Always a fun time presenting at the @gesvirologie.bsky.social annual meeting, this time in Heidelberg. An exciting time for structural virology ahead!

What a privilege to have this 5 minutes away from the office. Has spring sprung?

Since last year, I've been making a RELION GUI that supports viewing, navigating and running jobs in a way completely compatible with the original RELION pipeline. Now it's working nicely for both SPA and tomography! Please try it out - github.com/hanjinliu/hi...

If you're interested in how proteins of the innate immune response recognise and bind to pathogens (and/or how some microbes might avoid detection...), I invite you to read the paper now in press at the Journal of Biological Chemistry... www.jbc.org/article/S002... #crystallography

Paper accepted! 🎉 More Thursday’s like this, please.

We absolutely love Krios days. Screening grids, collecting data will get old.

And now out in Nature Comms (congrats Wyatt et al.): www.nature.com/articles/s41....

Cryo-EM structure reveals how influenza A virus NEP binds the viral polymerase at a regulatory hotspot, coordinating RNA synthesis and nuclear export. Fantastic collaboration with @loiccarrique.bsky.social and Jon Grimes. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Organelles do NOT have a single uniform pH. And if you think they must, because “protons diffuse fast,” this paper is for you. A thread on why that assumption is wrong; and what we found instead. 🧵 1/n

Experimental structures provide valuable hypotheses and accelerate but do not replace evolutionary and statistical analyses of protein sequences

An integrated workflow for structural virology with a 100 keV electron microscope www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.08.693081v1 #cryoem

Happy to see our latest work online. Here we present a new method for microsecond time-resolved cryo-EM based on jet vitrification! Details in the 🧵 below... we hope you enjoy reading! (Hint, there's some fun videos...) #cryoEM #structuralbiology

Always a good feeling!

MISO: microfluidic protein isolation enables single-particle cryo-EM structure determination from a single cell colony. Or from a single dish of HEK cell culture in the case of two membrane proteins. Out in Nature Methods now! lnkd.in/gpyBSceg Wonderful collaboration with the Efremov lab.

We are pleased to announce Doppio version 1.4! Available here www.ccpem.ac.uk/software/dow...

Our new preprint is out 🥳🥳🥳 Henipaviruses, like Nipah and Hendra, package their genomes inside helical shells built by thousands of nucleoproteins. These nucleocapsids are essential to protect the viral RNA, but how do they ever let the polymerase in to read the sequence? 👇

warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fa... I am advertising for a PhD position in my group. We'll be investigating how pathogenic RNA viruses replicate in the nucleus. The project will teach cryoEM/ET, virus culture, and in vitro assays. If you're interested reach out and I'd be happy to have a chat.

Finally, just about 2 years after finishing the postdoc the last part of my work is finally online! We determined the structure of HSV-1 Origin Binding Protein, the viral initiator of DNA replication, by cryo-EM 🧪🧬🧶🧵 #cryoEM #structuralbiology

Chris Russo and Anastasiia Gusach have developed a new method to prepare #cryoEM samples that avoids protein damage during freezing Read more: www2.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/a-new-method... #LMBResearch

An efficient eukaryotic cell-free expression and correlative cryo-electron tomography platform for structural biology of macromolecular complexes www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.18.683253v1 #cryoem

The EPFL/UNIL sheep appear to be thoroughly enjoying the slow move into autumn.

This is very cool!

The Starbucks people know me by name, I think this counts as settling in a new place, right?

Today, @rcsbpdb.bsky.social introduces Q-score in EM validation reports. Q-score assesses model-map fit. A new percentile slider will compare an entry’s average Q-score to the full archive and a resolution-matched subset. This would help judge whether the fit is typical for the reported resolution.

