Antoine Hocher
@ahocher.bsky.social
Group Leader, Molecular mimicry / chromatin evolution / engineering
Department of Genetics, University of Cambridge. Wellcome Trust CDA fellow
https://www.gen.cam.ac.uk/research/research-groups/hocher-group
Department of Genetics, University of Cambridge. Wellcome Trust CDA fellow
https://www.gen.cam.ac.uk/research/research-groups/hocher-group
Reposted by Antoine Hocher
1/6
PhD /PostDoc positions available. Exploration of physiological functions of the cell fusogen Fusexin1 in Archaea.
In a collaborative project between the Albers lab (Freiburg) and the Podbilewicz lab (Technion) starting in January 2026.
PhD /PostDoc positions available. Exploration of physiological functions of the cell fusogen Fusexin1 in Archaea.
In a collaborative project between the Albers lab (Freiburg) and the Podbilewicz lab (Technion) starting in January 2026.
November 12, 2025 at 7:53 AM
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PhD /PostDoc positions available. Exploration of physiological functions of the cell fusogen Fusexin1 in Archaea.
In a collaborative project between the Albers lab (Freiburg) and the Podbilewicz lab (Technion) starting in January 2026.
PhD /PostDoc positions available. Exploration of physiological functions of the cell fusogen Fusexin1 in Archaea.
In a collaborative project between the Albers lab (Freiburg) and the Podbilewicz lab (Technion) starting in January 2026.
Reposted by Antoine Hocher
At this rate of (amazing) papers/preprint, Asgard archaea will have an opposable thumb within next month 😂
November 10, 2025 at 2:37 PM
At this rate of (amazing) papers/preprint, Asgard archaea will have an opposable thumb within next month 😂
Reposted by Antoine Hocher
Excited to share our new preprint on BioRxiv!
A collaborative effort spanning many years and several labs to uncover what the germline chromosomes of Paramecium really look like. 🔗 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
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A collaborative effort spanning many years and several labs to uncover what the germline chromosomes of Paramecium really look like. 🔗 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
1/5
The tiny germline chromosomes of Paramecium aurelia have an exceptionally high recombination rate and are capped by a new class of Helitrons
Background. Paramecia belong to the ciliate phylum of unicellular eukaryotes characterized by nuclear dimorphism. A diploid germline micronucleus (MIC) transmits genetic information across sexual gene...
www.biorxiv.org
November 10, 2025 at 9:21 AM
Excited to share our new preprint on BioRxiv!
A collaborative effort spanning many years and several labs to uncover what the germline chromosomes of Paramecium really look like. 🔗 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
1/5
A collaborative effort spanning many years and several labs to uncover what the germline chromosomes of Paramecium really look like. 🔗 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
1/5
Reposted by Antoine Hocher
End-to-end protein design in the browser through evedesign. Generate and interactively explore designs in 2D/3D and export them as codon-optimized DNA. The underlying open source framework (released soon) is build to easily add new methods, more on that soon.
🌐 evedesign.bio
🌐 evedesign.bio
October 22, 2025 at 2:30 PM
End-to-end protein design in the browser through evedesign. Generate and interactively explore designs in 2D/3D and export them as codon-optimized DNA. The underlying open source framework (released soon) is build to easily add new methods, more on that soon.
🌐 evedesign.bio
🌐 evedesign.bio
Reposted by Antoine Hocher
Now published: EnVhogDB, a large database of viral protein family HMM profiles to help functional annotation of new phage genomes - peercommunityjournal.org/articles/10....
EnVhogDB: an extended view of the viral protein families on Earth through a vast collection of HMM profiles
peercommunityjournal.org
October 18, 2025 at 7:58 AM
Now published: EnVhogDB, a large database of viral protein family HMM profiles to help functional annotation of new phage genomes - peercommunityjournal.org/articles/10....
Reposted by Antoine Hocher
1/10 Genome maintenance by telomerase is a fundamental process in nearly all eukaryotes. But where does it come from?
