I had a ton of fun the other day talking with @nonresidentdesi.bsky.social and @scifri.bsky.social 's Flora Lichtman and Rasha Aridi about murderous microbes and the things that we are trying to learn from them. Happy for the opportunity to bring some new awareness to the world of protists!

Researchers like Ben Larson and Glen D’Souza are piecing together the world of killer microbes, including why they turn on each other and if their tiny weapons could be harnessed to fight disease. Listen to the podcast now: www.sciencefriday.com/segments/kil...

Native maypop purple passionflower, Maryland

How does a cell remodel the ER membrane into a lipid droplet? Excited to share our new bioRxiv preprint, where we find that regulated opening of the seipin ring defines a functional ER–lipid droplet interface — and identify SMLR1 as a regulator of this transition. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Looking for your next step after a BS/BA or MS in biology, cell biology, biochemistry, or a related field? My NIH lab in Bethesda, MD is looking for a Lab Manager/Technical Specialist. Interested in basic research? Please email me directly or learn about our lab here: irp.nih.gov/pi/justin-ta...

ICYMI: New Online! Caveolae mechanics in cellular functions and disease

🔬🚀 It's out! Run 100s of imaging experiments before touching a microscope. #VLab4Mic reproduces them in silico from PDB/AlphaFold to help you image right first time. From rockstars Damián Martínez & Bruno Saraiva, inaugural preprint of @mariodelr.bsky.social new lab www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Huge thank you to the labs of @christlet.bsky.social, Dylan Owen and @wmarkbates.bsky.social, and to Tayla Shakespeare, who helped us make it happen. #VLab4Mic also heavily uses data from @rcsbpdb.bsky.social, @jonasries.bsky.social and @taraska.bsky.social

Better vitrification = better cryo-ET. We've opened an RFA for two-year grants to advance vitrification techniques for biological samples—welcoming applications from researchers in heat transfer, cryogenics, and materials science. Apply here: bit.ly/4uip6eJ

And now it's out! Happy that PNAS selected for the cover this SEM image snapped by @samjlord.bsky.social, one of the most evocative visualizations of Euplotes that I have ever encountered. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... Stay tuned for what is shaping up to be some fascinating follow-up in the lab...

Bay Bridge, Maryland

A new paper in #ScienceSignaling visualizes the delicate ebb and flow of receptors within neurons via the unusual process of transcytosis—helping answer how these cells maintain their function and connectivity in vivo despite their spindly, elongated nature. https://scim.ag/4dlUGl8

Some moments between teaching microscopy at @mblscience.bsky.social in Woods Hole.

It was an honor to hear Prof. Sarah Veatch, PhD, deliver yesterday’s Inoué Lecture, discussing how spatiotemporal pair-correlation analysis can recover nanoscale membrane organization in live-cell single-molecule localization #microscopy despite diffusion and molecular motion. #MBL 🌊 #AQLM 🧫

OK, here we go. This is the good stuff. An awesome and technically innovatie new paper by good friends of mine including @profsharona.bsky.social, Bill Zagotta, and my next-door science neighbors Professor Suzanne Hoppins and grad student Sophie Hurwitz. 1/

Hydrozoa from Eel Pond @mblwoodshole imaged in dark field on an @evidentmicroscopy upright #microscope (cool to be able to tile and stitched on the go with a manual stage). These cuties are related to jellyfish, sea anemones and corals. 📸 Photo and caption credit: Nat Prunet @microscopic_farmer

#ScopeTheScope at AQLM Day 1 : Ray optics with Prof. Alexa Mattheyses, PhD. Up next: Building a microscope in the very first lab 👀 @mattheyseslab.bsky.social #MBL 🌊 #AQLM 🧫 #Microscopy 🔬 #BioImaging 🧬 #Fluorescence🪼#WoodsHole 🦞 #Optics 💡 #LightMicroscopy 🧪 #STEMCommunity 🫂 #ScientistLife 🧑‍🔬

Throwing the switch for our electron microscope installation. With these fabulously complex instruments, something always goes wrong at first light. Roseann Rosanna Danna’s (Gilda Radner) expression, “It just goes to show you, it’s always somethin’” is powerfully accurate.

