Excited to share our latest @nature.com: How does naloxone (Narcan) stop an opioid overdose? We determined the first GDP-bound μ-opioid receptor–G protein structures and found naloxone traps a novel "latent” state, preventing GDP release and G protein activation.💊🧪 🧵👇 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Don’t forget:

my friend and wonderful colleague Stan is hiring at Genentech in South San Francisco! 🧬 🌉 Biochemist/structural biologist looking for your first position in industry? I can’t recommend working with Stan enough ☺️ please repost for visibility www.linkedin.com/posts/stanis...

We are looking for a computational postdoc to work with us on new optimisation algorithms to make #RELION even better. Join our bubbly team at the @mrclmb.bsky.social in Cambridge, UK. 🤗 RTs appreciated. mrc.tal.net/vx/appcentre...

Wonderful talk by the legendary Jane Richardson today on validation of #cryoEM and #xray protein structures as part of the S2C2 modeling and validation workshop at SLAC. I continue to be amazed by how deeply she understands macromolecular geometry.

Interested in Biological Macromolecules? IUCr2026 has you covered with NINETEEN symposia, including cryoEM/cryoET innovations; membrane proteins; protein design/engineering; drug discovery; 21st century structural enzymology; and more! Join us in Calgary: event.fourwaves.com/...

I’ll be there and the cryoEM/cryoET session lineup looks great. See you there?

OpenFold3-preview (OF3p) is out: a sneak peek of our AF3-based structure prediction model. Our aim for OF3 is full AF3-parity for every modality. We now believe we have a clear path towards this goal and are releasing OF3p to enable building in the OF3 ecosystem. More👇

How do mRNA vaccines help fight cancer? A @nature.com paper today tells the story, one with big implications, as reviewed here erictopol.substack.com/p/how-mrna-v...

... and the Angel whispered "finish your current manuscript before starting a new one."

Just closed applications for the next Bay Area #cryoEM meeting and wow… 270 applicants! Even more than the last one, 6 months ago.

Very cool! Congratulations @vcushing.bsky.social @bjgreber.bsky.social and the whole team!

Check out our preprint! With new molecular mechanisms, 140 subtomogram averages, and ~600 annotated cells under different conditions, we @embl.org were able to describe bacterial populations with in-cell #cryoET. And there’s a surprise at the end 🕵️ www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #teamtomo

Trigger warning.

Re-upping: Excellent assessment of John "Roger Taney" Roberts. In @harvardmagazine.bsky.social , by Lincoln Caplan. As careful, legally informed, judicious-minded writer as you're going to find. With an unsparing judgment. www.harvardmagazine.com/legal/suprem...

An insightful read. I hadn’t appreciated the links between feudalism and privatization. The author’s evocation of how future historians may look back on our era in that respect felt important, and a fruitful way to think, to me. I’m hopeful the pendulum will swing back towards effective government.

1/9 🚀 Big news! As a result of 5 years of my PhD, building on a 30-year dream of my PI Dr. Nancy Carrasco, we think we've found a new way to treat cancer! We’ve released our preprint & I'm so excited to share this story! 🧵 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #Science #proteinengineering #proteindesing

Fwd: Fwd: “I hope this email finds you well”

Love this story about one of today's Nobel winners, Mary Brunkow. (She and colleague Fred Ramsdell, working at Celltech (RIP), uncovered the role of Foxp3 in the development of Tregs.)

This year’s #NobelPrize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to three scientists for discovering how the immune system distinguishes friend from foe. https://scim.ag/3Wt5rdi

RIP to the legend

I hadn't realized Robert Oppenheimer was a francophone. A few pearls in there. Last question: "Einstein is often quoted as saying if he had to do it all over again he'd be a plumber... what about you?" Oppenheimer: "I am very glad that the human condition means one never has to answer this question"

The end of an era. An outstanding body of broadcasting work.

