We’ve finally installed the beautiful cell membrane wall art that Priyanka Oberoi made for the lab…now hanging in its new home @zmbh.uni-heidelberg.de in Heidelberg. The move is nearly complete! @anh-nhn.bsky.social @varvarakramkova.bsky.social

Applications are now open for early-career researchers to apply for a funded place at our Workshop on Membrane Function: Insights from Cellular Diversity and Evolution, organised by Snezhana Oliferenko @alebenoit.bsky.social & Cunqi Ye. Find out more and apply www.biologists.com/workshops/ju...

Applications are now open for the Fall 2026 Heising-Simons 51 Pegasi b postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Washington in Seattle. The fellowship supports research in astrobiology and in exoplanet and planetary science. Great faculty! Details at: depts.washington.edu/astrobio/wor...

Lipids build the membranes of all cells, but identifying their precise functions is extremely challenging. Here’s our attempt to change that: How to find and understand lipid-protein interactions, by Katelyn Cook & company. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

How scientists simplify their datavis with a few clicks - read more in **Click to plot** article, out in @natureportfolio.nature.com I love these resources, because I know they bridge the experimentalists journeying into advanced plots and coding eventually. Great collab @alex-lex.bsky.social

Thrilled to share this #lipidtime mechanism story in @jcb.org where, led by Shiying Huang and in collaboration with Tamas Balla’s lab, we uncover plasticity in phospholipid metabolism to preserve plasma membrane identity and integrity in the face of disease-relevant perturbations!

Journal of Cell Biology@jcb.org · 4mo ago

How does the plasma #membrane preserve its #lipid identity under stress? The Baskin and Balla labs report a homeostatic circuit linking PI4P, phosphatidylserine, RhoB, and phospholipase D-driven phosphatidic acid. rupress.org/jcb/article/... @jeremybaskin.bsky.social

We held lab meeting at McDonalds today…they have air conditioning, and lipids

It's been a wonderful 4 years and I couldn't have done this without you James! Onwards and upwards!

James Saenz@jamessaenz.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Congratulations 🍾 to @anh-nhn.bsky.social on her successful PhD defense today: Deciphering the role of lipidome complexity using Mesoplasma florum!! Time to celebrate 🎉 @bcube-tud.bsky.social

What a week! My first Points of View was published @natmethods.nature.com Happy to start the series in 🏳️‍🌈 month with "On Color scales and the birth of Viridis" - looks good, allows naming of regions, AND is perceptually uniform 🎁 rdcu.be/fnPhk www.nature.com/articles/s41... #dataviz

WORK: our Bionanoscience department at TU Delft is looking to hire an Assistant Professor in Biophysics of Living Systems. Apply! Deadline 30 July careers.tudelft.nl/job/Delft-As... RT=nice

Assistant Professor in Biophysics of Living Systems

Assistant Professor in Biophysics of Living Systems

careers.tudelft.nl

😎 to have this out! --> stay tuned, this is a series about 📊#dataviz for #science 🧪

Nature Methods@natmethods.nature.com · 4mo ago

We are very excited to bring back our popular Points of View column, written by @helenajambor.bsky.social! Check out her first column in our July issue about the usage of color scales in scientific figures. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Just start writing. My new post: substack.com/home/post/p-...

Some things never change…I put this sign up 15 years ago when I borrowed a few glass vessels from @hymanlab.bsky.social as a postdoc… as of today it’s still there 😅 Did I return the bottles? We may never know! But there’s some bonus unpublished data printed on the back!

Thrilled to be joining the ZMBH, where my lab will continue to explore the evolution and engineering of living membranes. Farewell @bcube-tud.bsky.social...I couldn't imagine a better place to have started my lab! I'm perpetually grateful to my lab group for making this such a successful adventure!!

ZMBH@zmbh.uni-heidelberg.de · 4mo ago

The ZMBH welcomes Dr. James Sáenz @jamessaenz.bsky.social as new Professor in Molecular Biology. James previously led a research group at B CUBE - Center for Molecular Bioengineering of Dresden University of Technology.

