New preprint from the lab, co-led by Youmian Yan and @lianjiejerrywei.bsky.social! 🧵 at some point in the near future, but until then, check out our work uncovering mechanisms allowing the dual targeting of mitochondrial proteins using our favorite, PPTC7, as a case study.

bioRxivpreprint@biorxivpreprint.bsky.social · 4d ago

Combinatorial sequence elements fine-tune mitochondrial protein import to facilitate dual localization https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.07.31.742112v1

I am very grateful to join this year's class of LSRF Postdoctoral Fellows lsrf.org/current-fell...! With generous financial support from the Shurl and Kay Curci Foundation, I will investigate how brain lipids regulate the progression and fitness of brain metastases. (1/2)

Current Fellows - Life Sciences Research Foundation

lsrf.org

Yay! It was a ton of fun to help out with this cool study led by @drjoshblack.bsky.social and @greenlab.bsky.social. We show that a Legionella pneumophila enzyme AMPylates 3-phosphoglycerate, sequestering it from glycolytic metabolism and disrupting host translation.

Joshua Black@drjoshblack.bsky.social · last wk.

I'm excited to share my postdoc work where we characterized the #Legionella effector SidL, finding that it modifies a host #glycolysis metabolite to produce a novel molecule that is incompatible with host #metabolism and uncovers a new mode in which pathogens can manipulate their host environment.

Wait, what?! This isn’t about ribosomes? Check out our new work where we find that a #Legionella effector thought to target host translation instead targets metabolism by modifying a host glycolytic metabolite. Led by @drjoshblack.bsky.social www.cell.com/molecular-ce...

The Legionella pneumophila effector SidL is an adenylyltransferase that modifies the glycolytic intermediate 3-phosphoglycerate

Black et al. identify the L. pneumophila effector SidL as an adenylyltransferase that targets host glycolysis. SidL covalently modifies the glycolytic intermediate 3-phosphoglycerate (3PG) with AMP, g...

cell.com

I'm excited to share my postdoc work where we characterized the #Legionella effector SidL, finding that it modifies a host #glycolysis metabolite to produce a novel molecule that is incompatible with host #metabolism and uncovers a new mode in which pathogens can manipulate their host environment.

Green Lab JHMI@greenlab.bsky.social · 2w ago

Wait, what?! This isn’t about ribosomes? Check out our new work where we find that a #Legionella effector thought to target host translation instead targets metabolism by modifying a host glycolytic metabolite. Led by @drjoshblack.bsky.social www.cell.com/molecular-ce...

Check out our Spotlight in Molecular Cell on @lydiafinley.bsky.social's lab recent work on Aconitase 2 and its protective role against impaired cell fitness and ISR activation due to mitochondrial citrate accumulation authors.elsevier.com/c/1n3Nn3vVUP...

U.S. President Donald Trump has fired all 24 members of the National Science Board, the body that oversees the National Science Foundation. https://scim.ag/4cxQWhl

Trump fires NSF's oversight board

Dismissal of the National Science Board is widely seen as latest move to erase NSF’s independence

scim.ag

Awesome representation from @uwmadscience.bsky.social at the @asbmb.bsky.social #ASBMB2026 meeting in DC! #ScienceServesUsAll

Molecular biology on Pluribus. Rate their cloning protocol.

Happy to have contributed to this awesome finding! @slaterc.bsky.social and @thegarrettlab.bsky.social identify a mechanism by which acetoacetate drives anti-tumor immunity in the gut.

Slater Clay@slaterc.bsky.social · 9mo ago

Excited to share a preprint from my postdoc @theGarrettLab- now on bioRxiv! Oral acetoacetate (AcAc) suppresses tumor growth by expanding and activating MAIT cells… and the mechanism was a surprise 🧵👇 (1/10) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Check out the latest pre-print from the lab! Led by our brilliant postdoc @slaterc.bsky.social Thanks to all co-authors and collaborators. @jentekle.bsky.social @edreesrashan.bsky.social @mvhlab.bsky.social

Slater Clay@slaterc.bsky.social · 9mo ago

Excited to share a preprint from my postdoc @theGarrettLab- now on bioRxiv! Oral acetoacetate (AcAc) suppresses tumor growth by expanding and activating MAIT cells… and the mechanism was a surprise 🧵👇 (1/10) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Excited to share our study out in @natcellbio.nature.com! Led by @mikelangelipid.bsky.social, we identify the first #LipidDroplet lipid quality control pathway: LD-localized FSP1 protects stored lipids from oxidative damage and prevents LD-initiated #ferroptosis. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

FSP1-mediated lipid droplet quality control prevents neutral lipid peroxidation and ferroptosis - Nature Cell Biology

Lange et al. identify a lipid droplet quality control pathway in which FSP1 safeguards stored neutral lipids from lipid peroxidation, thereby preventing the induction of ferroptosis.

