As Fran was nice enough to highlight this, I thought I'd put up a brief thread. 3 in 10 proteins that our cells make are either embedded in membranes (ion channels, adhesion molecules, etc.) or secreted (insulin, antibodies). They move through the secretory pathway. 1/

Still time to submit an abstract or save £50 on the full fees for this great Membrane Proteins Conference! Taking place 7–9 April 2026 in Birmingham, don’t miss the chance to listen to expert researchers discussing membrane proteins in diverse biological processes. #Proteins🧪 ow.ly/rhHJ50XNBLI

Let's try this #AcademicSky 1 fav, 1 funny, strange, or unexpected scientific anecdote about a paper, a scientist, a fact, hoping that some will be new to you.

Holy shit. Bin nur ich das oder ist das selbst für trumpsche Standards ein neuer Tiefpunkt absurden, zusammenhanglosen, faktenfreien Gebrabbels? #wef #trump

We've got ISSUES. Literally. We scraped >100k special issues & over 1 million articles to bring you a PISS-poor paper. We quantify just how many excess papers are published by guest editors abusing special issues to boost their CVs. How bad is it & what can we do? arxiv.org/abs/2601.07563 A 🧵 1/n

Helical charge distribution at the transmembrane-luminal interface determines subcellular localization https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.12.688035v1

Save £100 if you book your place for Membrane Proteins Conference before 7 January 2026. Taking place on 7–9 April 2026 in Birmingham, don’t miss the chance to listen to expert researchers discussing membrane proteins in diverse biological processes. 🧪 buff.ly/sybIVz4

Blog post: Just quit Quitting projects in science is hard, but we should be doing a lot more of it. open.substack.com/pub/arjunraj...

Do #lipids carry the signatures of #evolution?🤔 In #Biochemistry Perspective, We 'provocatively' (as my former PhD guide & scientific guru Sankar put it ) propose an expanded view of the classic “lipid divide” idea feedback/critiques all welcome 🙌 #lipidtime pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

Ups we did it again! Please mark your calender. EMBO Workshop “Lipid Code to Life”, taking place September 7–11, 2026, in Dresden, organized by Maria Fedorova, @lipid.bsky.social, Valerie O'Donnell, @holthuislab.bsky.social and @molcellbiophys-lab.bsky.social 🥳 Retweets = lipidlove

wait, wait, what ???? aixiv.science

The Scientifc Reports autism cycle article has been retracted: doi.org/10.1038/s415...

LIVESTREAM in half an hour about the new ancient DNA study published last week that changes our timeline for ancient cats. Should be a fun dive into the archaeology of cats www.youtube.com/watch?v=9byO...

New preprint from the lab!!🎉 We show that Asgard archaea ESCRT-III proteins can trigger membrane fission and reveal its molecular mechanism, offering clues to how these cells may have built internal compartments. But do these organisms even have these compartments? www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

I will be giving several talks this coming week at universities in Switzerland: Lausanne, Neuchâtel, Basel, and Bern. Hope to see some of you there!

What do you think? Real SDS-PAGE gel or AI-generated ?

Is it a flagellate? A tiny ball with tentacles? Contamination in my ciliate culture? NEW SUPERGROUP OF EUKARYOTES? Yes to all 4! Meet Solarion - just out in #Nature doi.org/10.1038/s415... Huge congrats to Marek Valt, Cepicka Lab & the star team! Very happy to be part of this project. #ProtistsOnSky

Microtubule-based vacuum cleaner 👀

The first chapter of my PhD is finally out on @commsbio.nature.com We show that the transmembrane domain of SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein is not just a passive anchor to the virion surface, but a key player in the viral entry process.

We have wondered what a complex archaeal cell might look like ever since 2014. It’s been a long road (and the journey is far from over), but it’s a good time to pause for breath and look. These Asgard archaeal cells are a surprise! And that is the joy of being a cell biologist.

