Lab News

2025

Dr. Mehak passed her viva!
December 4, 2025

Dr. Mehak passed her viva! This was followed by a massive party in the Waddington building, from which most people are still recovering....

Sofia's NNS paper got accepted in Nucleic Acids Research!
October 9, 2025

Sofia discovered that the Nrd1-Nab3-Sen1 complex plays a role in co-regulating the expression of functionally related genes and also ensures homogenous gene expression of Pic2, a mitochondrial copper transporter. These data present a novel role for transcription termination in regulating gene expression noise
Sander invited speaker at the iCLIP2 conference in Genoa!
September 9, 2025

Sander traveled to Genoa to talk about his almost 20 years of experience doing CLIP experiments and UV cross-linking stuff.
Gabriele at conference
Gabriele presents at the Regulating with RNA in Bacteria & Archaea conference
September 2025

Gabriele presents her work on RNase R at the Regulating with RNA in Bacteria and Archea conference in Strasbourg!

Granneman and Cockroft lab awarded a BBSRC grant to develop a new high-throughput sequencing based method!
April 29, 2025

Scott and Sander came up with a crazy idea for a new method involving high-throughput sequencing. This project will start in January 2026 and we have already hired the post-doc!

Dina Nahhas joins the lab!
January 10, 2025

Dina is an MRC funded post-doc working on transcription factors metabolites and infection models.

2024

Dr. Sofia successfully passed her PhD thesis defense!
December 6, 2024

With very very minor corrections, sofia aced her viva and this was followed by a massive party.

Sara Pintar joins the lab!
November 1, 2024

Sara is an MRC funded post-doc. She will be structurally characterising interactions between transcription factors and RNA in MRSA.

New Paper on BioRXiv
October 30, 2024

Our paper on a co-transcriptional mechanism for tightly controlling gene expression in yeast is now available. A fantastic collaboration with the labs of Peter Swain and Michael Duchen and spearheaded by Sofia Esteban Serna!
Hong Duong Ngo joins the lab!
October 1, 2024

Hong Duong is a Darwin Trust funded PhD student that is working on RNases in MRSA.

pyRBDome RNA-binding proteome analysis paper accepted
July 17, 2024

Our pyRBDome RNA-binding proteome analysis paper has been accepted in Life Science Alliance! We developed pyRBDome, a comprehensive pipeline that enables users to identify putative RNA-binding regions within proteins.
Sander Granneman Promoted to Full Professor
May 16, 2024

Sander Granneman got promoted to Full Professor! Huge thanks to all the friends, colleagues and students and post-docs that have helped make this possible.

Dr. Wei successfully passed his PhD thesis defense!
May 16, 2024

Wei passed his viva with minor corrections! Congratulations!!!

Dr. Niki successfully passed her PhD thesis defense!
May 15, 2024

Niki passed her viva with minor corrections! Congratulations!!!

2022

Granneman and Tree RNase III CLASH papers accepted for back-go-back in Nature Communications!
June 3, 2022

Spearheaded by Stuart McKellar and in collaboration with Jai Tree's lab, we unearthed RNA-RNA interactomes in clinically relevant MRSA strains. We found RNA-mediated regulation mechanisms linking metabolism to toxin production and antibiotic resistance.
The MRSA RNA-binding proteome paper got accepted in Nature Communications!!
April 26, 2022

We applied high-throughput proteomics approaches to unravel the RNA-binding proteomes of clinically relevant MRSA strains. This revealed hundreds of possibly new RNA-binding proteins and post-transcriptional roles for transcription factors!

2019

Dr. Stuart passed his viva with minor corrections!
12th of December 2019

After almost five hours, Stuart emerged victorious from his viva. When Sander asked, why did it take FIVE hours? The examiners responded that they were having too much FUN!

Niki Christopoulou is awarded a Darwin Trust PhD studentship!
8th of April 2019

Our ERASMUS student Niki was recently awarded a Darwin Trust PhD studentship! She will be joining the lab for four years, starting October 2019. Her project involves understanding the role of RNA-binding proteins involved in antibiotic resistance in pathogenic bacteria. Congratulations Niki!

2018

The labs paper on post-transcriptional regulation in E. coli is now on BioRxiv!
30 November 2018

Our latest paper on post-transcriptional regulation in E. coli is now online!

Granneman lab welcomes Niki Christopoulou
1 October 2018

Niki Christopoulou will be in our lab for a few months to learn how to genetically manipulate pathogenic bacteria. She got an ERASMUS fellowship for her stay here in Edinburgh. The goal is to also teach her how to do CLIP/CRAC, should there be sufficient time. Welcome! UPDATE!!! She recently was awarded a Darwin Trust PhD fellowship to join our lab. Congratulations!

