Congrats James! Well deserved!

We‘ll give it a go 😀

Congrats! I really hope that this approach to science will set an example for many.

Thanks!

Awesome!

Have fun!

Thanks!

This was a joint effort of our lab spearheaded by Heike Kunze-Schumacher and @probertimmodels.bsky.social and great collaborators including @victorgreiff.bsky.social and Michael Meyer-Hermann. Thanks to @dfgpublic.bsky.social for their continuous support!

Taken together, we provide a framework to quantitatively determine cell cycle phase duration in vivo, which can be applied to a broad variety of biological systems.

We showed that thymocyte cell cycle phase progression is heterogeneous and that, in a model of irradiation induced involution followed by endogenous regeneration, cell cycle re-entry and G1 shortening promote thymus regeneration.

We discovered that a stretch model of simultaneous expansion or contraction of G1 and S phases explains steady-state thymocyte cell cycle speed transitions.

We combined sequential dual-nucleoside pulse labeling and DNA content analysis with two different agent-based mathematical models to map cell cycle phase durations in thymocytes in vivo.

Well. Perfect Q. Bullet proof glass yes. Jewish elementary school in Germany.

None of this would have been possible without the fun and productive collaboration with the Zarnack lab at Goethe University Frankfurt.
Thanks go out as well to our funders @dfgpublic.bsky.social (CRC902 and RTG2355).

Main conclusion: Functional analysis of miRNA binding sites in physiologically relevant context massively expands the pool of miRNA-mRNA interactions.

Prominent 3' binding in MREs exists and contributes to miRNA functionality in a complex manner.

We also uncovered a group of target sites associated with repeat regions in KZFP Zn-finger transcription factors, which behave differently. Located predominantly in the CDS, they act through translational repression.

There are many more binding sites than are predicted in silico.
While established targeting rules apply in general, we identified many functional non-canonical MREs.
We uncovered a prominent mismatch in the seed match, which retains functionality, thus extending the pool of targets substantially.

Using combined oligo-enriched eCLIP, RNAseq and ribosome profiling, we wanted to identify functionally relevant targets of miR-181. What did we learn?