And just when you thought things were settling down, the enigmatic Asgard archaea have another surprise in store! Cell cycle/life cycle stage-specific internal compartments with almost no eukaryote-derived clues as to how they might function. Beautiful tomography and microscopy - congrats all 🤩

Just published! We share an open-source workflow to measure membrane thickness from tomograms, including a tutorial with 3D visualizations. We analyze thickness variations across organelles and reflect on where to define a membrane boundary. @becklab.bsky.social #teamtomo rupress.org/jcb/article/...

Glushkova, Böhm, & Beck @maxplanck.de develop a publicly available computational method to measure the thickness of biological membranes in cryo-electron tomograms. Analysis of algae & human cells reveals systematic membrane thickness variations within & across organelles rupress.org/jcb/article/...

New paper from the Gossert lab: Dynamic interactions in the human β1AR signalling complex with mini-Gs revealed by NMR www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

As ever, beautiful #cryoEM work from the lab of Hong Zhou with field-defining insights using #cryoET: “Kiss-shrink-run” unifies mechanisms for synaptic vesicle exocytosis and hyperfast recycling | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Fwd: Fwd: “I hope this email finds you well”

This comic is becoming increasingly realistic. m.xkcd.com/3056/

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 🧬🧪

Are Asgard archaea the ancestors of eukaryotes? Likely not. Very insightful paper by @pforterrr.bsky.social

Getting closer to the year 3000

Did you know your MacBook has a sensor that knows the exact angle of the screen hinge? It’s not exposed as a public API, but I figured out a way to read it and make it sound like an old wooden door. Source code and a downloadable app to try it yourself […] [Original post on hachyderm.io]

Sounds very neat: OPRLM: A Web Tool and a Database for Positioning and Simulations of Proteins in Realistic Lipid Membranes - ScienceDirect share.google/yPJkioKNph4m...

Happy to share the latest work from the lab, led by @mudgal17.bsky.social‬, in collaboration with the Weis lab @ethzurich.bsky.social. How do nuclear membranes fuse during NPC assembly? We answer this question in our latest work, where we identify a new mechanism for membrane fusion… (1/13)

The peer review process is a flawless system that has no issues whatsoever /s

Fresh off the press from the @lek-lab.bsky.social: Modulation of histone tail electrostatic potentials in nucleosome core particles by acetylation and PARylation #NMRchat www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Made an attempt at generating a video of protein unfolding with #veo3 😹

The Vatican now takes a stronger stand for science than the US government: www.nature.com/articles/d41... www.pas.va/en/events/20...

Complexity myths and the misappropriation of evolutionary theory www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

David R. Hagen just solved a small mystery that I mentioned 13 years ago in the mouseover text of a comic drhagen.com/blog/the-mis...

For everyone interested in how membrane thickness differs between and within organelles, by @deglushk.bsky.social, S. Böhm & M. Beck: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

At times like these it's important to remember the 3 branches of science

It’s Mary Anning’s birthday, so time to share @katebeaton.bsky.social’s brilliant cartoon again.

Huge congrats to the authors for pulling this off: Activation dynamics traced through a G protein–coupled receptor by 81 1H-15N NMR probes | Science www.science.org/doi/full/10....

After years, I finally read this great paper on what the success of trial-and-error methods and AI tells us about emergent properties and reductionism in bio sciences: rdcu.be/emtBS

"Dolphins call each other’s signature whistles if they get separated. Once, we played one of those whistles while the pair was still together. They responded with a totally different whistle. We call it the 'WTF whistle,' because it really did seem like that’s what they were asking." @science.org

...and big thanks to @jiwasa.bsky.social for making this amazing video to illustrate the strand-sliding mechanism!

Why are biological membranes asymmetric, with different lipids in the two bilayer leaflets? Discovered in the 70s, lipid asymmetry is linked to many cellular processes, but why the cell needs it is largely unclear. @pavelbarahtjan.bsky.social addresses this question: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

New paper out! We discovered a tiny archaeon with the smallest known archaeal genome — only 238 kbp! Candidatus Sukunaarchaeum mirabile has almost no recognizable metabolic pathways and may rely heavily on a host to survive. It also represents a novel, deep-branching lineage in the archaeal tree.