Sander presents at the RiboClub meeting in Canada!
25 September 2018

Sander was invited to give a talk about their latest work at the RiboClub in Canada! He’s really looking forward to it as there are a number of really interesting talks lined up for this meeting!

Granneman lab welcomes Ivayla and Tove
3 September 2018

Ivayla is a new post-doc in the lab who will be working on one of the most pathogenic strains we have in the lab. She is an expert in post-transcriptional modification and this is her first venture into microorganisms. Tove, a Swedish MSc student in Synthetic Biology, will be manipulating yeast to develop new ways of making expression of exogenous genes more efficient in baker’s yeast.

Granneman lab welcomes Liangcui!
1 August 2018

Liangcui Cui recently joined the lab to understand the role of RNA-binding proteins in bacteria. Her post-doctoral work will be focussing on characterizing RNA-binding proteins in pathogens.

Dr. Ira passed her viva with minor corrections!
19th of February 2018

Ira produced a stellar thesis and did a great job during her thesis defence!

Granneman lab has two post-doc positions available!!
7 February 2018

We currently have two post-doc positions available (see Vacancies page) to work on RNA:RNA and protein-RNA interactions in prokaryotes! If you have any experience in NGS or quantitative mass-spectrometry and are looking for a new post-doc position, please do not hesitate to contact Sander! (sgrannem@ed.ac.uk). Deadline for applications is 5th of March 2018. UPDATE: Positions filled!

2017

Sander awarded a Medical Research Council Senior Research Fellowship!
20 October 2017

Sander’s proposal on bacterial pathogens was awarded with an MRC Senior Research Fellowship! The lab now has five years of funding to study post-transcriptional regulation in multi-drug resistant bacteria!! This work is done in collaboration with the Fitzgerald, Tree and Sanguinetti groups.

Our Nature Communications RNA structure probing paper is now online!!
29 September 2017

After 4 years of hard graft and overcoming many technical and computational challenges our pre-60S RNA structure probing paper is now online on the Nature Communications website! The first author is Elena Burlacu, a former PhD student from my lab. We have mapped the structural changes that take place during early 60S assembly and could show that folding of some regions in the 60S pre-rRNA takes place at very specific stages of maturation.
Our Nature Communications paper is now online!!
11 April 2017

We developed a much improved version of our CRAC protein-RNA interaction technique and identified a role for the Nab3 transcription terminator in controlling expression kinetics of stress-responsive genes. This work was done in collaboration with UVO3 and Guido Sanguinett’s group, who made a great contribution to the modeling part of the paper. The brand spanking new super duper UV cross-linker that we developed for kinetic CRAC can be ordered from UVO3!!

2016

Our Nature Methods paper is now online!!
7 November 2016

In collaboration with Guido Sanguinetti’s group we developed new statistical algorithms for calling modified nucleotides in high-throughput RNA structure probing data. These new tools greatly increase the sensitivity of RNA structure probing methods, even at low coverage. The next challenge is to modify this method so that we can use it to determine which nucleotides undergo conformational changes under different conditions or during assembly of large macromolecular complexes, such as the ribosome. Can’t wait!!
Sander becomes an Associate Scientist at Roslin Institute, Edinburgh
26 October 2016

The lab has been collaborating with Ross Fitzgerald’s group at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh for a while now to study RNA-binding proteins in nasty bugs. Now that I am an associate scientist at Roslin, we will be able to interact with many experts in infection and immunity and we will have access to the amazing facilities at the institute! This should greatly benefit our research and will help us to expand into new and exciting research areas.

Stuart McKellar joins the lab
11 July 2016

Stuart McKellar, a Wellcome-Trust funded PhD student, has decided to join my lab to work on some very nasty bugs! This work, in collaboration with Ross Fitzgerald’s group in Roslin and Jai Tree in Sydney, promises to unravel new layers and mechanisms of gene regulation in nasty bacteria!

Karen Julia Nieken joins the lab!
11 July 2016

Karen Julia (aka Jule) is a summer student from Germany that decided to join our lab to help Ira out with her projects. All I can say is that it has something to do with pores!

Dr. Elena passed her viva with minor corrections!
February 2018

My very first PhD student passed her viva with minor corrections. Examiners commented on high quality of her work and how well the thesis was written. So proud of her!

2015

Sander wins the 2015 SBS Recognizing Excellence award!
14 December 2015

Sander was extremely pleased to hear that he was awarded the 2015 School of Biological Sciences Recognizing Excellence award; Knowledge Exchange and Commercialization. This award was given as a recognition for his work on protein-RNA interactions and the impact it had on many RNA groups in the School. The Granneman lab has been collaborating closely with its industrial partner (UVO3) for many years and this has resulted in the development of several UV cross-linking machines that have been sold all over the world.

2011

Granneman lab officially starting!
March 1, 2011

Funded by a Wellcome Trust Research and Career Development Fellowship the lab will be starting in the Waddington building!