New paper out: PinkyCaMP: an mScarlet-based calcium sensor with enhanced brightness, photostability and multiplexing capabilities.: Fink, Ryan; Imai, Shosei; Gockel, Nala Eileen; et al. Nature methods Vol. 23, no. 5, p. 998 - 1010 | Thanks for sharing #dzne #papers

Happy to reveal our latest work, Microbe-Independent Deep Assembly and Screening (MIDAS), a method for engineering proteins >10x more cheaply and quickly than before. MIDAS addresses the slowest step in protein engineering — construction and expression of variants — by skipping cloning entirely

Combining biosensor imaging data with an animated plot of the quantified intensity, based on a blog I wrote earlier: thenode.biologists.com/crafting-plo... In this version I used a dark theme

PinkyCaMP: a red genetically encoded calcium indicator with improved brightness and stability. @massecklab.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

PinkyCaMP is finally published!! My first paper co-first authored with @sikmys.bsky.social where we make a great optogenetic and multiplex compatible red calcium indicator. Thank you to @massecklab.bsky.social and @campbell-lab.bsky.social for guiding this journey www.nature.com/articles/s41...

What if you got to work with some of your best friends on a science project? I can't publish how fun this was, but I can show you the data (🧵)! Last week, we posted our second neutrophil swarming paper to bioRxiv and I wanted to post my favorite videos here~ www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

TIL "dynamic range" is used for two orthogonal biosensor properties. Which one is correct?

📣 New preprint alert! Co-authored by @spalaciosm.bsky.social and @andreacaldarola.bsky.social : Quantitative imaging of calcium dynamics with a green fluorescent biosensor and fluorescence lifetime imaging www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Such a beautiful example demonstrating the importance of developing and using robust biosensors #FluorescenceFriday

Wait… localized norepinephrine transients in the awake visual cortex?! Who would have guessed this neuromodulatory signal is that spatially precise, right where visual processing is happening. Brain state control just got a lot more local. @ruedigersarah.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Science professors and educators all have a role in combating this eugenics resurgence www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

This is why we love #CalciumSignaling Look how mechanical damage triggers long range Ca2+ waves in this plant !! By @annalisabellandi.bsky.social, who is now around here ;) Full www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... @science.org #microscopy #cell #mechanobiology 🧪🔬

The most sensitive green and red #norepinephrine #sensors engineered to date are out in #naturemethods! Deeply grateful to all our funders and contributors who made this work possible. A true team effort. @erc.europa.eu @snsf.ch doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Abolish ICE. There’s no reforming it. There’s no compromise. There’s only one way to rein in ICE’s terror campaign. Abolish it.

Great to see this officially out: An mTurquoise2-Based Glucose Biosensor - works in yeast & mammalian cells and is compatible with FLIM: pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

Today I'd like to honor the memory of my mentor and friend, Roger Tsien, born 1952 February 1. Today would have been Roger's 74th birthday. Most know Roger for his 2008 Chemistry Nobel Prize with Shimomura and Chalfie. Roger made GFP into the versatile imaging method it is now.

An engineered nanobody inhibitor for molecular-to-circuit control of opioid receptor function. This was a really fun collaboration with @miriamstoeber.bsky.social and @amanglik.bsky.social labs, check it out! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

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

In this mesmerizing video by our #ElectronMicroscopy team, a layer 5 thin tufted neuron is revealed with blue dendrites and purple axon. As it progresses, we zoom into where it connects to a pyramidal cell. Explore our EM data at: microns-explorer.org

The 'Version of Record' of our paper came out on #FluorescenceFriday elifesciences.org/articles/105...

@massecklab.bsky.social @finkryan.bsky.social 🥳👏🧠🐭🔬🧪🩷

Fresh batch of Hot Plasmids here! Find new tools for: 🧠 Neural cell-surface proteomics 🔋 Nerve-to-cancer mitochondrial transfer @greletlab.bsky.social 🔬 Red calcium biosensors @massecklab.bsky.social & @piatkevich.bsky.social ✂️ CRISPRa-AAV for adipocytes @nadavahituv.bsky.social & more!

What happens when you combine 10 years of brain data with one of the world’s fastest supercomputers? A virtual mouse cortex simulation, thanks to a global collaboration. 🧠📈 https://alleninstitute.org/news/one-of-worlds-most-detailed-virtual-brain-simulations-is-changing-how-we-study-the-brain/

mStayRose is published in JBC 🥳🎉 Congratulations @wsctt.bsky.social @sporemohan.bsky.social and team for the monumental effort to make a non-natural amino acid incorporating fluorescent protein accessible. It's based on mStayGold, bright, and photostable: www.jbc.org/article/S002...

New week, new tool: Find our Protein Domain Designer tool to generate publication-ready protein domain diagrams here: domaindesigner.farnunglab.com

Dying in the weather, but the views in Seoul are incredible

Very excited to be at the #KSBNS2025 in a few days! I’ll be presenting a poster in the first session (P-097) about our mScarlet based sensor for calcium PinkyCaMP and our developing mScarlet and 5HT1A based serotonin sensor. Stop by to talk and learn about this new generation of red sensors!

How many photons are in a GFP? — more than last year, and more than you thought. Here's a simple, cheap, and practical method to break a fundamental limit in fluorescence microscopy. But it only works in light sheet!

For those of you attending academic conferences in the U.S., after October 1, 2025 please note the following:

(1/3) Excited to introduce our new GRAB sensors for a series of steroid hormones! These tools enable real-time detection of steroid hormone dynamics in vivo🐭🧠. Happy to share these sensors and welcome any feedback! Please contact [email protected] for information.

A @csisingapore.bsky.social team showed D-I-Tasser can outperform AlphaFold2/3, elevating high-accuracy protein structure & function predictions. We wonder if this moves us closer to resolving protein–protein complex structure prediction? @natbiotech.nature.com www.nature.com/articles/s41...

New plasmids available from the @massecklab.bsky.social‬! PinkyCaMP, a mScarlet-based calcium sensor, can be leveraged for its exceptional brightness, photostability, and multiplexing capabilities. https://twp.ai/4iobS2

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...

mScarlet3-H (aka mYongHong) is on the cover of Nature Methods! All plasmids are available for free from WeKwikGene wekwikgene.wllsb.edu.cn/publications...

New powerful article up in the New York Times on cancelled and delayed grants www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Happy to see my Postdoc work out @natbiotech.nature.com. Using HaloTag and synthetic fluorophores instead of FPs enables us to shift the spectral properties of kinase activity reporters (KARs) to the far-red 🔬. Huge thanks to everyone involved @jinzhanglab.bsky.social! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

First PinkyCaMP plasmids are available via @addgene.bsky.social www.addgene.org/browse/artic... Cc @finkryan.bsky.social @massecklab.bsky.social

A highly photostable monomeric red fluorescent protein www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-5...

PinkyCaMP a mScarlet-based calcium sensor with exceptional brightness, photostability, and multiplexing capabilities https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.12.16.628673v1

🎄PinkyCaMP- our christmas gift to you! 🎁: We are excited to present PinkyCaMP, the first mScarlet based calcium sensor with: ✨exceptional, brightness ✨phototability ✨and optogenetic compatability. Check out our new preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...