Baptiste Rafanel
Transposons, Transcription, piRNA, Drosophila
PhD Student in the Brennecke lab at IMBA
- Reposted by Baptiste RafanelAfter a huge amount of work w/ @alex-stark.bsky.social's group, a new version of our Ledidi preprint is now out! In an era of AI-designed proteins, the next leap will be controlling when, where, and how much of these proteins are expressed in living cells. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- Reposted by Baptiste RafanelHappy to share that my PhD project is finally published!🪱✨ Selfish genes are found across the tree of life. They can disrupt inheritance patterns and at the same time act as units for molecular innovation. Here we tried to answer one big question: how do selfish genes emerge in the first place?
- Recurrent evolution of selfishness from an essential tRNA synthetase in Caenorhabditis tropicalis 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- Reposted by Baptiste Rafanel🪱 Selfish genes are everywhere and drive some of biology’s biggest innovations (CRISPR, antibody recombination, epigenetics). Yet almost no one asks the obvious question: how does a selfish gene begin? Our new manuscript uncovers how selfishness can emerge directly from the host genome.
- Reposted by Baptiste RafanelFinally out in @nature.com! We uncovered a mechanistic framework for a general and conserved mRNA nuclear export pathway. www.nature.com/articles/s41.... 1/
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View full threadReposted by Baptiste RafanelLastly, I’m excited to join @imbmainz.bsky.social in 2026 to start my own lab. We'll explore new mechanisms in eukaryotic gene expression, leveraging ‘evolutionary play’ to uncover how regulation, repurposing, and hijacking shape RNA biology. tinyurl.com/y4x29ctt Thanks for reading! 20/20
- Reposted by Baptiste Rafaneljust in time for the opening of the @hohmannulrich.bsky.social group at @imbmainz.bsky.social what started as a project on how cells export piRNA precursors, ended up as a tour de force in mRNA export. truly wonderful collaboration with @plaschkalab.bsky.social at the @viennabiocenter.bsky.social
- New paper alert! Scientists in Clemens Plaschka’s lab at the IMP and @juliusbrennecke.bsky.social's lab at @imbavienna.bsky.social solved a decade-old puzzle, uncovering how the information molecule mRNA travels from the cell’s nucleus to its periphery. More: bit.ly/4nHcvys
- Reposted by Baptiste RafanelWhen transposons jump, genomes diverge - even in cultured cells. I am happy to share our new preprint: a chromosome-scale genome assembly for Drosophila OSC cells, one of the key model systems in the piRNA field, especially for nuclear piRNA biology. 🧬🧵 (1/12)
- Reposted by Baptiste RafanelHow are RNAs sorted for export vs. degradation in the nucleus? In collaboration with @heick.bsky.social’s lab we (@clemensplaschka.bsky.social and @juliusbrennecke.bsky.social labs) discovered a direct mechanistic link between the export and decay machineries: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... (1/x)
- Reposted by Baptiste RafanelMy first first-author paper is out!🎉 Here we propose a model where a silencing complex, PIWI*, assembles on target RNAs to recruit effectors and shut down transposon activity. Huge thanks to the Brennecke and Plaschka labs, especially Julius and Clemens, and all co-authors!
- PIWI clade Argonautes are essential for transposon silencing. Without them, animals are sterile due to massive transposon activity. But how does piRNA-guided target interaction translate into silencing? PhD student Júlia Portell Montserrat has an intriguing answer www.cell.com/molecular-ce...
