ROCKET 🚀 inference-time optimization of AlphaFold to fit structural data is published! rdcu.be/fa9YH Since our preprint, we’ve pushed it to regimes where other methods break: low resolution, weak signal, real experimental edge cases. Here’s what we learned: 1/15

The juvenile sea squirt swims the ocean currents, actively searching for the perfect place to live. Once it finds a nice, solid rock, it sticks itself down and gets to work reabsorbing bits it no longer needs - including its own brain. This post is about human civilisation.

You’ve just opened a chemistry themed pub, what are you calling it? The Grin Yard #chemsky

I’m excited to announce that I will be starting my research group on computational enzyme design at the Generative Biology Institute, Oxford, UK (@eitoxford.bsky.social)! PhD applications are open, deadline is Jan 8th (www.chem.ox.ac.uk/genbio-dtp). Email [email protected] with any questions!

This is amazing work lead by Tom (@tlitfin.bsky.social) in my team. Always trying to get more for less and making computing efficient. So satisfying making science resources go further. Boltz2 is great for protein structure prediction and hopefully LMI4Boltz extends its use. Code on GitHub… 🧶🧬

Possibly the most evergreen Onion article in history: theonion.com/recession-pl...

Had a very long social media break after the last #SynchrotronMugMadness and the bird site's decent into horror. So hello bluesky, I'm a staff structural biologist helping @imperiallifesci.bsky.social solve protein structures with #crystallography and #CryoEM. Please enjoy these protein crystals 💎

Kids were complaining that their gaming laptop was getting a bit sluggish… 😳🤢

Interviewer: Can you explain this gap on your CV? Evolutionary biology: Well, yeah… but then I’ll have two *new* gaps you’ll want me to explain.

🎄 xmas preprint 🎄 we are excited to share our cryo-EM structure of UBR4 in complex with KCMF1 and CALM1. the PQC ligase forms a massive ubiquitination arena, primed to amplify ubiquitin chains (E4 activity) and boost degradation of defective proteins. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

You know what they say about never releasing on a Friday… what does it say about me that I’m releasing on the last Friday before Christmas? 😬 Anyway, ISOLDE builds for ChimeraX 1.9 are now up. Enjoy!

An interesting finding that some types of HPV infection might be preventing cancer (as opposed to the ones that can cause it). Also features G.K. Chesterton and a brief cameo by RFK Jr.

Man… the fact that there’s a *second* ring galaxy visible in the gap? The sci-fi story (where these are the still-growing explosions from the past firing of some unimaginably powerful galaxy-killing beam weapon) practically writes itself.

Rare sighting of wild G-protein in Virginia

Structural biology people: @ucsfchimerax.bsky.social has entered the building.

Very excited to present the structural and mechanistic basis for stress response silencing by the monster E3 ligase SIFI. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Discussing Bluesky migration in terms of liberal flight misses the simple fact that most people use social media for fun not influence and this platform, unlike X and cruddified Facebook, doesn’t feel like you’re wading through shit to reach your friends. It’s not that deep.

… has anyone coined the term “Xit” yet?

For ISOLDE users who like to live on the edge: I uploaded dev builds for ChimeraX 1.8.dev… yesterday. While most things seem fine, if you want to use the “isolde add aa” command then *don’t* use this version. Something badly broken, killing the ChimeraX session.

Bugfix released! Unrelated, but I’d strongly recommend updating to ChimeraX 1.7.1 (particularly for Mac users - the 1.7 release inadvertently left out the Metal2 OpenMM implementation; 1.7.1 should get you back up to full speed).

Ahh, the pitfalls of software design… turns out ISOLDE breaks when you try to load an MTZ file containing only map coefficients (because I basically never use it that way myself, so didn’t notice when I broke it). Will try to push a fixed version out tomorrow.

Excited to share our first preprint of 2024! 🎉 researchsquare.com/article/rs-3... This study focuses on PDCoV, an emerging enteric pathogen. We generated anti-spike mAbs & investigated their inhibitory mechanisms using structural & functional studies. #virology #cryoEM

<ahem> This thing on?