10 years Bowman lab @bowchro.bsky.social anniversary today, so we are treated to a complete history with all side bets talk. Congratulations 🎉
Centre for Mechanochemical Cell Biology
@mechanochemistry.org
Interdisciplinary research centre at the University of Warwick (UK) with the mission to understand active self-organisation of living systems with a focus on molecular machines, cellular interfaces and tissue mechanobiology
A mystery at @mechanochemistry.org ! There’s a carrot that is neatly placed in the corridor. None is admitting to owning it. How did it get here? Where will it go next? 🥕
We had a blast. Thanks to everyone who came and made this such a memorable event.
Last but not least, Kristen Verhey's @kjverhey1.bsky.social closing keynote. She starts off with her top 5 of Rob's papers over the years
Erik Schäffer @schaefferlab.bsky.social uses silicon nanospheres to measure the forces of ultra-weak plant kinesins with sub femtoNewton resolution.
Mark Dodding @markdodding.bsky.social talks about cargo-dependent activation of kinesin-1 through the light chain. Phosphorylation by NEK10 kinase suppresses membrane association of KLC2 specifically and controls lysosome transport by cooperation with cargo adapters.
Our own Masanori Mishima is up next discussing weak electrostatic interactions of motors and tracks that can be regulated by post translational modifications with examples from phosphorylation of KIF23/MKLP1 and arginylation and myosin II.
Varun Ramaswamy is describing how he tackled the difficult problem of determining the structure of full length of HSET
What happens when science is free to ask any question? It leads to discoveries we didn’t plan for – but now depend on. This #EuropeDay, we support #ProtectWhatMatters, celebrating the freedom that makes frontier research possible. Read the stories 👉 buff.ly/SRCDWoW and have a happy Europe Day! 🇪🇺
Starting off today is Marija Zanic @zaniclab.bsky.social who introduces us to SSNA1, a sensor for microtubule damage and microtubule stabiliser, that increases their rigidity and protects against breakage
Good morning! Day 2 of our Motors and Filaments meeting is under way.
Dinner impressions. Now everyone really knackered after a quiz that felt more like an exam on physical biology of the cytoskeleton. Getting very competitive during the marking process...
The "Vanderbilt girls" on the way to the dinner in the Tocil Wood bluebells.
Evening keynote from Rob Cross summarising 35 years of research to understand how kinesin walks along microtubules featuring the neck linker as position sensor, the load-dependence of dwell time and directionality of steps and the type of microtubule track.
Yean-Ming (Cross lab) talks about the dynamics of different tubulin isotypes and interrogates the lateral interaction regions, generating a chimera that assembled so readily that they also assemble in GDP.
Some poster session impressions from motors and filaments meeting
Glenn Carrington (Peckham lab) shows the structure of myosin-5 in a two head bound state on actin and highlights strain-associated changes in the motor domain that explains different ADP release rates from leading and trailing heads.
Some happy faces behind the scenes - this is a reunion of @joehowardd.bsky.social with his former diploma student Frauke Hussmann
Beth Lawrence (Manchester) talks about her postdoc project in the @zaniclab.bsky.social where she showed that human CLASP2 promotes rescues and suppresses catastrophies without affecting microtubule assembly and disassembly speeds. CLASP can convert the pre-catastrophe intermediate state to growth
Jingyi Luo (Ti lab) identifies a single amino acid change in beta3-tubulin that can sensitise cancer cells to paclitaxel by allosteric changes to the taxane binding pocket and by directly stabilising the microtubule lattice by increasing structured water molecules and delayed GTP hydrolysis.
Change of machine: Andrew McMahon describes the elangosome that builds the bacterial cell wall. He is using Minflux to track individual rodA synthase molecules.
Flash talk session 2 with @eva-kreysing-lab.bsky.social talking about how neuronal maturation on stiff and soft substrates is regulated via piezo1 and TTR. Amy Godfrey introduces accessible microfluidics that is simple, cheap, fast and reliable and uses it to bend microtubules...
Now some theory of beating cilia from Benjamin Friedrich @friedrich-group.bsky.social describing a stochastic dynamic sliding control model.
Alice Brinkworth continues the flagellum theme with cryo electron tomography of microgamete cells from Plasmodium revealing non-canonical microtubule arrangements
Girish Mali @dyneinassembly.bsky.social looks at the recycling of motile cilia after they partially disassembled their cilia under stress.
Fast and furious flash talks as poster teasers next. Varun teasing us on doublecortin effects on the microtubule, Vishakha talks about slow motion stepping of kinesin, Abdulquddus describes how he uses BioAFM in cytokinesis, Shivani talks about force response of KIF1C in the presence of FHF...
Time-resolved cryo electron microscopy 🙃 from Carolyn Moores
Carolyn Moores focussed on doublecortin today, a microtubule nucleator stabilising 13 protofilament microtubules specifically. She also acknowledges inspiring and supportive mentors Rob and Ron.
Apolena Zounarova (Straube & Diez labs) talks about dynein-mediated sliding
Marcus Braun discusses how tau changes the microtubule environment for motors and other MAPs