I am leaving Rochester NY after attending the retirement fest of four giants in the field of evolutionary biology including my PhD advisor. This visit gave me a chance to revisit old haunts and reflect on my own somewhat unlikely origin story. 1/n

Structural and mechanistic insights into translation initiation on the enterovirus Type 1 IRES www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.04.680434v1 #cryoem

The outer membrane of Gram-negative bacteria blocks many antibiotics. Our latest work reveals that L-type pyocins bypass this barrier by inactivating the BAM complex, killing Pseudomonas aeruginosa without entering the cell, providing a new blueprint for beating antibiotic resistance.

New group leader: one to follow!

Interested in joining the Biology faculty at selective liberal arts college with a rising national profile? Come be my colleague at Trinity University! We are searching for TWO positions this year! (1/3)

Our paper on the Bacteroidota BAM complex is out in @natmicrobiol.nature.com! With @madejmar.bsky.social We found that BAM in Bacteroides and Porphyromonas gingivalis has a distinct architecture from BAM in Proteobacteria. doi.org/10.1038/s415...

The Department of Biology at the University of Kentucky is hiring a Microbiologist (broadly defined). Microbial eco-evo folks, this is your sign to come work with us. Not in the search committee, but happy to answer questions. ukjobs.uky.edu/postings/600... #microbiology #ecology

Thrilled to share that I’ll be joining the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania! Our lab will be relocating to the Department of Pharmacology in Jan ’26. We’re hiring at all levels—reach out if you’re interested! @isbupenn.bsky.social @pennmedicine.bsky.social

EXCITING NEWS!! We're searching for a new professor colleague at the Biozentrum🇨🇭. Ideal candidates are exploring novel biological questions with structure, biophysics, or high-resolution imaging. 🧪 🧶🧬 🔬 The call closes Nov 3. Please get in touch if you would like more information. Come join us! 👩‍🔬🤓

This applies to all structural biology projects! Seeing the features you ought to see at a nominal resolution is the best falsification you can do

Initial attempt at replicating in relion (parameters in next post). This is for Aca2-RNA, using a 100k subset of the 2D-classified particles (no prior 3D cleanup). A 1-class ab initio in relion, then local refinement in relion (1.8deg searches+blush) gives a nominally 3.3Å map; 3.5 Å w/out blush.

Excited to share Wendy Le Mouëllic’s PhD work, now published in @pnas.org! It reveals that M. tuberculosis depends on inorganic sulfate import to survive inside host cells—fueling essential processes such as redox balance and stress resistance. Huge congrats to Wendy & colleagues! shorturl.at/WbFQC

FT piece on the decline of Chemistry (from January). www.ft.com/content/563f...

Congratulations to this fantastic group of people: www.nature.com/articles/s41... #sheliveson #tcbf

My department at UC Davis is hiring a mycologist, broadly interpreted. Please repost, share, and consider applying. recruit.ucdavis.edu/JPF07339

These results are truly impressive! But I do worry that #cryoEM is moving into a phase where progress is made by optimizing parameter settings for black box programs. The devil is often in the details, and I am not sure how this could be implemented in #relion, as stated, without more info.

Great to see a) stunning tomography and b) eLife’s newish publication model working well with big hitters like @cellarchlab.com and @profmattjohnson.bsky.social using it

Still true

My news is that I will be joining the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine! I'm very excited to join an organization that shares my passion for improving global health, at the same time I'm sad to leave all of the wonderful colleagues here at SCRI who I've enjoyed working with over the past ~6y 🦠🧪

How the twin-arginine translocase (Tat) system manages to transport folded proteins across membranes without any leaks? To answer this fundamental question we solved the first structure of TatB3C3 complex with bound cargo. Please check out new preprint! t.co/962Kj9pt6F

Many of the most complex and useful functions in biology emerge at the scale of whole genomes. Today, we share our preprint “Generative design of novel bacteriophages with genome language models”, where we validate the first, functional AI-generated genomes 🧵

@grigoriefflab.bsky.social continues to push limits 👀

To test how few images we could get away with, I took progressively smaller subsamples of the Aca2-RNA blob-picked stack and repeated HR-HAIR with the same random seed. Using a 60k stack (<10% of the total), high res features are still easily discernible in the good class (~20k ptcls)

Lots of cool microbiology research coming out of Newcastle- certainly worth a follow if that’s your thing!

