How are mRNAs linked to molecular motors in mammalian cells? In our new preprint, we show that FXR1/2 are RNA adaptors for the microtubule motor dynein. Our findings have also prompted us to rethink how activating adaptors contribute to motor-based transport (1/n)

bioRxiv Cell Biology@biorxiv-cellbio.bsky.social · 2w ago

FXR proteins and BICD2 cooperate to promote dynein-mediated RNP transport and stress granule assembly https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.25.754448v1

Excited to share that the Chaaban Lab will be opening in January at the Crick!

The Francis Crick Institute@crick.ac.uk · last mo.

We’re excited to announce five new group leaders will join the Crick in the coming months. Welcome to Katya Osipova, @joshuabull.bsky.social, @vchandra.bsky.social, @sami-c.bsky.social and James Cranley, whose specialties range from artificial intelligence to cell biology. https://bit.ly/3SPC6vJ

Molecular architecture of colossal surface layers from hyperthermophilic archaea Led by @idocaspy.bsky.social (Ido) In collaboration with @mkrupovic.bsky.social and @vikramalva.bsky.social labs doi.org/10.64898/202...

Very happy to see the final version of our work on the structure and composition of cytoplasmic lattices in mouse embryos, previously shared on bioRxiv, now published in The EMBO Journal! Many thanks to our editor, Ieva Gailite, and the reviewers for their constructive input.

The EMBO Journal@embojournal.org · 2mo ago

What’s the function of embryonic ‘cytoplasmic lattices’? Using cryo-ET, @kashishsingh.bsky.social @carter-lab.bsky.social and coworkers reveal them as megadalton-size hubs of ubiquitination proteins/ubiquitin transfer link.springer.com/article/10.1...

New preprint! In collaboration with the Yogev lab (Yale), we characterized and determined structures of various gamma-tubulin complexes from C. elegans, showing how divergent worm subunits evolved to template non-canonical (11-pf) and possibly canonical (13-pf!) microtubules: tinyurl.com/2sapyx2b

Structural basis of biofilm formation mediated by the Pseudomonas aeruginosa fibrillar adhesin CdrA led by @olivia--smith.bsky.social Collaboration with @alexbateman1.bsky.social , Andres Floto and @geiselbiofilm.bsky.social labs

Scientists at Cambridge's @loke-ctr.bsky.social have, for the first time, used base editing to study gene function in human embryos. In future, the findings could help to improve IVF success rates and better understand early pregnancy loss. Read more: https://bit.ly/4aQOAZD

New preprint! In collaboration with the Steinmetz Lab at PSI we report cryo-EM structures of microtubules at up to 1.9 Å (!) resolution & in different nucleotide state mimics, suggesting a mechanism for lattice-induced GTP hydrolysis and why it leads to catastrophe: tinyurl.com/7cjrf863

📢 (1/2) Excited to share the first preprint from my PostDoc! We developed UbSeRP to map co-translational ubiquitination in a translatome-wide, revealing thousands of quality control sites, and how they reshape with aging. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... #proteostasis #ribosomes #preprint

Ubiquitin selective ribosome profiling reveals systematic principles of co-translational quality control

Protein biogenesis is a stress- and error-sensitive process that can lead to nascent protein misfolding and aggregation, challenging cellular proteostasis. Co-translational ubiquitination (CTU) is a c...

biorxiv.org

Now published! We investigated how polyadenylated RNAs are targeted for decay in the human nucleus. www.nature.com/articles/s41... (1/5)

Check out our latest research, just published in Nature @nature.com @molbiolau.bsky.social @au.dk Molecular basis of polyadenylated RNA fate determination in the nucleus www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Molecular basis of polyadenylated RNA fate determination in the nucleus - Nature

Biochemical, structural and cell biological analyses reveal that UAP56 (DDX39B) assembles with a TREX-2–like module that redirects non-functional polyadenylated RNAs from export to degradati...

nature.com

How do cells distinguish functional genetic messages from molecular noise? Researchers in Clemens Plaschka's lab at IMP, together with Julius Brennecke's lab at IMBA and collaborators at Aarhus University, reveal a new principle of gene regulation: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10650-0

There are lots of exciting opportunities to join the in situ structural biology community at Leeds this Autumn - 2 studentships in the Cheney PhD program (astbury.leeds.ac.uk/cheney-phd/) and I am recruiting a PhD student and research assistant. Please share and send any future tomographers our way!

Cheney Scholarship PhD Programme : The Astbury Centre for Structural Molecular Biology - "Understanding Life in Molecular Detail"

Applications are open for 2 PhD student places.  Closing date for applications is Thursday 26 June, 5pm. Interviews will be held on 9th July 2026. The Cheney Scholarship is a prestigious 4-year PhD pr...

astbury.leeds.ac.uk

New preprint! In collaboration with @xujwet.bsky.social, @pedrobeltrao.bsky.social, and Akhmanova and Beekman groups, we determined the structure of the transition zone microtubule doublet in mammalian motile cilia, providing potential insights into the regulation of IFT: tinyurl.com/fssnevuc

Structure of the mammalian ciliary transition zone microtubule doublet

The ciliary transition zone gates bidirectional protein trafficking to maintain the specialized ciliary proteome using microtubule doublets as a scaffold. While ciliary axonemal doublets are well-char...

tinyurl.com

Disrupting phage liquid crystalline droplets restores antibiotic susceptibility in Pseudomonas aeruginosa biofilms out in @plosbiology.org by @abultarafder.bsky.social and team. Exciting collaboration with @geiselbiofilm.bsky.social @pearce-maths.bsky.social and others

PLOS Biology@plosbiology.org · 4mo ago

#Biofilm matrices containing filamentous phages help #Pseudomonas aeruginosa tolerate antibiotics. @abultarafder.bsky.social @tbharat-lab.bsky.social &co show that #nanobody disruption of #phage Pf4 #LiquidCrystalline droplets restores #antibiotic susceptibility @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4xkd6Mw

Design principles of human membrane protein topology. New study from Haoxi Wu @ox.ac.uk and Ramanujan S Hegde @mrclmb.ac.uk: rupress.org/jcb/article/... #membrane #lipid

🚨 New in @natureportfolio.nature.com! 🚨 Excited to share our discovery of Manikomycin—a novel antibiotic tackling the AMR crisis! 🦠 Using cryo-EM, we found it’s the first-in-class to target the ribosomal E-site, blocking tRNA entry and beating multi-drug resistance. Read: doi.org/10.1038/s415...