Today, we report the discovery of telomerase homologs in a family of antiviral RTs, revealing an unexpected evolutionary origin in bacteria.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Today, we report the discovery of telomerase homologs in a family of antiviral RTs, revealing an unexpected evolutionary origin in bacteria.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Antiviral reverse transcriptases reveal the evolutionary origin of telomerase
Defense-associated reverse transcriptases (DRTs) employ diverse and distinctive mechanisms of cDNA synthesis to protect bacteria against viral infection. However, much of DRT family diversity remains ...
www.biorxiv.org
October 17, 2025 at 5:22 PM
1/10 Genome maintenance by telomerase is a fundamental process in nearly all eukaryotes. But where does it come from?
Today, we report the discovery of telomerase homologs in a family of antiviral RTs, revealing an unexpected evolutionary origin in bacteria.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Today, we report the discovery of telomerase homologs in a family of antiviral RTs, revealing an unexpected evolutionary origin in bacteria.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
« A key event in any cell’s life is division, when one cell becomes two » best opening, congrats to the team!
Our paper on chromosome segregation in the archaeon Sulfolobus Acidocaldarius has been published in PNAS! This has been a great collaboration with @joeparham19.bsky.social and the rest of @buzzbaum.bsky.social's team. Stay tuned for more to come!😉 @istaresearch.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1073/pnas...
doi.org/10.1073/pnas...
Temporal and spatial coordination of DNA segregation and cell division in an archaeon | PNAS
Cells must coordinate DNA segregation with cytokinesis to ensure that each daughter
cell inherits a complete genome. Here, we explore how DNA segre...
doi.org
October 17, 2025 at 8:08 AM
« A key event in any cell’s life is division, when one cell becomes two » best opening, congrats to the team!
Reposted by Antoine Hocher
Our paper on chromosome segregation in the archaeon Sulfolobus Acidocaldarius has been published in PNAS! This has been a great collaboration with @joeparham19.bsky.social and the rest of @buzzbaum.bsky.social's team. Stay tuned for more to come!😉 @istaresearch.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1073/pnas...
doi.org/10.1073/pnas...
Temporal and spatial coordination of DNA segregation and cell division in an archaeon | PNAS
Cells must coordinate DNA segregation with cytokinesis to ensure that each daughter
cell inherits a complete genome. Here, we explore how DNA segre...
doi.org
October 16, 2025 at 8:53 AM
Our paper on chromosome segregation in the archaeon Sulfolobus Acidocaldarius has been published in PNAS! This has been a great collaboration with @joeparham19.bsky.social and the rest of @buzzbaum.bsky.social's team. Stay tuned for more to come!😉 @istaresearch.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1073/pnas...
doi.org/10.1073/pnas...
Reposted by Antoine Hocher
Happy that the final version of our Lamassu work @yli18smc.bsky.social is now out:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Thanks again to our awesome collaborators @mblokesch.bsky.social and David and co and Mark Szczelkun and @steven-shaw.bsky.social and the DCI Lausanne @fbm-unil.bsky.social
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Thanks again to our awesome collaborators @mblokesch.bsky.social and David and co and Mark Szczelkun and @steven-shaw.bsky.social and the DCI Lausanne @fbm-unil.bsky.social
Glad to share the work of @yli18smc.bsky.social and co on Lamassu, a bacterial defense system related to Rad50/Mre11 (RM). While RM carefully trims DNA ends for repair, Lamassu chops up the host chromosome. Our study reveals how it is regulated to minimize damage, activating only during infection.