Assistant/Associate Professor in Structural Biology, Biophysics or Biological Imaging www.biozentrum.unibas.ch/open-positio... #biozentrum #University #Basel #Professor #Structural #Biology #Biophysics #Biological #Imaging

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 🧬🧪

We have a preprint of a book chapter for you: Structural Analysis of Membrane Proteins in Cell-Derived Microvesicles. We describe how to image membrane proteins in mid-sized vesicles using cryo-electron tomography zenodo.org/records/1717...

❄️ NEW PRE-PRINT ❄️ Happy to see our latest work online. Here we present a super simple solution to the preferred orientation problem in single particle cryo-EM: the use of ultrasonic excitation during vitrification! Details in the 🧵 below... #cryoEM #structuralbiology

🌈 A double rainbow over CSSB on Monday! Thanks to @carobarisch.bsky.social for the amazing photo. @topf-lab.bsky.social @bosse-lab.bsky.social @jankosinski.bsky.social @landaulabcssb.bsky.social @uni-hamburg.de @leibnizliv.bsky.social

Confidence-guided cryo-EM map optimisation with LocScale-2.0 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.11.674726v1 #cryoem

CSSB's Uetrecht group has revealed new insights into the mechanisms of human corona viruses. Their findings were published today in @natcomms.nature.com @uniluebeck.bsky.social @leibnizliv.bsky.social Find out more: t1p.de/7ij0e

You cannot beat a Saturday afternoon plane spotting at Geneva. The smell of Jet A-1 really clears the mind.

RNAi is a powerful tool for mosquito control, but delivery remains difficult. Could symbiotic bacteria be the key? Mixed results so far highlight the complexity and the gaps in our understanding of RNAi, bacterial delivery, and host–symbiont interactions. Read more in our recent review👇

We‘re looking for a (Full time) PostDoc at the Institute for Virology at Marburg University to help us with our project about the development of Ebola Virus antivirals. Please apply especially of you are interested in or experienced with BSL4 work: stellenangebote.uni-marburg.de/jobposting/6...

Nice work, Jeremy et al!

Why is it that we refer to bunyaviral endonucleases as being "cap-dependent"? It's an endonuclease, it will degrade all and any RNA with the correct sequence. Metal-dependent? Sure/probably. But cap-dependent? Highly questionable. [https://journals.asm.org/doi/full/10.1128/aac.00186-25]

Please make it stop.

Apoferritin of the RNA world? Very cool.

structure prediction is not science if not experimentally validated. period

How do you combine soft-landing mass spectrometry with laser flash melting to prepare samples for single particle cryo-EM? Here's the answer!

❄️ NEW PRE-PRINT ❄️ Happy to see the last chunk of protein X-ray crystallography work I completed for my PhD appear on bioRxiv. The result of an excellent and long-standing collaboration between colleagues at Keele, Southampton, MRC Harwell, and University College Dublin. Enjoy!

A new paper from my new colleagues in Lausanne! Microsecond time-resolved cryo-EM rumbles closer day by day. Very cool work!

Things we love to see on a Monday morning: 4 new X-ray crystal structures deposited with PDB. Nice to see sub-2 Å maps again! Prepare the new paper klaxon.

Ciao Hamburg, you’ve been sweet. Next stop (eventually) Schweiz!

If another person says ‘we will use AI’ in reference to some difficult molecular problem I think I’m going to explode. I’m tired of people thinking AF and the subsequent revolution in molecular science is like a chatbot in any way. You need trained molecular scientists to make it work properly. 🧵

People who haven’t lived in Germany will never know the sense of satisfaction one has when you turn up to an administrative appointment with not just the correct documentation but everything in the correct format too.

Finally managed to swing by hamburgpotter after 4 years for some adorable bits of pottery.

As Nelly Furtado says, all good things come to an end and after ~4 years in Hamburg, it's time to move on! In the next week or so, I'll being moving ~1000 km south'ish to Switzerland to work on microsecond time-resolved single particle cryo-EM. Exciting times ahead!

“Highly accurate” doing a lot of heavy lifting here…

The longer I’m around, the weirder I find groups where everyone is an expert in the same question, method, or specific field.