Excited to share that my 2025 collection of science-inspired drawings is now live on the Protein Data Bank (PDB) website. Thank you @rcsbpdb.bsky.social! It is free to explore and download. I’d love to hear what you think! pdb101.rcsb.org/sci-art/bezs...

Our preprint on Antarctic fish cell cultures is out now! Loads of pretty nice super-resolution images. Read it here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

False Indigo and paw paw flowers

New perspective on caveolae www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Congratulations to @juanbonifacino.bsky.social at the NIH on his election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences — one of the nation's most prestigious honorary societies — in recognition of his distinguished contributions to cellular and developmental biology! 🎉 www.amacad.org/new-members-...

Dr. Swee Lay Thein of NHLBI shared the 2026 Breakthrough Prize for her work on sickle-cell disease and beta-thalassemia. breakthroughprize.org/Laureates/2/...

Out in @natmethods.nature.com: More dyes. They work. Quite well. And blink. Pick the one that fits your target, your technique, and your labeling density. With too many collaborators and institutes to list, but anchored at @hhmijanelia.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

We are hiring POSTDOC now!🚨please repost! Fully-funded 5-year position 👩🏻‍🔬👨‍🔬🧬Looking forward to your application!✉️

West Virginia

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...

There are an extremely limited number of open slots for the Analytical and Quantitative Light Microscopy @aqlm.bsky.social course at @mblscience.bsky.social April 29-May 8 2026. www.mbl.edu/education/ad... Apply here for this amazing opportunity!

Emma Burns, Anastasia Amoiroglou, Gregory Rogers, Nasser Rusan and colleagues develop an expansion microscopy protocol for Drosophila cultured cells and tissues, which they use to dissect centriole biology. journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/...

Prime numbers 2-4999, animated with ggplot2+gganimate. #Rstats code: gist.github.com/stephenturne...

Don't miss out. Apply to our 2026 Advanced Research Training Courses today!

🚨 Job Alert! 🚨 We have an opening at our Microscopy Core Facility in Turku 🇫🇮. If you love imaging 🔬 and helping scientists succeed, we want you! 👇 abo.rekrytointi.com/paikat/index... #Microscopy #ScienceJobs #CoreFacility #Imaging @turkubioscience.bsky.social

DC, Winter 2025

My lab in the NIH Intramural Program (Bethesda, MD) will be recruiting postdoctoral fellows over the next year with flexible start dates. We work on nanoscale cellular imaging of the plasma membrane and related organelles. Please reach out if you’re interested. www.training.nih.gov/jobs/pdp-053...

We're thrilled to announce the largest private gift in our 137-year history: a $25 million unrestricted donation from MBL Whitman Scientist Mark Terasaki. His extraordinary generosity will bolster our renowned research and education programs. 🔬 Learn more: bit.ly/452WL1m

Hoya bloom

Woods Hole, MA

Salt Lake from the air

Metro

I am excited to share our first Pt replica EM images. It took us a little while, but now we have establish the unroofing, drying and Pt coating workflow 🎉 Great work by our postdoc Luis Wong Dilworth! The image below shows the cytosolic membrane leaflet of a fibroblast 👇

I'd like to draw your attention to this truly excellent paper from the Taraska lab on cryoET of plasma membrane associated proteins. Everyone who is thinking about probes in the cryoET space should also see what they could do with ferritag (fig 6) www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The deadline to apply for the MBL Physiology course is fast approaching, January 27th! Consider applying to this amazing, life-changing research discovery experience in Woods Hole! www.mbl.edu/education/ad...

CD44 and Ezrin restrict EGF receptor mobility to generate a novel spatial arrangement of cytoskeletal signaling modules driving bleb-based migration https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.12.31.630838v1