Patrick Hsu and Hiroshi Nishimasu uncovered the directional switch of IS110 bridge RNA, proving that modifying two dinucleotides flips recombination directionality and boosts excision by 13,000-fold in Nature. 🧬🤖
#BridgeRNA #CRISPR #Nature2026 #PatrickHsu #Nishimasu #GeneEditing #SyntheticBiology

This work was a wonderful collaboration with Silvana Konermann, led by star graduate student Nick Perry with key contributions from the amazing Liam Bartie, Dhruva Katrekar, Gabe Gonzalez, Matt Durrant, James Pai, Alison Fanton, Masa Hiraizumi, Chiara Ricci-Tam, and Hiroshi Nishimasu

Arc is on 🔥

New preprint on bioRxiv! 🧬

“Structural mechanism of the type IX Retron-Kva2 anti-phage defense system”

Led by the Nishimasu lab (Univ. Tokyo) — happy to have been part of the team!

🔗 doi.org/10.64898/202...

9/9 This was a huge team effort! Big thanks to Kanta, Junichiro, and the Nishimasu lab for adjusting their meeting schedules to collaborate across time zones. Equal gratitude goes out to the Sternberg lab for the discussions and shared curiosity that shaped this work!

5/9 To understand how, the Nishimasu Lab solved a cryo-EM structure of DRT3b. It assembles into a hexamer with bound poly-(dCdA) DNA. Two residues near the active-site enforce the alternating sequence.

1/9 New preprint from the Sternberg Lab in collaboration with the Nishimasu Lab! We uncover how the DRT3 antiphage immune system pairs two reverse transcriptases, one RNA-templated and one protein-templated, to build a double-stranded DNA effector. doi.org/10.64898/202...

This is the result of a great and ongoing collaboration with the Nishimasu lab. Thanks a bunch to all authors

Lastly, I’m very thankful of my excellent co-first authors Lukas Villiger, Justin Lim, Masa Hiraizumi, and mentors Omar and Jonathan. We are so grateful for our fantastic ongoing collaborations with Hiroshi Nishimasu. Thanks to all co-authors for their invaluable contributions!

Finally, don’t miss the parallel studies on Kva2 IX-retron by Grace Hibshman, Seth Shipman & @nogaleslab.bsky.social labs; and Kotaro Kiga and Hiroshi Nishimasu labs!!👇

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

I'm trying to find the source where this comes from, but seems like they also have...

Tomohiro Takizawa (combat designer for FF16)
Masaki Nishimasu (programmer RE Village)
Masashi Yamaura p(roject manager DMC 5)
Tak Fujii (producer Ninety-Nine Nights 2)
Atsushi Takaku (lead UI artist for FF16)

Continuing to read CRISPR classics. This week I reread Nishimasu et al., (2015) Crystal Structure of Cas9 in Comple... It's a Cell paper and yes it's long. The paper unveils the 2.5Å structure of the Cas9-sgRNA-target DNA complex, illuminating Cas9's intricate targeting mechanism for DNA cleavage...