
#RNAsky #RNABiology
Long-term imaging of individual ribosomes reveals ribosome cooperativity in mRNA translation
Ribosomes cooperate through transient collisions to ensure efficient translation.
www.cell.com
February 1, 2025 at 6:57 AM
fakih98.bsky.social
Translation of the downstream ORF from bicistronic mRNAs by human cells.
#phd #RNAbiology
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
Translation of the downstream ORF from bicistronic mRNAs by human cells: Impact of codon usage and splicing in the upstream ORF
Biochemistry textbooks describe eukaryotic mRNAs as monocistronic. However, increasing evidence reveals the widespread presence and translation of upstream open reading frames preceding the “main” OR....
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
January 28, 2025 at 10:04 AM
fakih98.bsky.social
Could variations in the genetic code have occurred since its early development in Archaea?!
#RNAsky #RNAbiology #phd #evolution
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39694177/
The genetic code is not universal - PubMed
Recently, a new genetic code with 62 sense codons, coding for 21 amino acids, and only 2 termination codons has been identified in archaea. The authors argue that the appearance of this variant of the...
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
January 24, 2025 at 2:52 PM
Reposted by Fadel Fakih
biorxiv-biophys.bsky.social
How subunit rotation controls tRNA dynamics in the ribosome https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.22.634288v1
January 23, 2025 at 5:48 AM