Pavel Barahtjan
@pavelbarahtjan.bsky.social
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Lipids | Membranes | Tardigrades | Chemical Biology | PostDoc @EPFL | Alumnus @MPICBB
reposted by
Pavel Barahtjan
Antonino Asaro
24 days ago
Very happy to share our work on Ether lipid remodeling and ferroptosis. This was a very fruitful collaboration with
@harayamajrlab.bsky.social
. Many thanks to
@giodang.bsky.social
for the support and guidance, and to Howard Riezman, where part of this story began.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
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Ether lipid remodeling during neuronal differentiation prevents ferroptosis
Ferroptosis is a form of cell death driven by iron-dependent lipid peroxidation, with specific lipid species playing key roles in modulating susceptibility. Among these, ether lipids have shown conflicting effects, being linked to both protection and sensitization. Here, we dissect the relationship between lipid structure and ferroptosis sensitivity and explain how ether lipids exert context-dependent effects. Ether lipids can promote ferroptosis through a metabolic bias towards the accumulation of polyunsaturated acyl chains and ethanolamine head groups, whereas this pro-ferroptotic tendency is counterbalanced by the anti-ferroptotic vinyl ether moiety introduced by plasmanylethanolamine desaturase 1. We show that this protective effect is critical for preventing ferroptosis in hiPSC-derived neurons, which accumulate otherwise pro-ferroptotic ether lipids during differentiation. This effect is not solely due to its antioxidant properties but also stems from the reprogramming of mitochondrial respiration. The lack of vinyl ether bonds leads to multiple mitochondrial defects, including increased mitochondrial reactive oxygen species (ROS), lower membrane potential, and abnormal cristae structures. These findings indicate that vinyl ether bonds in ether lipids offer dual ferroptosis resistance by scavenging ROS and minimizing its production at the mitochondrial level. The disruption of this system in Caenorhabditis elegans leads to iron-induced death and impaired motility. Thus, our study reveals ether lipid structural remodeling as a key regulator of ferroptosis sensitivity in neurons. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, AS 647/1-1 Agencia Estatal de Investigación, PID2023-146930NB-I00 Japan Science and Technology Agency, JPMJER2101, JPMJFR230H, JPMJND2305, 25H01425, 25H01426, JPMJAP2505 National Research Agency French government, ANR-25-CE44-1525 Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI)-Spain, PID2021-123336NB-C21, PID2024-158644NB-C21 Swiss National Science Foundation, 185898, 184949 CNRS/Inserm ATIP-Avenir, ANR-15-IDEX-01
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.02.722203v1
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reposted by
Pavel Barahtjan
André Nadler
about 2 months ago
Now out in its final form in
@jacs.acspublications.org
: Reaction pathways & photoreaction yields of bifunctional lipid probes. The numbers that explain why we spend so much time optimizing protocols for cellular assays. 😉
pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...
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reposted by
Pavel Barahtjan
André Nadler
2 months ago
It’s incredibly hard to study lipids in biological membranes on the nanoscale. You need near-perfect information on both membrane ultrastructure and lipid density. Lipid-CLEM, now out in
@natcellbio.nature.com
brought to you by
@mathilda95.bsky.social
changes that:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
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So glad to see this one out. Insane work.
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2 months ago
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reposted by
Pavel Barahtjan
3 months ago
Our paper on The Lipid Interactome is now published, and the database is open:
lipidinteractome.org
@ohsummi.bsky.social
@ohsunews.bsky.social
@nadlerlab.bsky.social
@jeremybaskin.bsky.social
Please RT to spread the word.
doi.org/10.1093/bioi...
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The Lipid Interactome: an interactive and open access platform for exploring cellular lipid–protein interactions
AbstractSummary. Lipid–protein interactions play essential roles in cellular signaling and membrane dynamics, yet their systematic characterization has lon
https://doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics/btaf651
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Amazing story. Congrats!
