Lars Eicholt
lacholt.bsky.social
Lars Eicholt
@lacholt.bsky.social
molecular evolution.
Reposted by Lars Eicholt
Join us tomorrow! Joana Pereira is talking about AI-powered classification and discovery across the protein universe. @joanampereira.bsky.social

5PM CET, link in the post and in our bio.
The next ProSE Seminar will be given by Joana Pereira @joanampereira.bsky.social (VIB, KU Leuven)
🗓️ November 11th, 5pm CET

Registration is now open: tinyurl.com/prose-seminar2
Please share!
November 10, 2025 at 2:00 PM
Reposted by Lars Eicholt
New article online: Modulation of archaeal hypernucleosome structure and stability by Mg2+

In this work, we dissect the effects of Mg2+ on hypernucleosomes formed by the canonical histones from M. fervidus (HMfA and HMfB) and T. kodakarensis (HTkA and HTkB).

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Modulation of archaeal hypernucleosome structure and stability by Mg2+
DNA-wrapping histone proteins play a central role in chromatin organization, gene expression and regulation in most eukaryotes and archaea. While the …
www.sciencedirect.com
November 6, 2025 at 7:53 AM
Reposted by Lars Eicholt
Soon available in my group: 1 PhD position to investigate prokaryotic histones. See our recent work that highlights the existence and diversity of prokaryotic histones (e.g. Schwab et al., TIBS, 2025; Schwab et al., Nat Comm, 2024; Hu et al., Nucl Acids Res, 2024). Please DM for informal enquiries.
November 5, 2025 at 12:57 PM
The DeNoFo format & toolkit for annotating, assessing and comparing the tools and tresholds used in studies of de novo evolved genes is out now in Bioinformatics! Great effort led by @drdomain.bsky.social and Anna Grandchamp!

academic.oup.com/bioinformati...
November 3, 2025 at 7:47 PM
Reposted by Lars Eicholt
Looking for a PostDoc in Origins? The Wisconsin Center for Origins Research might be the right place for you!
Apply here:
wicor.wisc.edu/postdoc/
November 3, 2025 at 5:49 PM
Reposted by Lars Eicholt
Our new preprint is out 🥳🥳🥳

Henipaviruses, like Nipah and Hendra, package their genomes inside helical shells built by thousands of nucleoproteins. These nucleocapsids are essential to protect the viral RNA, but how do they ever let the polymerase in to read the sequence?

👇
November 3, 2025 at 12:26 PM
Reposted by Lars Eicholt
Ancient amino acid sets enable stable protein folds https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.29.685319v1
October 30, 2025 at 2:47 AM
Reposted by Lars Eicholt
Lab’s first paper is out!! We show the first structures of #Asgard #chromatin by #cryo-EM 🧬❄️
Asgard histones form closed and open hypernucleosomes. Closed are conserved across #Archaea, while open resemble eukaryotic H3–H4 octasomes and are Asgard-specific. More here: www.cell.com/molecular-ce...
October 28, 2025 at 3:07 PM
Join our next ProSe seminar 11th November 5PM CET and follow us @proteinstructure.bsky.social!
The next ProSE Seminar will be given by Joana Pereira @joanampereira.bsky.social (VIB, KU Leuven)
🗓️ November 11th, 5pm CET

Registration is now open: tinyurl.com/prose-seminar2
Please share!
October 28, 2025 at 8:13 PM
Reposted by Lars Eicholt
Protein Structure Evolution (ProSe) Seminar is now on BlueSky! Every 2nd Tuesday, 4PM GMT.

Sign-Up: tinyurl.com/prose-seminar2

Organized by Claudia Alvarez Carreño, Zachary Ardern, Lars Eicholt, Carolina Sanchez-Rocha,
Sergio Romero Romero and Md. Hassan Uz-Zaman.
October 25, 2025 at 9:23 PM
Reposted by Lars Eicholt
We need to have a conversation about random seeds. Don't use 42.
blog.genesmindsmachines.com/p/if-your-ra...
If your random seed is 42 I will come to your office and set your computer on fire🔥
Figuratively. More likely you'll get a stern talking to.
blog.genesmindsmachines.com
October 22, 2025 at 12:49 PM
Reposted by Lars Eicholt
A fun little side project I've been working on with @stepadenisov.bsky.social , Mato Lagator, and Andreas Wagner: "Strong promoters are mutationally robust". Briefly...

