Iain Cheeseman

With the new academic year starting, and many people beginning fresh as graduate students, post-docs, or junior faculty, I have been thinking a lot about the core philosophies that govern my own perspectives on science. So I thought I would share. Welcome to The Tao of Cheese

@pipcosper Such a fun visit. Great conversations. Cool science.

Such a pleasure to finally meet @iaincheeseman (we think he should move here given all the 🧀🧀 in WI). Thanks for your visit and for giving such a beautiful, inspiring talk!

Iain Cheeseman spoke of the power of biology and collaboration across MIT and beyond. "Literacy in biology is central to everything we think about" and the new HEALS initiative has been successful because so much research at MIT touches the life sciences @iaincheeseman

From an accidental discovery of hidden biology to a new framework to understanding and diagnosing rare disease. Thrilled to share the most recent work from our lab and the amazing Jimmy Ly. wi.mit.edu/news/alternate…

To clarify, this is not a default setting. You have to enable this functionality. See the last post in the thread.

Today @AnthropicAI released PubMed integration for Claude. No hallucinations. Just real science, real data. As a beta tester, this has been a game changer—like having a supercharged research assistant. Here are 6 prompts that will transform how you search the literature. A 🧵

8/ To get started, use the desktop version and add PubMed under "Settings -> Extensions". What prompts, instructions, and use cases are working for you? Drop your ideas below 👇"

7/ Beyond PubMed. Don't stop there. Combine with this with instructions to search UniProt, your own favorite databases, or your data. It can recapitulate 30 min of exploration in seconds.

Quiescent cells alter cell structures to enact a proliferative arrest but retain the capacity to divide. Despite their constant presence in cycling cells, we find quiescent cells disassemble most centromere proteins. Upon cell cycle reentry, centromere proteins assemble de novo.

New preprint! Graduate student Océane Marescal leverages quiescence- proliferative hibernation - to reveal unexpected dynamics for “constitutively”-localized centromere proteins. To understand the logic of mitosis, you need to consider non-dividing cells. biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

Jimmy Ly, a graduate student in Whitehead Institute Member Iain Cheeseman's lab, has received the Porter Prize for Research Excellence from @ASCBiology. Congratulations, Jimmy! ascb.org/society-news/a… (@iaincheeseman)

@Simona_Giunta Wow. That is probably one the nicest things anyone has ever said about me and our lab. Thank you!

Visionary work by one of the greatest scientist and person I know - congrats to the whole team!

The key? This occurs by inhibiting deadenylation. Mitotic cells block the shortening of the polyA tail due to a stabilization of polyA binding protein (PABPC). This results in amazing "bumps" in tail length. Critically, blocking this process results in premature mitotic exit.

Graduate student Katya Khalizeva and team show that mRNA is robustly stabilized the moment that cells enter mitosis with >4x increase in half life. We see this for individual genes and across the transcriptome.

New preprint! We solve a mystery you didn't know existed. Mitotic cells lack new transcription but require ongoing translation. Interphase mRNA half life is only 2-4 hrs. So how do cells arrest in mitosis for hours without depleting their transcriptomes? biorxiv.org/content/10.110…