@elisafadda.bsky.social’s post is spot on about LinkedIn vs Bluesky. I like the thoughtful and critical nature of Bluesky but if you want little dopamine hits, LinkedIn will do that for you (as will many other social media sites)

A key attack line in the next few years coming from Trump/MAGA and Reform is that university teachers (lecturers/professors) are poisoning the minds of young people, brainwashing them into leftist thinking. Make no mistake, this is a pretext to defund the sector. 1/n

This one is a bit of a departure from the usual and definitely a work in progress! We found that by using ab initio reconstruction at very high res, in very small steps, we could crack some small structures that had eluded us - e.g. 39kDa iPKAc (EMPIAR-10252), below. Read on for details... 1/x

Interesting to see how the eLife review process shaped this controversial study. The current summary is worth a read! 🧪 elifesciences.org/articles/89106

Dear scientific community, I am looking for two postdoctoral structural biologists to join my group at the Department of Biochemistry, University of Oxford. my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru... my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru...

Pretty pleased with my 3d-printed Jeol 1400. But does anyone in #TeamTomo or #cryoEM have a 3D model or technical drawings of a Krios/Aquilos/Arctis I could have a go at printing?

State-of-the-Art and Future Directions in Structural Proteomics pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40912403/ #cryoem

I won't say this is *every* paper, but I have trouble remembering any that weren't like this

Come be my colleague! We are hiring a full-time Lecturer in Organic Chemistry. If you are interested in teaching/curricular development & pedagogy this is a great position for you! Review of applications begins 10/6/25 Happy to answer any questions! Full details here: tinyurl.com/vcorganiclec... 🧪

Opportunity for senior lecturer (associate professor) in School of Chemistry at University of Bristol (UK) ref: ACAD108220 | closing: 30-Sep-2025 #UKChemJobs #ChemJobs #chemsky 🧪 www.bristol.ac.uk/jobs/find/de...

There is a new position open in the Department of Microbes, Infection and Microbiomes! This is for someone in the area of microbial genomics 🧬 Please re-post and send to people, thank you! www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DOO184/a...

Results so stunningly clear they inspired this classic xkcd (xkcd.com/2400/):

Great to see HeXI starting to appear on the experimental hall at @diamondlightsource.bsky.social. HeXI will be a 1 MeV electron diffraction instrument that will complement complement the capabilities of VMXm.

Label free elemental contrast at good resolution and combined with cryoET! This could be one of the most important additions to the cryo-EM toolbox for really quite a while with @tbharat-lab.bsky.social and team leading the way

A brilliant example on what you can find in those fuzzy bits of maps if you can crack the imagine processing!

We are recruiting 2 postdocs to work on bacterial motility using a combination of cryoEM, FLM and MD. An exciting collaboration with Kirsty Wan @micromotility.bsky.social Wolfram Moebius @wolframmoebius.bsky.social and Daniel Kattnig. Please see links in the thread below!

Contrast by electron microscopy in thick biological specimens pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40857101/ #cryoem

Faculty opening in Cornell Chemistry at the Assistant Professor level in the area of chemical biology, broadly defined! academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/30338 #chemjobs

🧪 The University of Basel is setting up a new endowed professorship in #ClimateBiophysics at the @biozentrum.unibas.ch, funded by the Georg H. Endress Foundation. This new professorship strengthens climate research @unibas.ch. www.biozentrum.unibas.ch/news/detail/...

Better ML for cryo-ET starts with better benchmarks. We built a phantom cryo-ET dataset (~500 tomograms) + hosted a Kaggle challenge. The result: community models beat expert tools. Read more in the @natmethods.nature.com article that just came out: 🔗 doi.org/10.1038/s415...

BOKU University in Vienna is recruiting a full professor for Biochemistry! Check out the description below, apply and join us in beautiful Vienna. @bokuvienna.bsky.social 🧪🧪🧪 short.boku.ac.at/53e6g6

📢 New preprint: Aromatic Ring Flips Reveal Reshaping of Protein Dynamics in Crystals and Complexes. We addressed a long-standing question that people debated already in the 1970s - but it still remained open: Do proteins in crystals move as they do in solution? We used ring flips to find out. 1/n

New preprint from the lab, in collaboration with Ed Tate, Nate Traaseth and many others! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Overcoming air-water interface induced artifacts in Cryo-EM with protein nanocrates https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.08.18.667046v1