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Strong promoters are mutationally robust
Mutational robustness is the persistence of a phenotype upon mutation. It facilitates molecular evolution and has been characterized in a variety of biological systems, but studies of prokaryotic prom...
www.biorxiv.org
October 21, 2025 at 8:02 AM
Reposted by Lars Eicholt
I’m excited to announce the launch of my lab at EPFL in Jan 2026 🎉. We’ll combine evolution & synthetic biology to study and (re)engineer bacterial communication.
I’m recruiting PhD students to start in the first semester of 2026.
Apply via EPFL PhD programs by Nov 1
drive.google.com/file/d/1cm-t...
October 20, 2025 at 6:14 PM
Reposted by Lars Eicholt
How does catalysis emerge from non-catalytic domains?

In our new paper, we show that catalytic activity can arise without conserved active-site residues — through multimerization and electrostatic features instead.

A striking case of catalysis evolving from binding.
October 8, 2025 at 2:32 PM
Join us Tuesday for the next Protein Structure Evolution Seminar (ProSe Seminar) with Stephen Fried!
The next Protein Structure Evolution Seminar will be given by Stephen Fried (JHU):

Title: “Who Cares About Protein Refolding Anyway?: Why Some Microbes Do and Others Don’t”
Date: October 14th, 5 pm CET
Registration link: tinyurl.com/prose-seminar2
October 12, 2025 at 6:50 PM
Reposted by Lars Eicholt
Never thought I would say this, but I need a Dane.. novonordiskfonden.dk/grant/postdo...
Postdoctoral Fellowships at Uppsala University - 2026 - Novo Nordisk Fonden
novonordiskfonden.dk
October 2, 2025 at 5:11 PM
Reposted by Lars Eicholt
The paper is a masterpiece of modern evolutionary genomics with a potential for synthetic biology. Imagine designing new genes from scratch to improve plant traits.
Beautiful work from colleagues at Huazhong Agricultural University in Wuhan.
Link to the paper in Cell: www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...
A de novo-originated gene drives rose scent diversification
Genomic analysis of more than 100 Rosa species uncovers a multi-step process for the de novo origination of SCREP, a taxon-restricted gene specific to the Rosa genus, highlighting its function in modu...
www.cell.com
September 3, 2025 at 1:40 AM
Reposted by Lars Eicholt
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
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
Reposted by Lars Eicholt
Dear scientific community,

I am looking for two postdoctoral structural biologists to join my group at the Department of Biochemistry, University of Oxford.

my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru...

my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru...
September 8, 2025 at 3:16 PM
Reposted by Lars Eicholt
The ProSE seminars are back after a summer break. The next speaker is Nir Ben-Tal on "Contrastive learning unites sequence and structure in a global representation of protein space".
Date: September 9
Time: 5pm CET
Register here: tinyurl.com/prose-seminar2

Please share!
🧪 #mevosky
September 2, 2025 at 1:09 PM
Reposted by Lars Eicholt
*Postdoc in Evolutionary genomics at Stockholm University*
We are recruiting a postdoc for a large interdisciplinary project to investigate evolutionary drivers and genomic consequences of pollen evolution in response to pollination mode shifts in flowering plants. 1/5

su.varbi.com/what:job/job...
September 2, 2025 at 2:20 PM
Reposted by Lars Eicholt
The #MaxPlanckPostdocProgram offers a guaranteed contract of at least 3 years, targeted mentoring, and career workshops. The call for applications is open now! 🚀 Take advantage of this opportunity and browse the job vacancies. www.mpg.de/en/max-planc...
September 1, 2025 at 8:46 AM
Reposted by Lars Eicholt
Excited / nervous to share the “magnum opus” of my postdoc in Andreas Wagner’s lab!

"De-novo promoters emerge more readily from random DNA than from genomic DNA"

This project is the accumulation of 4 years of work, and lays the foundation for my future group. In short, we… (1/4)
De-novo promoters emerge more readily from random DNA than from genomic DNA
Promoters are DNA sequences that help to initiate transcription. Point mutations can create de-novo promoters, which can consequently transcribe inactive genes or create novel transcripts. We know lit...
www.biorxiv.org
August 28, 2025 at 6:37 AM
Reposted by Lars Eicholt
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
Reposted by Lars Eicholt
Beautiful work from @claudiaalcar.bsky.social, congrats!

Piecing Together the History of Protein Folds From a Fragmented Evolutionary Record

academic.oup.com/gbe/article/...
Piecing Together the History of Protein Folds From a Fragmented Evolutionary Record
Abstract. Protein folds are structural units defined by the number, type, arrangement, and orientation of their core secondary structural elements. The uni
academic.oup.com
August 21, 2025 at 6:29 PM