October 14, 2025 at 9:28 AM
Happy that the final version of our Lamassu work @yli18smc.bsky.social is now out:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Thanks again to our awesome collaborators @mblokesch.bsky.social and David and co and Mark Szczelkun and @steven-shaw.bsky.social and the DCI Lausanne @fbm-unil.bsky.social
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Thanks again to our awesome collaborators @mblokesch.bsky.social and David and co and Mark Szczelkun and @steven-shaw.bsky.social and the DCI Lausanne @fbm-unil.bsky.social
I'm preparing a lecture on prokaryotic chromosomes, which will include some discussion on ploidy. I was curious to know if some of the ASGARD archaea are polyploid so I googled it. This is Gemini's results 😅😅😑
October 14, 2025 at 8:35 AM
I'm preparing a lecture on prokaryotic chromosomes, which will include some discussion on ploidy. I was curious to know if some of the ASGARD archaea are polyploid so I googled it. This is Gemini's results 😅😅😑
I hope that genophore will one day make a come back instead of nucleoid for prokaryotic chromosomes
October 13, 2025 at 4:17 PM
I hope that genophore will one day make a come back instead of nucleoid for prokaryotic chromosomes
Thrilled to see this work in its preprint form! A great collaboration with Jovana and Tung to explore the evolution and properties of the surprisingly versatile nucleotide binding domain of ParB.
new preprint from our group & Antoine Hocher: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
A fantastic collaboration with Antoine, with Jovana Kaljevic' initiated the collaboration and drives the project.
A fantastic collaboration with Antoine, with Jovana Kaljevic' initiated the collaboration and drives the project.
Versatile NTP recognition and domain fusions expand the functional repertoire of the ParB-CTPase fold beyond chromosome segregation
Nucleotide triphosphate (NTP)-dependent molecular switches regulate essential cellular processes by cycling between active and inactive states through nucleotide binding and hydrolysis. These mechanis...
www.biorxiv.org
October 11, 2025 at 1:02 PM
Thrilled to see this work in its preprint form! A great collaboration with Jovana and Tung to explore the evolution and properties of the surprisingly versatile nucleotide binding domain of ParB.
Reposted by Antoine Hocher
Independent research fellowships leading to tenured positions at the John Innes Centre.
Repost = nice. Thank you very much!!!
Repost = nice. Thank you very much!!!
Shortlisted candidates will be invited to give a seminar at the Fellows Conference, which will be held on 10 March 2026.
Candidates who win Fellowships will be offered a Tenure Track Group Leader position from the outset, initially for 5 years.
Find out more: www.jic.ac.uk/training-car...
Candidates who win Fellowships will be offered a Tenure Track Group Leader position from the outset, initially for 5 years.
Find out more: www.jic.ac.uk/training-car...
Independent Research Fellowships Leading to Tenured Faculty Positions | John Innes Centre
The John Innes Centre (JIC), is a world leading centre of excellence in plant and microbial sciences based on the Norwich Research Park, UK. We are inviting applications from outstanding researchers…
www.jic.ac.uk
October 3, 2025 at 4:06 PM
Independent research fellowships leading to tenured positions at the John Innes Centre.
Repost = nice. Thank you very much!!!
Repost = nice. Thank you very much!!!
Reposted by Antoine Hocher
SEPTEMBER's EDITOR's CHOICE:
Intergenic, repetitive motifs that act as nucleosome repleted regions in the budding yeast genome, have evolved de novo into novel protein-coding genes:
doi.org/10.1093/jeb/...
@vakirlis.bsky.social
@timothyfuqua.bsky.social
Intergenic, repetitive motifs that act as nucleosome repleted regions in the budding yeast genome, have evolved de novo into novel protein-coding genes:
doi.org/10.1093/jeb/...
@vakirlis.bsky.social
@timothyfuqua.bsky.social
September 30, 2025 at 8:05 PM
SEPTEMBER's EDITOR's CHOICE:
Intergenic, repetitive motifs that act as nucleosome repleted regions in the budding yeast genome, have evolved de novo into novel protein-coding genes:
doi.org/10.1093/jeb/...