Congratulations 🍾 to @anh-nhn.bsky.social on her successful PhD defense today: Deciphering the role of lipidome complexity using Mesoplasma florum!! Time to celebrate 🎉 @bcube-tud.bsky.social

Congratulations 🎉🎊 to Dr. Sandra Rizk for defending her PhD thesis today: Functional Characterization of Isoprenoid Lipids in Methylobacterium extorquens PA1!!! @bcube-tud.bsky.social

The fact we can see this machine factory frozen in time (and space), happily making molecular machines, effectively at an atomic level is just jaw dropping. Every time I see these images I am blown away by it. Great work by Xiaohan and what a way for Christoph Müller to retire from @embl.org

joe dobbs@joedobbs.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Super cool cryo-ET work from my colleague Xiaohan resolving a ton of ribosome assembly intermediates in the nuclei of human cells!

And now I’ve found a catchy new slogan for the lab…MEMBRANES: MORE THAN YOU THINK inpreparation.substack.com/p/biophysica...

Biophysical Society Blows Ad Budget On Bus That Reads 'MEMBRANES: MORE THAN YOU THINK'

ROCKVILLE, MD—The Biophysical Society confirmed Tuesday that it has spent its entire $14,000 annual advertising budget on a single advertisement on the side of a Washington, D.C., Metrobus that reads ...

inpreparation.substack.com

The ZMBH welcomes Dr. James Sáenz @jamessaenz.bsky.social as new Professor in Molecular Biology. James previously led a research group at B CUBE - Center for Molecular Bioengineering of Dresden University of Technology.

Geoscience teachers, interested in playing my GeoTimeline Game? You can now buy your own copy, these little timescale cards come in a cute mint tin! www.thegamecrafter.com/games/geotim...

“Academic science is not only about productivity, it is also about deep understanding, exploring creative solutions and training critical thinkers to be the next generation of researchers.” www.nature.com/articles/d41...

The uncritical adoption of AI in science is alarming — we urgently need guard rails

Artificial intelligence is rapidly accelerating scientific output, but risks narrowing inquiry, weakening judgement and undermining how scientists are trained.

nature.com

🍾 🎉 Congratulations to Dr. Isaac Justice for defending his PhD thesis, in which he demonstrated that two lipid species are sufficient (but not optimal) for life! @bcube-tud.bsky.social

James Saenz@jamessaenz.bsky.social · 2y ago

🥳 A tuneable minimal cell membrane reveals that two lipid species suffice for life: www.nature.com/articles/s41... We chemically minimized the membrane of the Minimal Cell...they survived, but with some interesting shapes, like this 'Death Star' phenotype @jcvi.bsky.social @jcv.bsky.social

Evolutionary strategies of late-stage diversification in bacterial biosynthetic gene clusters portlandpress.com/essaysbioche... Nice review by @pthiel.bsky.social and Aleksandra Nivina

Wow. 3’UTRs are pretty amazing.

Christine Mayr@christinemayr.bsky.social · 5mo ago

If you want to know what 3′UTRs with long conserved sequence stretches do, check out our BioRxiv preprint doi.org/10.64898/202.... They form functional intermolecular 3′UTR-3′UTR interactions that enable co-folding of proteins to rapidly induce transcriptional programs.

What membrane properties do cells maintain through regulation of lipid metabolism? In a new paper, we identify intrinsic curvature stress as one such parameter and show how different (eukaryotic) cell types employ different lipids to do that www.cell.com/cell-reports...

Active regulation of intrinsic curvature by eukaryotic phospholipid metabolism

Cells maintain membrane function by actively balancing the molecular shape of their lipids. Milshteyn et al. find that, when subjected to high hydrostatic pressure, yeast and human cells, but not bact...

cell.com

Take a look at the fresh post-Easter paper about lipid regulation of NS5A, a key protein of the hepatitis C virus. We were happy to contribute to the all-star team by Anna, Rebecca, James et al, spearheaded by Christoph Welsch. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Phospholipid-driven conformational switching of HCV NS5A links protein folding to replication membrane remodeling

A host lipid flips a viral protein’s shape to control membrane remodeling during virus replication.

science.org

I'm thrilled to be starting as Professor for Molecular Biology at Heidelberg University in April. Looking forward to this adventure!

Helena Klara Jambor@helenajambor.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Its official, from April civil servant for "the Ländle" - Congratulations @jamessaenz.bsky.social on becoming professor @uniheidelberg.bsky.social - and I am happy to be back in town. @mpi-cbg.de @bcube-tud.bsky.social @tudresden.bsky.social

Its official, from April civil servant for "the Ländle" - Congratulations @jamessaenz.bsky.social on becoming professor @uniheidelberg.bsky.social - and I am happy to be back in town. @mpi-cbg.de @bcube-tud.bsky.social @tudresden.bsky.social

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...