I'm excited to announce a new preprint from the lab just posted to bioRxiv: “Retrograde trafficking inhibitors allosterically trap Get3 to block tail-anchored protein biogenesis.” www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Keenan Lab
@keenanlab.bsky.social
The Keenan Lab at UChicago keenanlab.bsd.uchicago.edu
New leader of the National Academy of Sciences Neil Shubin warns: ‘a society that loses science loses the future’ go.nature.com/4b2TXVG
Incoming US science academy chief vows to ‘double down’ on research
New leader of the National Academy of Sciences Neil Shubin warns: ‘a society that loses science loses the future’.
go.nature.com
Important to understand how Rs in Congress are attempting to weaponize a many decades old scandal to undermine the credibility of the government and scientists today. Great piece from @elizabethginexi.bsky.social open.substack.com/pub/elizabet...
I Went to Congress to Testify in Defense of NIH. Here's What Happened.
On June 30, 2026, I sat at a witness table, under oath, in the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, DC and testified before the House Oversight Committee’s Task Force on the Declassification o...
open.substack.com
Also another good synopsis here elizabethginexi.substack.com/p/summary-of...
Summary of Key Changes in OMB’s Proposed Federal Financial Assistance Rule
Russell Vought is going to destroy American Science
elizabethginexi.substack.com
AAlison Farrell@alisonfarrell.bsky.social · 2mo ago
For anyone applying for US federal funding, this is essential reading for changes governing grants. Stick it into an AI tool for a faster summary. www.federalregister.gov/documents/20...
Online Now: Design principles of a membrane-spanning ubiquitin ligase Online now:
Design principles of a membrane-spanning ubiquitin ligase
Williams et al. report structures of the MMM complex, a membrane-spanning E3 ligase. A single α helix suspends an activated RING domain below the plasma membrane to ubiquitylate the GPCR Smoothened and attenuate Hedgehog signaling. This work establishes a structural and mechanistic blueprint for how transmembrane E3s search and destroy key receptors in development, immunity, and metabolism.
dlvr.it
MIT president: Why so many optimistic scientists are losing heart www.statnews.com/2026/05/27/s... via @statnews.com
MIT president: Why so many optimistic scientists are losing heart
“This erosion of our strength is a loss for the nation,” writes MIT President Sally Kornbluth.
statnews.com
The first cut is the deepest: Cleavable signal peptides direct thousands of different nascent proteins to the endoplasmic reticulum. Oddly, SPs are all different and nevertheless cleaved with exquisite specificity. Our new cryo-EM structures + MD solve this paradox: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Structural basis of signal peptide recognition by the signal peptidase complex - Nature Communications
Signal peptides are highly variable, yet the signal peptidase complex processes them with remarkable specificity. Here, authors combine cryo-EM, molecular dynamics simulations and modeling to reveal a...
nature.com
🚨🧠🔬 Dopamine was discovered over a century ago, and has long been thought to only signal through metabotropic means. In our new preprint, we provide evidence that dopamine can directly signal through the "orphan" GluD ionotropic receptors. More to come! #iGluRs #neuroscience #dopamine #cryoEM
bioRxiv Biophysics@biorxiv-biophys.bsky.social · 3mo agoGluDs are ionotropic dopamine receptors tuned by G-proteins https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.10.723887v1
Excited to share our work uncovering SNOR, a ribosome-associated factor that promotes translation restart after dormancy published in Nature!! This was, as usual, a wonderful collaborative effort between our group and the Mattei Lab @simonemattei.bsky.social @embl.org www.nature.com/articles/s41...
I'm incredibly honored at election into the American Academy for Arts and Sciences. And Jodi Foster and Rita Moreno too! Credit goes to the amazing people I've been lucky to work with over many years. www.amacad.org/news/new-mem...
Electing New Members: Recognizing America’s 250th Anniversary
Building on America’s 250-year-old commitment to knowledge, the American Academy of Arts & Sciences announces the leaders in academia, the arts, industry, journalism, philanthropy, policy, research, a...
amacad.org
Congratulations to Manu Hegde, Group Leader & Joint Head of @cellbiol-mrclmb.bsky.social, who has been elected a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Congratulations also to the #LMBalumni joining him, Julie Ahringer & Edward Egelman. Read more: mrclmb.ac.uk/news-events/... #LMBNews
Very proud of Kevin Choi, who was a postbac in my lab starting in the midst of the most difficult circumstances possible - during the pandemic and was a spectacular scientist. Congratulations to Kevin and all co-authors on this paper.