@vakirlis.bsky.social
@timothyfuqua.bsky.social
Intergenic, repetitive motifs that act as nucleosome repleted regions in the budding yeast genome, have evolved de novo into novel protein-coding genes:
doi.org/10.1093/jeb/...
@vakirlis.bsky.social
@timothyfuqua.bsky.social
Reposted by Antoine Hocher
The lab github is here: github.com/mol-evol/ so you can get an idea of what we have been working on recently (several projects are private at the moment, so this will be bigger soon) and the job ad is here: www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DOU184/p...
Postdoctoral Research Associate - Grade 7 at University of Liverpool
Apply now for the Postdoctoral Research Associate - Grade 7 role on jobs.ac.uk - the leading job board for higher education jobs. View details.
www.jobs.ac.uk
September 25, 2025 at 9:49 AM
The lab github is here: github.com/mol-evol/ so you can get an idea of what we have been working on recently (several projects are private at the moment, so this will be bigger soon) and the job ad is here: www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DOU184/p...
Reposted by Antoine Hocher
📝New preprint! #MicroSky
🕰️We chart the full, synchronized lifecycle of a predatory bacterium using Hi-C, RNA-seq, ChIP-seq & microscopy.
🧬We uncover dramatic shifts in nucleoid architecture & transcription, tightly coordinated with predation.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
🕰️We chart the full, synchronized lifecycle of a predatory bacterium using Hi-C, RNA-seq, ChIP-seq & microscopy.
🧬We uncover dramatic shifts in nucleoid architecture & transcription, tightly coordinated with predation.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Dynamics and interplay of gene expression and chromosome organization across a predatory lifecycle
The obligate predatory bacterium Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus alternates between a motile attack phase and a growth phase inside another bacterium, during which it undergoes multiple rounds of DNA repli...
www.biorxiv.org
September 25, 2025 at 7:12 AM
📝New preprint! #MicroSky
🕰️We chart the full, synchronized lifecycle of a predatory bacterium using Hi-C, RNA-seq, ChIP-seq & microscopy.
🧬We uncover dramatic shifts in nucleoid architecture & transcription, tightly coordinated with predation.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
🕰️We chart the full, synchronized lifecycle of a predatory bacterium using Hi-C, RNA-seq, ChIP-seq & microscopy.
🧬We uncover dramatic shifts in nucleoid architecture & transcription, tightly coordinated with predation.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Reposted by Antoine Hocher
Only single cell sequencing of the all these post docs will reveal why
September 19, 2025 at 8:54 AM
Only single cell sequencing of the all these post docs will reveal why
Reposted by Antoine Hocher
You like phages ? In this publication, we use metaHiC and our new version of the MetaTOR pipeline to challenge the traditional view of phages with a narrow host range.
@rkoszul.bsky.social @natmicrobiol.nature.com @cnrs.fr @institutpasteur.bsky.social
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
@rkoszul.bsky.social @natmicrobiol.nature.com @cnrs.fr @institutpasteur.bsky.social
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Phages with a broad host range are common across ecosystems - Nature Microbiology
Proximity-ligation-based sequencing from 111 samples and 5 environments reveals that a substantial proportion of phages infect multiple species.
www.nature.com
September 19, 2025 at 9:32 AM
You like phages ? In this publication, we use metaHiC and our new version of the MetaTOR pipeline to challenge the traditional view of phages with a narrow host range.
@rkoszul.bsky.social @natmicrobiol.nature.com @cnrs.fr @institutpasteur.bsky.social
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
@rkoszul.bsky.social @natmicrobiol.nature.com @cnrs.fr @institutpasteur.bsky.social
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Reposted by Antoine Hocher
hey bluesky 👋 visa hurdles mean I’m looking for opportunities outside the US. I’m a computational biologist (bacterial + phage genomics, postdoc in Koonin’s group @ NIH). I am interested in teaming up on funding apps. reach out if this resonates!
