Science

A paper in Nature Communications by Gao lab members (Simone Evans, Collin Chiu) with collaborators at Stanford and MIT shows how two distinct bacterial immune sensors use unexpected molecular mechanisms to detect the DNA packaging motor of bacterial viruses.

A paper in Nature from Gao lab members (Hyunbin Lee, Sofia Luengo-Woods) with collaborators at Stanford and the NIH reveals that bacteria have a surprisingly comprehensive alarm system, with distinct families of intracellular receptors that together keep watch on nearly every essential part of an invading virus.

Junyi (Xiao Lab) has received a prestigious 2026–27 National Cancer Center Research Fellowship to support her project, “Targeting Cysteine Catabolism to Induce Ferroptosis in Liver Cancer.” Her research focuses on a newly identified protein regulator of intracellular cysteine levels, with the goal of developing small-molecule strategies to restrict cysteine availability and trigger liver cancer cell death.

In a new paper in Nature Genetics, Ganesh Pusapati and colleagues in the Rohatgi lab used base editing enabled scanning mutagenesis to show that the WNT master regulator β-catenin scaffolds the very destruction complex that degrades it WNT-driven cancers.

Recognized for his transformative contributions to RNA and protein worlds, as well as his outstanding mentorship, Dr. Daniel (Dan) Herschlag will be honored with a symposium at the Spring 2027 ACS National Meeting.

In a new paper in Molecular Cell, the Rohatgi lab, with collaborators at Oxford, describes the structure and mechanism of a membrane machine that targets and destroys cell surface receptors that play key roles in development, cancer, immunity, and obesity.

Dr. Straight is one of the newest members recognized by the American Academy for his contributions in the field of cellular and developmental biology. Congratulations!

A paper in Science by Gao lab members (Pujuan Deng, Hyunbin Lee, and Carlo Armijo) describes a unique bacterial reverse transcriptase that creates sequence-specific DNA repeats using its own amino acids as the template.

What tells lung stem cells it’s time to spring into action after injury? New research published in Science uncovers a self-contained signaling system where stem cells produce their own growth trigger—kept safely “on hold” until damage occurs.

Dr. Brown was recognized for his contributions of industrializing genetics with DNA microarrays and starting Impossible Foods.

A paper published by Straight Lab members (Rae Brown, Jacob Schwartz) find that Xenopus M18BP1 phosphorylation controls its centromere localization in interphase and metaphase, such that this phosphoregulatory switch restricts CENP-A nucleosome assembly to interphase.

Geneticist William Greenleaf, PhD, and biochemist Rhiju Das, PhD, gathered insights from citizen scientists via a Stanford Medicine-designed video game to help create an affordable RNA sensor for tuberculosis.

Science Communication Lab (formerly iBiology) presents Life Recombined, a new short film exploring the origins of recombinant DNA and the groundbreaking contributions of Paul Berg and Janet Mertz.

A joint paper from Konermann Lab and Arc Institute collaborators introduce RESPLICE, an RNA-guided trans-splicing platform.

Recent research from the Brandman Lab (Danish Khan, Ananya Vinayak, Cole Sitron, and Onn Brandman) reveals a new force-based mechanism for quality control of stalled ribosomes. CAT tailing is a conserved, non-templated process that extends stalled nascent polypeptide chains while they are still attached to the large ribosomal subunit.

Deadline is March, 2026. Hidden leaderboard targets now include cryo-EM structures of new-to-Nature RNA folds, RNA complexes with small molecules and proteins, and assemblies up to 6000 nts, solved in collaboration with the AI@HHMI initiative at Janelia Research Center and experimental groups around the world.

PDB’s first 2026 “Molecule of the Month” are natural RNA-only assemblies discovered by Rachael Kretsch, Postdoctoral Scholar in Das Lab!