Discovery of a Turing reaction-diffusion system in Archaea! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

A self-organized geometry sensing oscillator spatially regulates cell division in archaea

Cell division must be tightly regulate in time and space. Many bacteria and eukaryotes employ geometry sensing systems to regulate cell division spatiotemporally. However, how archaea ensure they divi...

biorxiv.org

New preprint! Cell division has to happen at the right place but how Archaea pick that place is unknown. We now identified a three-protein system, Dip, that positions the divisome at midcell in H. volcanii and is broadly conserved across Archaea. A thread 🧵 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

What can a microscopic organism in Lake Mendota teach us about cellular adaptation? The @cellraiser.bsky.social Lab is studying P. collini, a single-celled predator that reshapes its feeding structures to match changing conditions in its environment. Read the story: biochem.wisc.edu/2026/07/16/i...

Investigating a Microscopic Predator in Madison’s Lakes

Researchers in the Coyle Lab have identified unusual growth patterns and their underlying biochemical mechanisms in a single-celled organism on the hunt.

biochem.wisc.edu

Initial set of our new T1 T-DNA vectors now available on @addgene.bsky.social: pT1 (no selection marker): lnkd.in/dcnTN8Rj pT1-B (BASTA selection marker): lnkd.in/dgTZmuCx pT1-K (kan selection marker): lnkd.in/dqgv4QRc pT1-H (hygro selection marker): lnkd.in/dhrs5Tsg

Mo Khalil@mokhalil.bsky.social · 3w ago

🌱🚨 Very proud and excited to share our PREPRINT, unveiling an advance for plant science, biotech, & synthetic biology in the first (of many) Khalil <> Gehring collaborations! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Very excited to announce that my paper with @toettch.bsky.social from my time as a Fellow at Princeton's Center for the Physics of Biological Function @cpbf.bsky.social is finally out as a preprint! Here is the link if you want to check it out: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... A thread: (1/10)

A modular live-cell biosensor for extracellular protease activity

Extracellular protease activity plays key roles in cell and tissue behavior, processing cell surface proteins, ligands and the extracellular matrix. Extracellular proteases can be subject to complex p...

biorxiv.org

A minimal lipid kinase/phosphatase system, two effector proteins from Legionella pneumophila, self-organizes together with its lipid substrates (PI/PI3P) into dynamic patterns on membranes. Check out our preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

New preprint! How does a cell "know" how big to make its nucleus? This has puzzled biologists since the 1800’s. We show the answer is physics: colloid osmotic pressure. 🧵1/5

bioRxiv Biophysics@biorxiv-biophys.bsky.social · 2w ago

Nuclear size and physical properties of the nucleoplasm are determined by colloid osmotic pressure at the nuclear envelope https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.07.21.739918v1

A bit late but…Tenured! Immense gratitude for those who got us here. Firstly the students/postdocs (too many to list!) who took a chance on an unproven lab and were unafraid to pursue some strange new ideas. I couldn't have predicted our path, and I couldn’t be more excited for what's next.

Had a lot of fun writing this dispatch article for @currentbiology.bsky.social with PhD student Caitlin Doyle www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti..., highlighting cell morphogenesis and recent work on suctorian growth control principles. 1/3

We developed a new approach for mapping absolute membrane voltage, based on dynamic photocycle control in Voltron2. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Here's my favorite example: human iPSC colonies break into electrical domains as they begin to differentiate.

The STRAIGHT-IN (Dual) kit is now available via @addgene.bsky.social! 🧬 A complete 24-plasmid toolkit for installing up to two orthogonal CLYBL landing pads, DASIT-based enrichment without FACS, and efficient large DNA integration in human cells. Link: www.addgene.org/kits/gallowa... 🧵

🔬 #JobAlert Interested in doing a PhD with us in #SyntheticBiology on the Reconstitution of Oscillatory Microtubule-Motor Systems? Check shorturl.at/wis5P (note the eligibility criteria) or/and get in touch with us shorturl.at/WmgOD. Deadline: 31 July 2026 #WeAreHiring #AcademicJobs #ScienceJobs

How did octopuses evolve novel traits? Rishav Mitra, Richard Han, Trey Scott, et al serendipitously discover a unique ribosome adaptation that increases the accuracy of protein synthesis and evolved alongside their elaborate nervous systems vs deep sea relatives. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Congrats to our talented postdoc @amirbitran.bsky.social for his first preprint in the lab, a collaboration with the Bustamante lab, studying time-resolved protein folding during translation elongation with HDX-MS! Check out the attached manuscript and tutorial for more:

Amir Bitran@amirbitran.bsky.social · last mo.

I am delighted to share that my newest manuscript and the first of my postdoc in the Marqusee and Bustamante labs, “A detailed molecular picture of protein folding during active translation”, is now on the BioRXiv! (1/n) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Engineering Modular Cargo Loading Strategies for Carboxysome-Derived Protein Particles | ACS Synthetic Biology @cellforganized.bsky.social

Engineering Modular Cargo Loading Strategies for Carboxysome-Derived Protein Particles

Bacterial microcompartments (BMCs) are a diverse and widespread class of self-assembling protein-based organelles consisting of a semipermeable protein shell encapsulating an enzymatic core. Isolated ...

pubs.acs.org

Beautiful work (and beautiful figures!) from Sashital lab alum @yuktidhingra.bsky.social! Congrats, and looking forward to seeing more exciting RNAP work in the future!

Yukti Dhingra@yuktidhingra.bsky.social · last mo.

