Excited to share our latest paper! We show that lipid droplets promote aberrant liquid-liquid phase separation of alpha-synuclein, leading to impaired lipid turnover, local mitochondrial dysfunction, and disrupted energy homeostasis. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Lipid droplets promote aberrant liquid-liquid phase separation of alpha-synuclein impairing energy homeostasis - EMBO Reports

Alpha-synuclein (αSyn) inclusions are a defining neuropathological feature of Parkinson’s disease, but the cellular events that initiate their formation and promote neurotoxicity remain incompletely u...

link.springer.com

After reading @blekhernia.bsky.social's great blog post on lab AI usage policy (blekhman.substack.com/p/you-need-t...), we made one in lab meeting. Feedback welcome! rilab.ucdavis.edu/ai_expectati...

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Regulated conformational transitions in seipin define a functional ER-lipid droplet interface

Regulated conformational transitions in seipin define a functional ER-lipid droplet interface

Lipid droplets (LDs) are key organelles in cellular lipid homeostasis that form at the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) through a sequence of membrane rearrangements. While seipin emerged as an essential pr...

biorxiv.org

Congratulations to our amazing undergraduate student Elyse for receiving the Henry Rutgers SAS Scholarship for her summer research in the lab! 🥳 7th student award since the establishment of the lab! 🔬🥽

New preprints from the lab, stay tuned for more details! 🚨 sites.rutgers.edu/shi-lab/soli... preprint links: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Solidifying Condensates! - Shi Lab

Two of our recent findings on condensates were posted on bioRxiv! In the first one, Huan made a surprising discovery that the excitation of fluorescently tagged proteins leads to condensate-mediated …...

sites.rutgers.edu

New lab photo! We missed 4 members today but we celebrated Jose’s one year anniversary in the lab 🥳

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Visualizing suborganellar lipid distribution using correlative light and electron microscopy - Nature Cell Biology

Lennartz et al. introduce a correlative light and electron microscopy workflow, Lipid-CLEM, combining near-native lipid probes and on-section labelling via click chemistry. Lipid-CLEM quantitatively a...

nature.com

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Decoupling phase separation and fibrillization preserves activity of biomolecular condensates - Nature Communications

The authors show that aging of metastable protein condensates can lead to amyloid formation and impair biochemical activity. Certain small molecule metabolites can selectively impede this transition, ...

nature.com

Neurodegeneration risk variants promote lysosomal TMEM106B fibril accumulation. 🔥 preprint by former trainee extraordinaire, Jordan Marks, and the Petrucelli and Ward labs www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

www.cell.com/cell-reports...

MitoTracker transfers from astrocytes to neurons independently of mitochondria

The mitochondrial dye MitoTracker is commonly used to investigate intercellular mitochondrial transfer (IMT), particularly between astrocytes and neurons. Hole et al. compare MitoTracker with a geneti...

cell.com

New publication from our lab! We developed Python based pipelines for the analysis of confocal images. This protocol paper is tailored to a biologist without much coding experience. It is the resource I wish I had when I first started this line of work. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Protocol for automated analysis of biological images using Python code

Image analysis in Python provides greater flexibility and an open-source alternative to commercially available software. In this protocol, we present …

sciencedirect.com

A view we will not soon forget. The Blizzard of 2026.

Congratulations to our undergraduate student, Neeharika, for winning a competitive Aresty research grant!!! 🥳 This is the 6th student award from our lab within less than 1 year ☺️

Please spread the word: the Structural Studies Division @mrclmb.bsky.social is looking for a new tenure-track, independent group leader with an exciting plan in any area of Structural (Molecular & Cell) biology, in discovery biology and/or methods development. 🥳 mrc.tal.net/vx/mobile-0/...

@zs-biophys.bsky.social we also got one!

Midnight confocal session 🔬

Understanding why cancers relapse - sometimes years or decades after successful treatment - is a major challenge in the cancer field This perspective in Nature discusses several of the important recent advances and new studies in the field of tumor dormancy 🧪⚕️ www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Why cancer can come back years later — and how to stop it

Researchers are targeting dormant tumour cells that might explain why some cancers reappear long after successful treatment.

nature.com

@zs-biophys.bsky.social I had the privilege of meeting this avatar today 😂

Zheng Shi@zs-biophys.bsky.social · 7mo ago

People in the lab made me this ☺️

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Defining RNA oligonucleotides that reverse deleterious phase transitions of RNA-binding proteins with prion-like domains

RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) with prion-like domains (PrLDs), such as FUS and TDP-43, condense into functional liquids, which can transform into pathol…

sciencedirect.com

Happy new year! I've so enjoyed the end-of-year lists of people's favorite papers from 2025, so I made a list of 16 #lipidtime studies from 2025 that I found interesting. Here they are in no particular order (please add more if you would like!), and here's to much more exciting science in 2026! 🧪

NYC Part 3

NYC part 2

Museum of Modern Art, NYC

Of course the lab flooded on the last day of experiments before the holidays 😂 🐠

Organelles do NOT have a single uniform pH. And if you think they must, because “protons diffuse fast,” this paper is for you. A thread on why that assumption is wrong; and what we found instead. 🧵 1/n

bioRxivpreprint@biorxivpreprint.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Organelles harbour pH gradients https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.12.694065v1

The lab's posters at the CellBio conference 😁

EMBO reception at the Pennsylvania academy of the fine arts 🎭

Philadelphia

Congratulations to our undergraduate student, Maia Wang, for winning the first prize in the brain art competition at the Rutgers brain health institute annual symposium for her watercolour of an axon! Great job to all our lab members who submitted 5 fantastic pieces 🖼️

New York