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3 months ago
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reposted by
Pavel Barahtjan
André Nadler
4 months ago
Methods should be used as widely as possible, so here is our detailed lipid imaging protocol, written with
@martinba99.bsky.social
and Chia-Yi (Christine) Chou
authors.elsevier.com/a/1mU4XHRzCb...
in Methods in Enzymology. Everything you need to know to do it yourself is in there -
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reposted by
Pavel Barahtjan
André Nadler
4 months ago
It's always important to carefully characterize the reactivity of your favorite tools to optimize applications. We teamed up with Carla Kirschbaum and Carol V. Robinson to map photolysis reaction pathways of bifunctional lipids
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
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https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.18.700185v1
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We have several Master’s thesis projects available in the D’Angelo lab, spanning different areas of lipid biology/biochemistry. If you know someone who might be interested, we’d really appreciate you sharing this.
#lipidtime
www.epfl.ch/labs/dangelo...
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Master Projects
DANGELOLAB
https://www.epfl.ch/labs/dangelo-lab/open-positions/
4 months ago
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reposted by
Pavel Barahtjan
Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics
5 months ago
With Byung Ho Lee and Kana Fuji as first/lead authors,
@anne-grapin.bsky.social
group,
@utokyoofficial.bsky.social
, Inst. of Physics of Academia Sinica, &
@igbmc.bsky.social
found the shape of lumens in the developing pancreas is controlled by pressure & proliferation.
www.mpi-cbg.de/news-outreac...
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Engineering the development of the pancreas
Researchers found that the shape of the fluid-filled cavities in the developing pancreas is controlled by pressure and the rate cells divide.
https://www.mpi-cbg.de/news-outreach/news-media/article/engineering-the-development-of-the-pancreas
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Congrats
@mikelangelipid.bsky.social
and
@olzmannlab.bsky.social
! Amazing story and findings.
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7 months ago
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reposted by
Pavel Barahtjan
Gioele La Manno
8 months ago
🧠 The Lipid
#Brain
Atlas is out now! If you think
#lipids
are boring and membranes are all the same, prepare to be surprised. Led by
@lucafusarbassini.bsky.social
with Giovanni D'Angelo's lab, we mapped membrane lipids in the mouse brain at high resolution.
www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...
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reposted by
Pavel Barahtjan
Oded Rechavi
8 months ago
BIG ANNOUNCEMENT📣: I haven’t been this excited to be part of something new in 15 years… Thrilled to reveal the passion project I’ve been working on for the past year and a half!🙀🥳 (thread 👇)
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reposted by
Pavel Barahtjan
André Nadler
8 months ago
Lipid imaging on the cover of
@nature.com
! Great times for lipid cell biology indeed. And a fantastic recognition of all the hard work by the team, especially Juan M. Iglesias-Artola and Kristin Böhlig (who made the cover). Link to article:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
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reposted by
Pavel Barahtjan
James Saenz
8 months ago
🌶️ Lipids bring the heat 🔥 Lipids don’t just shape membranes, they influence cellular metabolism. We show that tuning lipidome composition strongly alters metabolic heat flow in the minimal cell JCVI-Syn3B 🦠 Fantastic collaboration with Karim Fahmy’s lab (HZDR) 🎉
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
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Metabolic heat flow from the minimal cell JCVI-Syn3B reveals the lipidome-dependence of growth and metabolism
The cell membrane facilitates interactions with the environment and serves as an organizational platform for coordinating cellular processes, with lipids playing a central role in determining membrane...
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.12.675810v2
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reposted by
Pavel Barahtjan
Milena Schuhmacher
9 months ago
So honored to be awarded the ERC Starting Grant! I am very grateful for this support and looking forward to more exciting
#lipidtime
🥳 Also, we will have positions available next year. So stay tuned!
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reposted by
Pavel Barahtjan
9 months ago
We are all super happy and proud to see our work on the function and evolution of the
#cephalic
#furrow
published in
@nature.com
. Let me say a few things about the background and history of this work on the
#Evolution_of_Morphogenesis
(1/12)
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reposted by
Pavel Barahtjan
Giovanni D’Angelo
9 months ago
Happy to share our work on uMAIA, a framework for building metabolomic atlases from mass spectrometry imaging. With uMAIA, we mapped the lipidome of zebrafish development, uncovering spatially organized metabolic programs .
