How do distant DNA loci come into contact to activate genes?

Our paper combining live imaging 🔬& polymer physics 🧬 to answer this is out in @ScienceMagazine!

We show how chromosome packing & diffusion determine pairwise dynamics & transcription

👉 1/n https://t.co/GKSS1uzzvPscience.org/doi/10.1126/sc…
In experiments spearheaded by Hongtao Chen, Lev Barinov & @gregorscience, we observe the real-time trajectories of functional DNA loci, tagged in blue and green.

The twist: when these come together & produce mRNA, a red light turns on

Will #ScienceTwitter🐦 -> #ScienceMastodon🐘 work?

The response to this was massive & my #Mastodon has gone from a quiet void to a science party in just 3 days!

Many are worried about servers, network effects & losing followers

Follow these tricks to make it work for you! 🧵 1. Find your friends on #Mastodon 👯👯

If you want your followers to find you, put your #Mastodon handle in your Twitter bio, otherwise this doesn't work!

Go to fedifinder.glitch.me & insert your handles

It will create a csv of #Mastodon handles of who you follow on Twitter

There's been lots of talk on moving #ScienceTwitter to another platform

As scientists, we should make informed decisions & not accept status quo - so what are the options? I checked out open-source non-profit @joinmastodon

How it works, why it's great & how to get started!🧵 First, why change? As twitter now belongs to the world's richest person, we have a moment to ask ourselves if this is the right place for us.

From our experience with software and journals, we all agree that open-source community-based solutions are the way forward

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