nature.com

Excited to share my postdoc work @olzmannlab.bsky.social! We found lipid droplets, the cell’s lipid storage depots, are subject to oxidative damage and are protected by FSP1. Loss of FSP1 triggers droplet peroxidation and cell death, revealing a new layer of lipid quality control! shorturl.at/B5XYD

FSP1-mediated lipid droplet quality control prevents neutral lipid peroxidation and ferroptosis - Nature Cell Biology

Lange et al. identify a lipid droplet quality control pathway in which FSP1 safeguards stored neutral lipids from lipid peroxidation, thereby preventing the induction of ferroptosis.

nature.com

Our work detailing the metabolic roles of serum for cancer cell proliferation is now out at JBC, @asbmbjournals.bsky.social! Congrats to Oliver and Eric and many thanks to the editor and reviewers for a thoughtful and efficient review process. See here: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Defined media reveal the essential role of lipid scavenging in supporting cancer cell proliferation

Fetal bovine serum (FBS) is an undefined additive that is ubiquitous to mammalian cell culture media and whose functional contributions to promoting c…

sciencedirect.com

Lucas Sullivan@lucasbsullivan.bsky.social · last yr.

Excited to share a recent preprint by Oliver Newsom, where we evaluate the functional contributions of serum for cancer cell proliferation. Inside: A broadly applicable serum-free media, Quantitative lipid uptake characterization, Evidence lipid scavenging > synthesis for cancer cell proliferation.

Lipid imaging on the cover of @nature.com! Great times for lipid cell biology indeed. And a fantastic recognition of all the hard work by the team, especially Juan M. Iglesias-Artola and Kristin Böhlig (who made the cover). Link to article: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I received this award as a second year student, and it was transformative and a big part of the reason I persisted. They are making things harder just for no reason. I remember the days when we recognized that STEM fields were a worthy national investment 🤦🏾‍♀️

@LaBonneLaB@labonnelab.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Continuing efforts to hurt the research pipeline, the very late NSF GFRP solicitation no longer allows 2nd year PhD students to apply. Lots of these students chose not to apply last year because they were told they would have a better change once in their thesis lab www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...

If you’re looking for some exciting reading to take into the weekend with you, please check out Haley’s first, 1st-author paper published in Science of the Total Environment this week! You won’t want to miss these wildfire smoke induced lipid changes!🔥💨 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Wildfire smoke induces GM3 ganglioside lipid accumulation and transcriptomic shifts in mouse lung tissue: A smoke signal story

Wildfire smoke is a growing concern due to continually rising exposures and links to numerous adverse health effects. Lipids are essential regulators …

sciencedirect.com

A pleasure to write this short review on lipid droplets for @jcb.org together with Will Prinz and amazing artist Emma Reynolds! We discuss 5 pervasive questions surrounding these remarkable little lipid organelles. doi.org/10.1083/jcb....

The 4 chemically targeted Laurdan derivatives (for mitochondria, ER, lyso/endosomes, and the Golgi) that we published last year are now available (at a pretty reasonable price) from Avanti Polar Lipids (cat #880194, 880197, 880193, 880196). These have been very popular! pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10....

Organelle-Targeted Laurdans Measure Heterogeneity in Subcellular Membranes and Their Responses to Saturated Lipid Stress

Organelles feature characteristic lipid compositions that lead to differences in membrane properties. In cells, membrane ordering and fluidity are commonly measured using the solvatochromic dye Laurdan, whose fluorescence is sensitive to lipid packing. As a general lipophilic dye, Laurdan stains all hydrophobic environments in cells; therefore, it is challenging to characterize membrane properties in specific organelles or assess their responses to pharmacological treatments in intact cells. Here, we describe the synthesis and application of Laurdan-derived probes that read out the membrane packing of individual cellular organelles. The set of organelle-targeted Laurdans (OTL) localizes to the ER, mitochondria, lysosomes, and Golgi compartments with high specificity while retaining the spectral resolution needed to detect biological changes in membrane ordering. We show that ratiometric imaging with OTLs can resolve membrane heterogeneity within organelles as well as changes in lipid packing resulting from inhibition of trafficking or bioenergetic processes. We apply these probes to characterize organelle-specific responses to saturated lipid stress. While the ER and lysosomal membrane fluidity is sensitive to exogenous saturated fatty acids, that of mitochondrial membranes is protected. We then use differences in ER membrane fluidity to sort populations of cells based on their fatty acid diet, highlighting the ability of organelle-localized solvatochromic probes to distinguish between cells based on their metabolic state. These results expand the repertoire of targeted membrane probes and demonstrate their application in interrogating lipid dysregulation.

pubs.acs.org

Quite a week for #lipidtime: phenomenal study using bifunctional lipid probes to quantify intracellular lipid transport from @nadlerlab.bsky.social and colleagues is now out @nature.com! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Quantitative imaging of lipid transport in mammalian cells - Nature

Directional, non-vesicular lipid transport is responsible for fast, species-selective lipid sorting into organelle membranes.

nature.com

Grrrr. We don't call protein phosphorylation or acteylation epiproteomics. So let's not call RNA modification epitranscriptomics. In fact, realisitically, epigenetics has so many definitions, some of them non-overlapping, that this whole epi-XXXX (genetics/genomics whatever) is just not helping us.