September 15, 2025 at 5:26 PM
hey bluesky 👋 visa hurdles mean I’m looking for opportunities outside the US. I’m a computational biologist (bacterial + phage genomics, postdoc in Koonin’s group @ NIH). I am interested in teaming up on funding apps. reach out if this resonates!
Reposted by Antoine Hocher
Please re-post:
Interested in chromatin and its evolution? Good news! There's still time to join us in beautiful Catalonia (9-12 Dec) to discuss eukaryotic, bacterial, archaeal, and viral chromatin and how it all hangs together meetings.embo.org/event/24-evo...
Abstract deadline: 30 September
Interested in chromatin and its evolution? Good news! There's still time to join us in beautiful Catalonia (9-12 Dec) to discuss eukaryotic, bacterial, archaeal, and viral chromatin and how it all hangs together meetings.embo.org/event/24-evo...
Abstract deadline: 30 September
EvoChromo: Evolutionary approaches to research in chromatin
Chromatin is the complex of DNA, RNA and protein that is found making up the chromosomes in eukaryotic cells. Chromatin is essential for proper genome function and is involved in chromosome segregati…
meetings.embo.org
September 8, 2025 at 11:14 AM
Please re-post:
Interested in chromatin and its evolution? Good news! There's still time to join us in beautiful Catalonia (9-12 Dec) to discuss eukaryotic, bacterial, archaeal, and viral chromatin and how it all hangs together meetings.embo.org/event/24-evo...
Abstract deadline: 30 September
Interested in chromatin and its evolution? Good news! There's still time to join us in beautiful Catalonia (9-12 Dec) to discuss eukaryotic, bacterial, archaeal, and viral chromatin and how it all hangs together meetings.embo.org/event/24-evo...
Abstract deadline: 30 September
Reposted by Antoine Hocher
Please re-post: If you know (or are!) somebody who might fancy doing a PhD (Oct 2026 start) in my group @oxfordbiochemistry.bsky.social, working on chromatin evolution in prokaryotes (or other things we're interested in), please have a look at www.bioch.ox.ac.uk/supervisors-...
Supervisors and Projects
www.bioch.ox.ac.uk
September 1, 2025 at 9:27 AM
Please re-post: If you know (or are!) somebody who might fancy doing a PhD (Oct 2026 start) in my group @oxfordbiochemistry.bsky.social, working on chromatin evolution in prokaryotes (or other things we're interested in), please have a look at www.bioch.ox.ac.uk/supervisors-...
Reposted by Antoine Hocher
Feeling mitochondrially challenged lately?
Here are two classic reviews on #mitochondria that should help.
www.cell.com/current-biol...
www.cell.com/current-biol...
Here are two classic reviews on #mitochondria that should help.
www.cell.com/current-biol...
www.cell.com/current-biol...
The Origin and Diversification of Mitochondria
Moving beyond the simplistic view of mitochondria as the power house of the cell,
Roger et al. present the immense diversity of mitochondria and mitochondrial functions
across eukaryotes, and bring th...
www.cell.com
August 28, 2025 at 10:28 PM
Feeling mitochondrially challenged lately?
Here are two classic reviews on #mitochondria that should help.
www.cell.com/current-biol...
www.cell.com/current-biol...
Here are two classic reviews on #mitochondria that should help.
www.cell.com/current-biol...
www.cell.com/current-biol...
Reposted by Antoine Hocher
Good, and about time too. A shameful example of eugenics in recent European history.
Denmark issues first apology over forced contraception of Greenlandic women
www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...
Denmark issues first apology over forced contraception of Greenlandic women
www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...
Denmark issues first apology over forced contraception of Greenlandic women
Prime minister admits ‘systemic discrimination’ after thousands of girls and women fitted with IUDs without consent
www.theguardian.com
August 27, 2025 at 7:50 PM
Good, and about time too. A shameful example of eugenics in recent European history.
Denmark issues first apology over forced contraception of Greenlandic women
www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...
Denmark issues first apology over forced contraception of Greenlandic women
www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...