Benthamiana rhapsody 🎶 🌱 How benthi is the go-to system for cracking the activation mechanism of an Arabidopsis TIR-NLR immune receptor— that’s the rhapsody. Congrats He Zhao and Selvaraj for this wonderful collaboration 👇🏼 doi.org/10.64898/202...

We genetically disconnected starch from the matrix in the algal pyrenoid! A saga1;saga2 double mutant lacks a starch sheath! Our model: SAGA1 & SAGA2 locally initiate starch on the pyrenoid surface by enriching starch precursors. 🌞🦠🔬🔌👀 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

You like #LLPS? #TeamTomo? #Rubisco? Check out our latest preprint! What a great collaboration this has been!

Excited to finally share this work also in written form! 🎉 Huge thanks to all co-authors and collaborators — this really was a team effort, and I’m very grateful for all the ideas, discussions, and hard work that went into it. Thanks everyone! #TeamTomo #cryoET #autophagy

It makes me sad to see a paper in a fancy journal that I didn't see on bioRxiv before 😢

Gorgeous paper and a plea for open data. ⬇️ See thread ⬇️

Microsoft spell check trying to sabotage reviewer replies again 🙄

Final version is out! Our large-scale cryo-ET dataset 🔬 of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii 🦠 is now published in @cp-molcell.bsky.social Huge collaborative effort! So glad to see the community already using it to develop new resources & tools. Check it out here: shorturl.at/z4i4c #CryoEM #CryoET

To build the body plan of an animal, cells must adhere to one another via cell-cell junctions. We now know these assemble as punctate protein complexes containing thousands of proteins, but how this occurs remains mysterious. 1/n 🧪 www.molbiolcell.org/doi/full/10....

🥳 Our new paper on C2CD3 is out in @plosbiology.org With the labs of @cellarchlab.com , @chgenoud.bsky.social , and @stearnslab.bsky.social , we revealed the mammalian centriole Distal Ring architecture by combining #UExM and in situ #CryoET. Big congrats to @ebertiaux.bsky.social and all involved.

Totally! And they rate outputs from their own model family higher. arxiv.org/abs/2508.06709 At this stage, automated text review should probably average across multiple models.

We're back for our final seminar of 2025 with talks from @alexholehouse.bsky.social and Birthe Kragelund! 1 pm EST or 7 pm European time. If you're not already signed up, head on over to idpseminars.com to register!

Murnau Conference nailing the hot topic: "The overarching theme of this edition will be “(Un)structural biology: in situ, in vitro, in silico”. Besides amazing cellular and 4D structural biology, we will have a session covering the topic of condensate structural biology." 🔗 murnauconference.de

CryoET of symbiotic cell-cell interfaces 🦑🦠 🔗 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

AI model Helixer predicts eukaryotic genes ab initio, directly from a plain text FASTA file. No RNA-seq. No protein homology. No repeats, hints, or curated evidence. Raw genome → accurate gene models. Deep learning + HMM, published in @natmethods.nature.com www.nature.com/articles/s41...

As undergrad I had to purify and crystallize a new protein that kept aggregating no matter what. In distress fantasized about an algorithm to predict good buffer conditions & mutations. This dataset + what’s in PDB already would be a decent start.

We (Nordborg & Weigel labs) need input on the next generation of genome browsers & data download modes for the #Arabidopsis #1001GenomesPlus project. We have now a curated collection of over 500 long read genomes. Please help us by filling out this questionnaire: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Why IDPs Are Poor Candidates for Homotypic LLPS 🧵👇A thread

Microtubule-based vacuum cleaner 👀

Registration is open to take part in the Molecular Biology of Plants (#MBP2026), which especially invites early career scientists to present their molecular #plantsci research www.pflanzen-molekularbiologie.de/en/conferenc...

My main work as postdoc @plantophagy.bsky.social lab in @gmivienna.bsky.social is out in @natplants.nature.com 🌱🎉 We asked how can protein complexes diversify without compromising their function and explored this question using the plant #exocyst complex. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

New OA Article: "In situ architecture of the nuclear pore complex of the higher plant Arabidopsis thaliana" rdcu.be/eNFiR Advanced imaging techniques and computer modelling to create a detailed structural model of a nuclear pore complex from a seed plant.

Curious which parameters everyone uses to consider res pairs as potentially interacting. Thoughts? My set for screening (AND): Side chain heavy atom distance <= 4.2 Å PAE <= 8 Å Combined pLDDT >= 140 pDockQ > 0.3

Our colleagues Vinith Kishore and Valentin Debarnot from the @ivandokmanic.bsky.social lab have come up with an amazing deep learning tool for denoising and filling the missing wedge in #cryoET data. I'm pleased to introduce Icecream🍧

@delaconcepcionjc.bsky.social from @gmivienna.bsky.social (a @johninnescentre.bsky.social alumnus) delivered his 2026 Early Career Research Award Lecture on NLR engineering and his ongoing cryo-ET work! #BiochemEvent

Second, I’m slowly getting to be in the camp that proteins don’t have functions but instead have properties. What biology does with those properties is a somewhat different matter. So maybe we need to predict properties (kcat, Kd, etc) as well

Great read & perspective! "We can't leave all the fun to the biologists; we should zoom out while they zoom in."