Happy to share the first paper from my postdoc in the Darst and Campbell labs! 🧵 www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.... We used cryo-EM and allosteric inhibitors as mechanistic probes to visualize conformational landscapes of E. coli and M. tuberculosis RNA polymerases during nucleotide addition. 1/4

Had a blast putting this video abstract together with colleagues for @zjmaggiexu.bsky.social story in @currentbiology.bsky.social on how the "vampire cell" P. collini builds the perfect feeding trap 👀. Be sure to check out the full paper: www.cell.com/current-biol... www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ikzm...

A cellular vampire builds the perfect feeding trap / Curr. Biol., June 24, 2026 (Vol. 36, Issue 14)

YouTube video by Cell Press

youtube.com

A High-Affinity Nanobody Recognizing mNeonGreen Enables Versatile Biochemical, Cellular, and in vivo Applications. by Steffen Frey and team: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Happy Canada Day to all my fellow Canadians out there! 🇨🇦🍁

Our evil ORFeome paper is out! In collaboration with @alex-stark.bsky.social, we screened ~4,000 viral proteins and secreted effectors from bacteria and parasites, covering hundreds of diverse pathogens, for phenotypes in human cells.

Folks, mind the suctorian trap!

Zhejing (Maggie) Xu@zjmaggiexu.bsky.social · last mo.

Our updated full story on suctorian trap structure adaptation now online in @currentbiology.bsky.social! Huge thanks to Scott and all the co-authors for all the wow moments along the way! Also, if you’d like some new #protist #suctorian, let’s know! (They are surprisingly easy roommates/predators) 🤠

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!

Science Friday@scifri.bsky.social · last mo.

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...

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...

Swords, cannibalism, poison: inside the world of killer microbes

Some microbe species have evolved to stab, bomb, cannibalize, or poison each other. Can we harness their weapons for good?

sciencefriday.com

Congratulations to Coyle-Lab alum @born2raisecell.bsky.social (now in Kole Roybal's lab at UCSF) on being selected for this! Very well-deserved -- can't wait to see what you do next

Jane Coffin Childs Fund for Medical Research@jcchildsfund.bsky.social · last mo.

We are thrilled to announce our 2026 Jane Coffin Childs Fellows! These thirty-two outstanding scientists are performing cutting-edge research to advance our understanding of human diseases such as cancer, neurodegeneration, autoimmunity, pathogenic infections, and more. 1/3

@zjmaggiexu.bsky.social's story on suctorian trap structure adaptation is now online in @currentbiology.bsky.social , with new evolutionary analyses and modeling! This fall, Maggie will keep exploring predatory protists as a PD in @nbellono.bsky.social group; keep an eye out for her she's amazing!

Scott Coyle@cellraiser.bsky.social · 9mo ago

How do cells adapt morphology to function? In a 🔥 preprint by @zjmaggiexu.bsky.social , with @dudinlab.bsky.social and @amyweeks.bsky.social , we identify a self-organizing single-cell morphology circuit that optimizes the feeding trap structure of the suctorian P. collini. 🧵 tinyurl.com/4k8nv926

Tiny unicellular #eukaryotes, big #biomaterial inspiration. Excited to share our Nature Communications study showing that tintinnid ciliates build their chemical- and heat-resistant shells from self-assembling proteins we call Tintinnidorins. doi.org/10.1038/s414... #protistsonsky 1/3

JIT 4 summer, the latest preprint from our lab, brilliantly led by @kaitezhang.bsky.social w/ support from Collepardo lab (@juliamaristany.bsky.social / @janhuemar.bsky.social). www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... describes a new single-molecule epigenomic method, & discoveries it enables ... (1/n)

Single-molecule nucleosome spacing coordinates chromatin fiber interactions

Nucleosome spacing influences higher-order chromatin fiber organization in vitro but how this relates to cellular chromosome structure remains contentious. To address this, we developed Ligation Analy...

biorxiv.org

Watching reaction-diffusion signaling couple to protein condensations feels like opening a new world of exotic subcellular spatial patterning 🌌 huge thanks to the evolving idea started from @edenchang.bsky.social and @cellraiser.bsky.social that make this journey possible and incredibly fun!

Scott Coyle@cellraiser.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Sub-cellular architectures arise through integrating signaling and structure. @edenchang.bsky.social and @zjmaggiexu.bsky.social show how coupling reaction-diffusion signaling to protein condensation provides a tunable, regulatable landscape for sub-cellular structure www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Excited to share our new bioRxiv preprint! We introduce RIPPLE, a synthetic platform that couples reaction–diffusion signaling with protein condensation to generate tunable intracellular architectures. Grateful to @zjmaggiexu.bsky.social and @cellraiser.bsky.social. It’s been a rewarding journey.

Scott Coyle@cellraiser.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Sub-cellular architectures arise through integrating signaling and structure. @edenchang.bsky.social and @zjmaggiexu.bsky.social show how coupling reaction-diffusion signaling to protein condensation provides a tunable, regulatable landscape for sub-cellular structure www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Check out this awesome paper from @neugmonicaelena.bsky.social on a new family of nickel pincer enzymes! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Discovery and characterization of a nickel enzyme family that catalyses intermolecular hydride shuttling - Nature Chemistry

There is limited understanding of nickel-catalysed chemistry in nature. Now a bioinformatic pipeline reveals a structurally distinct family of nickel pincer nucleotide-dependent enzymes. Nickel pincer...

nature.com