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
#developmentalbiology
#MSI
#lipidtime
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Unified mass imaging maps the lipidome of vertebrate development
Nature Methods - uMAIA is an analytical framework designed to enable the construction of metabolic atlases at high resolution using mass spectrometry imaging data.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41592-025-02771-7.epdf?sharing_token=K5iHw1c3Jkq0HBI6pQtJNdRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0O0dqgsACWV1axX8CzMM4T7iI1XKGp3N-81HgCRS-XXxftpPp3pUNuwYw1DBxUrNsq_lsZHO-zWSflih1WxTQah_5HFsLyD8DN9QPvkFm6CzdtR5nIyDK9dJegr1uk_77g%3D
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reposted by
Pavel Barahtjan
André Nadler
9 months ago
Out today in
@nature.com
: Together with the Honigmann, Shevchenko, Drobot and Hof labs, we present a general workflow for imaging the localization and transport of individual lipids in cells and mapping their metabolism.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
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reposted by
Pavel Barahtjan
Jeremy Baskin
9 months ago
Quite a week for
#lipidtime
: phenomenal study using bifunctional lipid probes to quantify intracellular lipid transport from
@nadlerlab.bsky.social
and colleagues is now out
@nature.com
!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
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Quantitative imaging of lipid transport in mammalian cells - Nature
Directional, non-vesicular lipid transport is responsible for fast, species-selective lipid sorting into organelle membranes.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09432-x
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reposted by
Pavel Barahtjan
Milena Schuhmacher
10 months ago
We are hiring! If you are looking for a postdoc position and you are interested in signaling lipids and proteomics, come join us in beautiful Switzerland! More information on
www.epfl.ch/labs/gr-schu...
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Open positions
GR-SCHUHMACHER
https://www.epfl.ch/labs/gr-schuhmacher/open-positions/
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The world is small... Randomly found out that
@mikelangelipid.bsky.social
and I are both in Osaka, so we met up for some drinks and
#lipidtime
talk.
about 1 year ago
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reposted by
Pavel Barahtjan
Rita Mateus
about 1 year ago
Think biosensors that give absolute measurement values! So happy this is out :) congrats to everyone involved, especially
@sascha-kuhn.bsky.social
and
@nadlerlab.bsky.social
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reposted by
Pavel Barahtjan
André Nadler
about 1 year ago
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...
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reposted by
Pavel Barahtjan
André Nadler
about 1 year ago
Meet GEQO: Genetically-encoded biosensors for absolute small-molecule quantification in single cells brought to you by
@sascha-kuhn.bsky.social
. For simple absolute quantification of your favourite small molecule or ion, head on over to @bioarxiv and read our new preprint:
doi.org/10.1101/2025...
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reposted by
Pavel Barahtjan
Coskun Lipid Cellar @ ZML Dresden
about 1 year ago
An amazing new enabling technology. Measurements of molecular size and shape on a chip. Couldn't be prouder of our friend Madhavi Krishnan of
@ox.ac.uk
this was and is one among the must fun collaborations I ever had.
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
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Measurements of molecular size and shape on a chip
Size and shape are critical discriminators between molecular species and states. We describe a microchip-based high-throughput imaging approach offering rapid and precise determination of molecular pr...
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adt5827
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Really happy that my main PhD story is out! Huge thanks to everyone involved - especially
@nadlerlab.bsky.social
- for giving me the opportunity to work on this amazing topic.
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about 1 year ago
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Amazing work! Of course LA is the answer to all questions :D
add a skeleton here at some point
about 1 year ago
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reposted by
Pavel Barahtjan
over 1 year ago
Amazing review to learn about single-cell lipid biology ! Congratulations to all authors
@antonino-asaro.bsky.social
@Agostina Crotta Asis
@giodang.bsky.social
published in
@cp-trendscellbio.bsky.social
!
www.cell.com/trends/cell-...
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Single cell lipid biology
Lipids are major cell constituents endowed with astonishing structural diversity. The pathways responsible for the assembly and disposal of different lipid species are energetically demanding, and gen...
https://www.cell.com/trends/cell-biology/fulltext/S0962-8924(24)00255-1?rss=yes&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
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