This was a labor of love requiring lots of teamwork over years, repeating in 3 locations! Thanks to all the lab over the years, giving their time generously to this team project, & our wonderful collaborators. The source of fat matters for anti-tumor immunity 🐄🐖🧈🌴🫒🥥 www.nature.com/articles/s42...

The source of dietary fat influences anti-tumour immunity in obese mice - Nature Metabolism

This study shows that animal-based high-fat diets accelerate tumour growth and impair anti-tumour response to melanoma in obese mice, whereas plant-based high-fat diets do not.

nature.com

1/Patient-derived xenografts (PDXs) are used in preclinical testing of cancer therapies, including metabolic therapies. We determined which metabolic properties are retained, and which are lost, when melanomas from patients are implanted and passaged as PDXs in mice. www.nature.com/articles/s42...

Conservation and divergence of metabolic phenotypes between patient tumours and matched xenografts - Nature Metabolism

Rao and Cai et al. perform a detailed metabolic comparison between primary tumours from patients and their matching xenografts, which identify conserved as well as divergent metabolic patterns.

nature.com

Super excited to share new review on metabolic stress and adaptations in pancreatic cancer to these stresses from @cssheehan.bsky.social jci.org/articles/vie... 1/6

Super excited for Niemi lab grad student Hannah Pletcher, who placed second in the recent "What's Your Story" Sci-comm writing contest put on by The Scientist! Read more about the contest, as well as Hannah's winning entry, here: www.the-scientist.com/what-s-your-... #ProudPI

What’s Your Story? 2025 Contest Winners

The Scientist is excited to announce the winners of our 2025 science writing contest!

the-scientist.com

AND IT'S DONE! A 🧵 on our recent article now out in @natsmb.nature.com! Co-led with @abbybartlett.bsky.social, Pagliarini Lab, @judisimcox.bsky.social, we find ACAD10/11 are NOT like other acyl-CoA dehydrogenases and instead catabolize atypical lipids called 4-hydroxy acids 🤯 doi.org/10.1038/s415...

ACAD10 and ACAD11 enable mammalian 4-hydroxy acid lipid catabolism - Nature Structural & Molecular Biology

Rashan, Bartlett and colleagues show that mammalian 4-hydroxy fatty acids are primarily catabolized by ACAD10 and ACAD11 (atypical mitochondrial and peroxisomal acyl-CoA dehydrogenases, respectively) ...

doi.org

Very excited to see this work with @edreesrashan.bsky.social published in @natsmb.nature.com ! #metabolism #AmazingACADs 🤩

Nature Structural & Molecular Biology@natsmb.nature.com · last yr.

New online: ACAD10 and ACAD11 enable mammalian 4-hydroxy acid lipid catabolism

AND IT'S DONE! A 🧵 on our recent article now out in @natsmb.nature.com! Co-led with @abbybartlett.bsky.social, Pagliarini Lab, @judisimcox.bsky.social, we find ACAD10/11 are NOT like other acyl-CoA dehydrogenases and instead catabolize atypical lipids called 4-hydroxy acids 🤯 doi.org/10.1038/s415...

ACAD10 and ACAD11 enable mammalian 4-hydroxy acid lipid catabolism - Nature Structural & Molecular Biology

Rashan, Bartlett and colleagues show that mammalian 4-hydroxy fatty acids are primarily catabolized by ACAD10 and ACAD11 (atypical mitochondrial and peroxisomal acyl-CoA dehydrogenases, respectively) ...

doi.org

Proud present our latest work led by Blessy Paul, now in Developmental Cell @cellpress.bsky.social. Here, we characterize an ER-localized antioxidant enzyme in humans and Drosophila that acts as a lipid quality control factor to suppress ER lipid oxidation. www.cell.com/developmenta...

Paraoxonase-like APMAP maintains endoplasmic-reticulum-associated lipid and lipoprotein homeostasis

Here, Paul et al. show that APMAP is an ER-localized paraoxonase-like enzyme that suppresses lipid oxidation and redox stress at the ER network. APMAP loss leads to ER stress, redox disruption, phosph...

cell.com

My father-in-law, Jack Strominger, and I wrote a letter to the @wsj.com editor about the current threats to science due to Trump's funding freeze. Please repost! www.wsj.com/opinion/scie...

Opinion | Science Suffers With Trump’s Funding Freeze

America’s scientific enterprise demands reliable stewardship, not destabilizing political intervention.

wsj.com