Hiten Madhani@hitenmadhani.bsky.social · 4mo agoAnother banger from my UCSF/Genentech Hall colleagues Yifan Cheng and David Julius! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Very sad to hear of the passing today of our UCSF colleague Mike Bishop at the age of 90. A legendary and inspiring figure. He also led UCSF as Chancellor. Have a listen to his Nobel lecture. youtube.com/watch?v=CDv7...
Michael Bishop, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1989: Official Lecture
YouTube video by Nobel Prize
youtube.com
I've been leading a big project at Methods in Enzymology over the past year or so: editing three back-to-back-to-back volumes of articles describing the latest advances in methods for studying lipids and membranes — thank you to the 50 #lipidtime luminaries who contributed the 51 chapters! Details 👇
China pledges billion-dollar spending boost for science www.nature.com/articles/d41...
China pledges billion-dollar spending boost for science
Funding for national laboratories and important research projects would increase under the government’s plans.
nature.com
Exciting new discovery from @jimwellsucsf.bsky.social and coworkers, a new class of potential cancer antigens flipped onto the cell surface via autophagy-associated exocytosis, featuring first author and former PhD student Corleone Delaveris! #proudofalumni
Stella Hurtley@smhsci.bsky.social · 5mo agoJust published in @science.org Autophagolysosomal exocytosis inverts Src kinase onto the cell surface in cancer | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
China increases science funding again (by at least 7-% over the next 5 years) as it pledges billion-dollar spending boost for science 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...
China pledges billion-dollar spending boost for science
Funding for national laboratories and important research projects would increase under the government’s plans.
nature.com
Nature research paper: Convergent MurJ flippase inhibition by phage lysis proteins go.nature.com/4aAWHKb
Convergent MurJ flippase inhibition by phage lysis proteins - Nature
A common mechanism of inhibition of the essential lipid II flippase MurJ by three distinct phage-encoded single-gene lysis proteins provides insights into potential new targets for antimicrobial development.
go.nature.com
🧵Antibiotic resistance is a public health crisis. But viruses called phages have been solving this problem for millennia. New research in @nature.com reveals how 3 different phages attack the same weak spot—a protein called MurJt—potentially leading to a new class of antibiotics.
Happy to finally share the amazing results of our long-term collaboration with Karin Reinisch’s lab on how bridge lipid-transfer proteins (BLTPs) cooperate with partner proteins to orchestrate lipid delivery. A quick thread (1/7) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
BREAKING: Hundreds gathered at San Francisco’s Ocean Beach to form a human banner reading “It Was Murder 🇺🇸 ICE Out,
“Uruguay did what most nations still call impossible: it built a power grid that runs almost entirely on renewables—at half the cost of fossil fuels. The physicist who led that transformation says the same playbook could work anywhere—if governments have the courage to change the rules.”
Uruguay’s Renewable Charge: A Small Nation, A Big Lesson For The World
Uruguay built a power grid that runs 99% on renewables—at half the cost of fossil fuels. Here’s how its bold energy overhaul became a global model.
forbes.com
Final version is out! Our large-scale cryo-ET dataset 🔬 of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii 🦠 is now published in @cp-molcell.bsky.social Huge collaborative effort! So glad to see the community already using it to develop new resources & tools. Check it out here: shorturl.at/z4i4c #CryoEM #CryoET
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 agoOrganelles harbour pH gradients https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.12.694065v1
It’s out! Using cryo-ET in Dicty cells, we take a fresh in situ look at vaults. Surprisingly, we uncover vaults associated with ER and NE membranes, and find that many vaults enclose ribosomes in defined orientations, opening new avenues to their cellular function! www.biorxiv.org/lookup/conte...
bioRxivpreprint@biorxivpreprint.bsky.social · 8mo agoThe vault associates with membranes in situ https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.12.693869v1
Our study on the molecular function of translational activators for mitochondrial protein synthesis is published: rdcu.be/eSWxT A great collaboration with @stirlingchurchman.bsky.social and @sshaolab.bsky.social with structural work from our @pelleeas.bsky.social Funded by @kawresearch.bsky.social
Translational activators align mRNAs at the small mitoribosomal subunit for translation initiation
Nature Structural & Molecular Biology - Mitochondrial translational activators (TAs) facilitate transcript-specific translation. Using selective ribosome profiling and cryo-electron microscopy,...
rdcu.be
Fresh from the deep—a rarely seen giant in Monterey Bay. 🤩 Last month, MBARI Senior Scientist Steven Haddock and the Biodiversity & Biooptics Team spotted a seven-arm octopus (Haliphron atlanticus) holding a crimson helmet jelly (Periphylla periphylla). Learn more: www.mbari.org/animal/seven...
Seven-arm octopus • Animals of the Deep • MBARI
The seven-arm octopus is a rarely seen deep-sea giant who feeds on gelatinous animals.
mbari.org