A natural depsipeptide antibiotic binds the E-site of the bacterial ribosome - Nature

Improved fractionation strategies can identify antibiotics with previously unseen scaffolds and mechanisms, exemplified by manikomycin from Streptomyces rimosus, which acts by targeting the E-site of ...

doi.org

Really happy to share our latest work on the dynactin complex. We were so surprised to find that overexpression of dynactin p50 causes part of the dynactin complex to form clusters that contain our recently discovered dynactin assembly factor VezA/vezatin. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

We present: Index-agnostic oblique plane light sheet microscopy of centimetre-scale cleared tissues at subcellular resolution www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

TL;DR: We've identified more than 100 cases of apparent manipulation in Thermo Fisher Scientific's antibody verification data. @sholtodavid.bsky.social @johanduchene.bsky.social reeserichardson.blog/2026/05/28/h...

How much of Thermo Fisher’s antibody data has been manipulated?

We’ve documented more than 100 instances of apparent data manipulation in Thermo’s catalog

reeserichardson.blog

New preprint alert! Ever wonder if cells can talk to each other? Tunneling nanotubes (TNTs) are tiny bridges between cells used to pass organelles, nucleic acids, proteins & even viruses but we've never seen inside them clearly. Until now! 👇🧵 biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.27.728322v1

We're happy to announce our new preprint! 🐸 easymode: general pretrained networks for cellular cryo-ET. Segment ~20 cellular features – ribosomes, microtubules, mitochondria, nuclei & more – with zero model training. 🔗 doi.org/10.64898/202... 🧵👇

Sub-cellular chemical mapping using correlated cryogenic electron and mass spectrometry imaging online @natmethods.nature.com, led by Hannah Ochner, collaboration with @catfranco.bsky.social and @kiranrpatil.bsky.social labs doi.org/10.1038/s415...

How do sperm and egg fuse? Surprisingly, we still don’t fully know… Our field has uncovered many pieces of the fertilization puzzle, but not how they fit together. We identify ✨ SPARK ✨ - a conserved sperm complex that couples sperm-egg binding to fusion. tinyurl.com/34cm4xat Read on! 🧵👇

How do mitochondrial ribosomes keep pace with membrane insertion? Now out in NSMB: We show that mitoribosomes slow down at defined positions linked to membrane insertion and protein topology: rdcu.be/fhqIT #Mitochondria #Ribosome #CryoEM

Membrane insertion of mitochondrial-encoded proteins regulates ribosome decoding speed

Nature Structural & Molecular Biology - Schöndorf and Petrychenko et al. show that mitochondrial translation speed is coupled to OXA1L-mediated inner membrane insertion, with...

rdcu.be

Thrilled to see this work published. Thanks to helpful reviewer suggestions, there are some exciting new insights that were not in the preprint (particularly in Figure 4). www.nature.com/articles/s41...

MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology@mrclmb.ac.uk · 5mo ago

The hidden rules behind mRNA transport. A collaborative study between @simonbullock11.bsky.social & @carter-lab.bsky.social’s groups has found a structural code that explains how cells selectively transport mRNAs. Read more: mrclmb.ac.uk/news-events/... #LMBNews @cellbiol-mrclmb.bsky.social 🧪

Our latest preprint list is now up on FocalPlane. This week, bioimage analysis takes centre stage! focalplane.biologists.com/2026/05/01/m... #microscopy #bioimageanalysis #preprints

Microscopy preprints: bioimage analysis - FocalPlane

Microscopy preprints: bioimage analysis - News

focalplane.biologists.com

Really exciting to see our new review published! This review explores the evolutionary history of the extra-embryonic endoderm, an evolutionarily ancient tissue co-opted to form the yolk sac, and explores how in vitro models are uncovering its biology. Check it out here: doi.org/10.1242/dev....

The vertebrate yolk sac: evolutionary origins and current advances in in vitro models

Summary: This Review examines the evolutionary history of the extra-embryonic endoderm, an evolutionarily ancient tissue co-opted to form the yolk sac, and explores how in vitro models are uncovering ...

doi.org

Check out this new study led by @amicoennio.bsky.social , with important contributions from @sami-c.bsky.social, @abidalilab.bsky.social and @leonmichalski.bsky.social. The work dissects how dynein–dynactin engages distinct adaptors to drive transport of diverse cargoes within cells.

Ennio@amicoennio.bsky.social · 6mo ago

New preprint! We asked a simple question: How do very different activating adaptors all activate dynein? Turns out: same architecture, wildly different implementations 🧵👇 doi.org/10.64898/202...

The #ADFLIP approach by @kaiyi94.bsky.social and @kjamali.bsky.social, combined with their approach to backpropagation through #AlphaFold2, is really powerful. Keep tuned for more exciting results! 🥳

Kai Yi@kaiyi94.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Thrilled with the our results with @kjamali.bsky.social and @sjorsscheres.bsky.social from the recent binder competition! 🎉 2 of our 7 designs successfully bound to the target, with affinities ranking 2nd and 3rd overall. All of these designs targeted the disordered region of the protein.