Wow. This seems excellent. I assume it will force some journals to change policies regarding embargoes (revised preprint must be published after peer review but before publication).

I get that the news cycle is packed right now, but I just heard from a colleague at the Smithsonian that this is fully a GIANT SQUID BEING EATEN BY A SPERM WHALE and it’s possibly the first ever confirmed video according to a friend at NOAA 10 YEAR OLD ME IS LOSING HER MIND (a thread 🧵)

Can Jimmy Kimmel sue Brendan Carr, or other federal actors, for violating his First Amendment rights by coercing ABC to suspend his show, and maybe eventually to fire him? To teal deer it, yes, but without an effective remedy. /1

@grigoriefflab.bsky.social continues to push limits 👀

The right sets the terms of our political discourse in so many ways, one of which is the idea that there isn't enough "debate" and "free speech" on campus. We need to push back on this. The truth is (speaking for myself as a history prof), I don't really emphasize debate much in my classes/

This one is a bit of a departure from the usual and definitely a work in progress! We found that by using ab initio reconstruction at very high res, in very small steps, we could crack some small structures that had eluded us - e.g. 39kDa iPKAc (EMPIAR-10252), below. Read on for details... 1/x

I wonder which manufacturer licensed it… either way I hope it makes it to market!

Unbend: Correction of local beam-induced sample motion in cryo-EM images using a 3D spline model www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.05.674398v1 #cryoem

Results so stunningly clear they inspired this classic xkcd (xkcd.com/2400/):

I can

Wow. Very impressive image analysis going on there, to unveil stunning biological architectures.

This rule would have meant I couldn't do my Ph.D. in America. I did do it in America. Became a professor. 12 thriving U.S. labs are now headed by trainees from my research lab. Like me, they are all working hard to enrich American knowledge and society. With this self-harming rule, none of that.

Bindcraft is awesome! If you haven’t already seen the preprint check out the final pub here. We’ve had nearly 100% success using it for the targets we’ve attempted.

You only hear this sort of thing in dictatorships. Truly toe-curling.

Very very cool work. The thing I don’t get is: they ran their encapsulation reactions with a ~1:1 capsid:target ratio (table S1). How can that be efficient? Only if the target has pretty high affinity to the inside of the capsids. How can that be true for a variety of proteins? (1/2)

one small consolation of being a 60+ year old investigator is the ability to submit to 𝘔𝘈𝘛𝘜𝘙𝘌 family journals — sure they’re low impact (for our knees) but they have an early bird special if you submit between 4:00 and 5:30 on weekdays

There is also a trend to large, open lab spaces. Have there been studies of their merits relative to more old-school lab architecture?

1. "'Trusting the experts is not a feature of either a science or democracy," Kennedy said." It's literally a vital feature of both science and of representative democracy. I've written a fair bit about trust in expertise as a vital mechanism in the collective epistemology of science.

I think there is a similar dynamic in scientific research and technology development. If something sounds simple and still hasn’t been done, maybe it’s because it’s actually very difficult. A kind of survivorship bias for research questions.

Food for thought here for anyone not working at TRUE atomic resolution…

This headline in my feed caught my eye the other day 1/n

Wes Sundquist is one of the good guys. He is a scientists scientist and has carefully, passionately, and consistently carried his science out with this goal in mind. A cure for AIDS that is available to all. This is an amazing recognition for him and for the @utah.edu where he has done his work.

With Tom Lehrer's passing, I suppose this is a moment to share the story of the prank he played on the National Security Agency, and how it went undiscovered for nearly 60 years.

Oh no! The BBC has shut down access to most of its recorded radio shows to those living abroad. After 20+ years of ~ weekly listening, it seems I won’t be able to listen to David Rodigan anymore… 😢

That's a wrap! The results of the first #cryoEM heterogeneity challenge are up on biorxiv! biorxiv.org/content/10.110

Nice work @jackn.bsky.social !!

Welcome Jeff & TFS EM team to BlueSky!