30 Jul, 2018

Brain tumors are aggressive and deadly cancers, yet it has been difficult to study them in the laboratory. A new Nature Methods paper reports a ground-breaking method to grow tumors inside brain organoids, which are tiny organ-like structures derived from human stem cells that resemble the architecture of the brain. These tumors develop after introducing clinically-relevant mutations using genome-editing, and mimic the onset of brain cancer within the human brain - allowing researchers to learn

23 Jul, 2018

A gibbon is swinging across a river within an epigenetic landscape, which regulates compaction and expression of our DNA. The arid desert illustrates loosely packed DNA containing actively expressed genes, whereas the tropical forest represents densely packed chromatin. The gibbon genome is similar to ours, but many regions were heavily rearranged during evolution. Still, even the rearranged genes keep their original epigenetic landscapes because the shuffling has occurred at boundaries between

24 Aug, 2017

During division, cells disassemble their nucleus and release many independent chromosomes - but how are all those chromosomes enclosed in a single nucleus after mitosis? The protein BAF cross-bridges DNA strands, allowing the cell to 'knit' a network of DNA around the chromosome ensemble and guide the nuclear membrane along the surface. This drawing illustrates BAF as beads that link the DNA strands into a network. Congratulations to the Gerlich lab on this fantastic Cell paper!

06 Aug, 2017

I'm so excited to share a drawing I made for my own paper recently published in Nature Cell Biology!  This artwork illustrates the dynamics of a protein machinery for splitting membranes. This machinery, called ESCRT-III, forms spirals that constantly exchange their building blocks with the help of a protein called VPS4. This remodeling allows the spirals to change their shape and constrict membranes until they split, for example in the final step of cell division that separates the emerging