Michał Świrski co-authored a correspondence in Nature Methods: Introducing the term “translon”

28 10 2025

Michał Świrski, PhD student and staff member at the Faculty of Biology, is a co-author of a letter published in the October issue of Nature Methods, titled “Translon: a single term for translated regions.” The letter serves as a broad, consensus-based manifesto introducing a new term for one of the fundamental units of genetic information flow – the translon – defined as a region undergoing translation.

By proposing a term consistent with the established nomenclature of biological units (such as exon or intron), the paper consolidates scientific discourse around the ubiquity of translation and the diversity of translational mechanisms.

The initial draft was written jointly by four authors: Michał Świrski (Faculty of Biology, University of Warsaw), Jack Tierney (European Bioinformatics Institute), Prof. Eivind Valen (University of Oslo), and Prof. Pavel Baranov (University College Cork). To increase the likelihood of widespread adoption of the proposed terminology, extensive consultations were conducted, resulting in a unified position endorsed by 127 signatories – prominent researchers representing a wide range of genomics and molecular biology fields.

We encourage you to read the full publication: https://rdcu.be/eDnOj and warmly congratulate Michał!