Very happy and proud to share the #Spirogyra genome: 50 Mbp small, lacking almost all plastid division proteins and many transcription factors. Kudos to all the many people involved in this multi year project! @jandevries.bsky.social @watertoland.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

✨Excited that the main project of my PhD is now available as a pre-print on #bioRxiv Here, we used #CryoET to visualise mitochondrial proteostatic stress and together with SPA #CryoEM shed light into the functional cycle of the Hsp60:10 chaperone system. #TeamTomo 🔗 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

New blog post. In which I analyze the new HHMI announcement and what it means for the science publishing ecosystem openrxiv.org/preprint-man...

You can get MSAs directly from AlphaFold DB now (alphafold.ebi.ac.uk). I also missed the FoldSeek implementation, which lets you search for structurally similar proteins direktly. This saves some clicking around. Neat!

123 new genomes you say? Time to update some sequence alignments 🥲

Thylakoids, the prettiest membrane structures in planty cryoET, in full glory:

I am excited to share our new preprint on the CAGE complex, a mysterious hollow protein complex that I first saw years ago while surveying Tetrahymena ciliary lysate www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #cilia #protistsonsky 🧬🧪

Correlative MS Imaging for cellular identification and analysis of in situ cryo-ET https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.16.676641v1

La-Proteina from NVidia to do co-design of fully atomistic protein structures (sequence + side-chains + backbone) for up to 800 residues is now open source with permissive licensing 🖥️ github.com/NVIDIA-Digit... 🗎 arxiv.org/abs/2507.09466

Trouble imaging actin in ExM? Meet HAK-Actin, a probe for U-ExM, cryo-ExM & iU-ExM. Enables post-expansion labeling for max signal. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Soon at @spirochrome.com Led by O.Mercey and @lreymond.bsky.social, in collab with @dudinlab.bsky.social and @marinelap.bsky.social

H2B-mRFPruby, scale bar: 20µm #live-imaging

Our latest on brassinosteroid signaling: Ligand binding spectrum, specificity & selectivity of all BR receptors in Arabidopsis. By @albertocaregnato.bsky.social , @hmchen93.bsky.social and our great chemistry collaborators Mirek Kvasnica, Jana Oklestkova and Mirek Strnad.

Unexpectedly, @jurgjn.bsky.social found that running Alphafold3 predictions for protein interactions can yield ipTM scores that are more predictive of true interactions when run in pools of proteins instead of pairwise predictions. Presumably, this reflects some sort of "competition effect".

Another plant glutamate receptor (GLR) involved in defense response via calcium signaling. This one senses insect eggs. Pretty cool!

New preprint: In situ Architecture of #Plasmodesmata. Using #cryoET, #AlphaFold & proteomics, we uncover the native organization of plant intercellular nanopores. 🔗 doi.org/10.1101/2025... 🧪🧵1/n #teamtomo #PlantScience #Physcomitrium #Arabidopsis #cryoEM

Our #cryoET of #plasmodesmata preprint is out! Will write more on it later. 🌿❄️

🌈 www.youtube.com/watch?v=uR-r...

We've tried to gather and unite the streptophyte algae community all around the world to join forces and develop tools and methods for these critters. Learn more about it on @currentbiology.bsky.social! With @jandevries.bsky.social, @dolfweijers.bsky.social, and (many) others! tinyurl.com/29n4zwen

Vitrification is THE make-or-break for cryoET in tissues. Each sample we figure out opens so many new possibilities for understanding biology. Great screening effort, rewarded with beautiful tomograms. Congrats!

Struct bio ms titles over the years 1965 - A three-dimensional model of X 1985 - The structure of X 1995 - The structure of X reveals Y 2005 - Structural basis of 2015 - The molecular mechanism of 2025 - Harnessing AlphaFold

Today in the journal Science: BioEmu from Microsoft Research AI for Science. This generative deep learning method emulates protein equilibrium ensembles – key for understanding protein function at scale. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

New tools! GreenPy and ApplePy are fluorescent biosensors for pyruvate with huge responses (20–40x in vitro) and a range of affinities (10s of μM to mM). These should be game changers for imaging of metabolism! Great work by Shosei Imai @sikmys.bsky.social and team 👏. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

We’re kicking off the DinoSphere Online Seminar Series! Join us for our first session with Karel Mockaer (Heidelberg) & Yong Heng Phua (OIST) 📅 1 July 9AM CEST 🔗 tinyurl.com/4mjaverj Spread the word! @protistwtmostest.bsky.social @ehehenberger.bsky.social @chandnibhickta.bsky.social&Norico Yamada