Robin van Schendel

During World War II, the U.S. military studied bullet holes on returning planes to decide where to add armor. Most damage appeared on the fuselage, so many thought it should be reinforced. Mathematician Abraham Wald pointed out a crucial flaw: the data only showed surviving planes. Planes hit in the engine didn’t return at all. This meant the engine was the real weak point. By reinforcing engines instead, many more planes were saved. The lesson: good mathematics isn’t just about numbers—it’s about questioning assumptions behind the data.

Today in @Nature we report a new prime editing strategy that can rescue a common cause of many genetic diseases in a disease-agnostic manner. This approach converts a redundant endogenous tRNA into an optimized suppressor tRNA, enabling a single prime edit to rescue premature stop codons across different diseases. (1/15) drive.google.com/file/d/1bSvkJW…

We’re thrilled to host Françoise Dantzer, presenting on PARP3 and its roles in DNA repair, cell plasticity, and cancer. Marco Baraza (M.Tijsterman lab) will share insights on MUSIC, a genome-wide CRISPR screen revealing DSB repair signatures. Still one slot available! (06/24/25)

@SerenaNikZainal @NatureGenet @GeneChChKoh Looks great! I like InDels much more than SNVs anyway. We have found some funky InDels in worms in some backgrounds and I hope that your new signatures will shed some more light on that as well. Congratulations to the entire team!

PAPER OUT!! 🥳🎉💃🏻🕺🏻💃🏻🕺🏻 A redefined InDel taxonomy provides insights into mutational signatures ⁦@NatureGenet⁩ Brainchild of the amazing ⁦@GeneChChKoh⁩ Tweetorial below!! 👇 1/n nature.com/articles/s4158…

@_adameur I think if you want to call mutations from single reads this is still very difficult with long read sequencing. If you are talking about SNVs or indels by using multiple reads I am sure that will be possible. HiFi reads are indeed already more usable for that purpose.

Surprised to see that misconceptions about long reads are still around. Maybe I'm living in a bubble.. This from a new paper: nature.com/articles/s4155…. Not saying anything about their work but this info is way outdated

@LarsBoelen @FCCoachJohan Ik dacht dat dit niet mag zonder vergunning? Omdat alleen daken zijn vrijgesteld hiervan. En dat je voor dit soort opstellingen een non-reflecterend paneel moest hebben? Ik vraag het omdat ik zo een optie eerder ook overwoog.

@FCCoachJohan Nuance: Stijl op zuid is goed voor maximale opbrengst wintermiddagzon. De beste hoek daarvoor zou dan gemiddelde zijn loodrecht op de zon rond 21 december maar praktische overwegingen (verticaal makkelijker te monteren) wonnen hier.

Winterpanelen (2x 420 WP / zuid 90 graden) Ik ben benieuwd wat die in december en januari doen.

DAPI-stained nuclei in an L1-stage C. elegans larva, as seen by two-photon Bessel beam structured plane illumination microscopy. doi.org/10.1016/j.cell…

We have just completed the last trip to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch for 2024, resulting in our total catch of over 500,000 kg (1.1m lb) from the GPGP so far. Here are some facts about our ocean operations to date:

@ItaiYanai I needed that!

If you don't feel stuck doing your project, you probably need to find another project.

Very interesting work that our lab has contributed a bit to. Check it out and let us Know what you think!

Updated manuscript! We analyzed Cas9-generated indels at >2,800 synthetic Cas9 targets in 18 DNA repair deficient stem cell lines to learn about sequence-specific DNA repair. #GeneEditing #Cas9 #DNArepair Soon to be out! biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

@CaronPierre13 @GeflucGrenoble That's great news Pierre! Congratulations!

I'm delighted and very happy that #Gefluc (@GeflucGrenoble) has awarded our project with a grant to support our research 😃. We will be able to deepen our understanding of the mechanisms regulating the base excision repair in response to anti-cancer treatments.

@Roel_vdHeijden @UitgeverijUBHS Wat gaaf! Veel succes!

@SusanKilgas @NatureComms Neat! Will check it out later. Congratulations!

Really happy to share my first author paper from my postdoc published in @NatureComms ! 🥳 A huge thank you to our collaborators and all the contributing authors of the paper!

@luijsterburglab @FdAdF66 Finally i see my boss at Twitter! Looks like it was fun indeed!

It was a pleasure to have Fabrizio d'Adda di Fagagna @FdAdF66 as keynote speaker at the MGC symposium in Leiden. Here with Wim Vermeulen, Roland Kanaar, and Marcel Tijsterman. We really enjoyed your talk and company.

@palconh @lapassmore @RuedaLab @MRC_LMB @MRC_LMS @imperialcollege @arthur_pol @KorakRay @TamaraSijacki @LMB_Biophysics @JulianSaleLab @PKnipscheer I really enjoyed your presentation at the GRC Mutagenesis meeting on this work. Congratulations on your paper!

@CalebLareau @Nature Great piece you wrote! It is always difficult to show that someone else has made a conclusion that relies on low quality/low number of molecules. Especially because you need to provide an even more convincing story when you do so (and you did). Thanks a lot for sharing this!

On bioRxiv today, we raise serious concerns over a recent @nature paper describing ReDeeM, a new single-cell mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequencing / analysis method. Here are three things that you need to know: 1/n biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

@CejkaLab @giordano_reg @MartinJinek @taekjip @nussenza Cool stuff! Congratulations!

Check out our latest paper showing that HLTF removes Cas9 from DNA, explaining phenotypic differences when using the two Cas9 nickase variants. Important for gene editing! Thanks to @giordano_reg & Rosaria and @MartinJinek @taekjip @nussenza nature.com/articles/s4146…

@gbw42 In our hands it all depends on the method of DNA extraction and the subsequent quality of the DNA. For worms nanodrop is useless,but for our mouse ES cells the nanodrop and qubit measurements are quite similar.

-Wanna know how I know you used a Nanodrop to quant this DNA even though I told you to use a Qubit? -How? -You say this is 68 ng/uL, right? -Yeah... -My Qubit is saying 1.7 ng/uL -Oh... really? -Yup. So... you used a Nanodrop didn't you? - ... -Hmm? -Yeah, OK, I used a Nanodrop