In #cryoET, separating closely apposed membrane segmentations into distinct labels can be difficult. Small artefacts may connect otherwise separate membranes, requiring tedious slice-by-slice correction. To address this, @jasmred.bsky.social and I developed MemSplit, a napari based workflow.

My personal summer of code continues with another ChimeraX plugin - this time, MorphometricsX! Load quantified meshes from morphometrics (or pycurv) in ChimeraX with color-by-quantification and display alongside tomos and particles. Coming to the toolshed soon! #teamtomo github.com/baradlab/mor...

Your cryo-EM work deserves to be seen 🔬 Submit your poster or talk abstract for the annual New England cryo-EM symposium by July 15th. The meeting will be held September 8th at MIT. This is the place to be if you are doing structural biology in the Northeast! Register: cryoem.mit.edu/2026-ne-cryo...

1/7 New preprint: we found that Chlamydomonas carries a giant and unexpectedly elaborate chloroplast RNA polymerase with 12 previously unknown subunits, overturning the idea that the complexity of this organellar enzyme emerged during plant terrestrialization! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

The structure of a 2-MDa chloroplast RNA polymerase reveals unexpected evolutionary complexity

Transcription in chloroplasts depends on the Plastid-Encoded RNA polymerase (PEP), a bacterial-derived enzyme whose catalytic core remains encoded by the highly reduced genome inherited from the cyano...

biorxiv.org

How does a cell remodel the ER membrane into a lipid droplet? Excited to share our new bioRxiv preprint, where we find that regulated opening of the seipin ring defines a functional ER–lipid droplet interface — and identify SMLR1 as a regulator of this transition. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

I had such a fun time teaching at the U Michigan Cryo-ET Course this week! I taught quantitative ultrastructure analysis and we made cool figures like these! My course materials are at baradlab.com/michigan_tutorial for anyone to try. Workflow include mesh refinement and thickness measurement!

Very sad to learn that Steve White has passed away.

Finally out in @Cellcellpress! Proteins with long IDRs are prone to misfolding during protein synthesis. This is prevented by mRNA 3′UTRs that act as mRNA-based IDR chaperones. www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

mRNA 3′ UTRs chaperone intrinsically disordered regions to control protein activity

Highly conserved mRNA 3′ UTRs act as co-translational chaperones for intrinsically disordered regions (IDRs), preventing inter-domain misfolding and enabling biogenesis of fully active proteins.

cell.com

The Thermo Fisher situation keeps getting worse. We've now collected 450+ problematic images presented as verification data in TF's antibody catalog. This includes: 🖌️ Dozens more images with duplications or painting 🖨️ Hundreds of blots that all share the same background (behold slideshow below)

I've just released a small open-source utility for RELION users: relion_tracker. RELION stores a lot of useful information in the *_optimiser.star files, but I often found myself repeatedly grepping STAR files to see how metrics were changing across iterations.

Long shot, but, with lots of labs turning from crystallography to cryo-EM I’m wondering if anyone knows of labs potentially looking to offload some of their old crystallography supplies to a PUI with potential screening hits and really eager students but nothing to harvest with, etc.?

One, perhaps two, of our postdocs are moving on to faculty positions this year (more news soon!). While they're truly irreplaceable, it does mean that we have openings for new members to join our team studying #cilia. If interested, please apply: academicpositions.harvard.edu/postings/15526

@johanduchene.bsky.social @sholtodavid.bsky.social Spent the last hour looking, found ten more apparently manipulated Western blots in Thermo Fisher's antibody verification data (across eight different catalogued products). Thread below. www.thermofisher.com/antibody/pro...

A huge milestone for the lab! The first Ph.D. from the lab, Dr. Jaimin Rana. In keeping with my training and German tradition, he received a Doktorhut! Jaimin graduates with 2 first-author manuscripts (one more to come soon) and 5 additional manuscripts in which he is a contributing author.

Measles is coming back. Until now, we didn't know how human antibodies actually recognize and neutralize the virus. No structure of either measles surface protein bound to a human antibody had ever been reported. We set out to change that.

New preprint 🚀 ❄️ We developed Autogrid-compatible HPF planchettes that enable direct freezing of clipped EM grids and streamline integration with cryo-FIB workflows ✔️ improved grid stability ✔️ reduced handling ✔️ robust vitrification (🦠 🧫 🧠) A step toward routine HPF for complex samples #teamtomo

Excited to share our paper about copick, a dataset API and toolkit for collaborative annotation and analysis of #cryoET data! Whether you're picking particles or curating segmentations, copick reduces friction and brings #OME-Zarr to cryoET without breaking pipelines. 🧵👇 doi.org/10.1002/pro.70578

1/ Excited to share our preprint! 🥳 Degradation of aromatic compounds, including BTEX pollutants, requires highly endergonic aromatic ring reduction. Using #cryoEM and in situ #cryoET, we show how BCRII couples electron bifurcation modules in one giant redox machine www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

I am excited to share our most recent work collaborating with @centriolelab.bsky.social and @stearnslab.bsky.social to look at the ciliary base of mammalian multiciliated cells w/ cryo-ET, XL/MS, and U-ExM www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Molecular architecture of the ciliary base in mammalian multiciliated cells https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.04.05.716577v1

The LSI labs of David H. Sherman and Filipa Pereira have teamed up to boost bacterial production of a long-elusive compound, leading to a potential new treatment for drug-resistant malaria. Read more: research.umich.edu/research-sto...

Neurodegeneration risk variants promote lysosomal TMEM106B fibrilaccumulation https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.26.714634v1

Excited to share this collaborative work with Ward and Petrucelli Labs! We show that two major genetic risk factors for #neurodegeneration and cognitive decline converge on TMEM106B fibrils accumulating within lysosomes. A LOT of work packed in here 🧠🔬 Preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

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

Holy smoke. What ultimately happened???

Remember that everyone you meet is fighting their own battle, sometimes with amino acids

Incredibly proud of our small but mighty team at Interdict Bio as we bring the interdictor modality closer to the clinic! Check out our first publication that lays the foundation for context-dependent translation modulators as a therapeutic approach for cancer! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Context-dependent translation inhibition as a cancer therapeutic modality - Nature Communications

Robust protein synthesis by the ribosome is required for rapid cancer growth. Here authors present interdictors, small molecule inhibitors of protein synthesis with context-dependent activity that inh...

nature.com

Graduate student Martin Fernandez just won the best poster 🏆 at the Gordon Research Conference on ‘Frontotemporal Dementia and Related Rare Dementias’ #proudPI

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/...

Happy birthday to one of my favourite haters, Charles Darwin