So everyone should want to work @stjuderesearch.bsky.social! Less than 24 hours after the request we have the football on the big screen!
Susan Lea
@smlea.bsky.social
Scientist at St Jude using structural biology to try and understand how things work - views are my own not my institutions
Excited to announce that our research group will be joining the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital Department of Chemical Biology & Therapeutics in September. 🥼 🧬 🧪 @stjuderesearch.bsky.social
Happy to see our work on SLCO2A1 with @smlea.bsky.social, Nakanishi and Newstead labs out now. Important insight into how prostaglandin and many drugs are transported. Hats off to @weitse-hsu.bsky.social for computational work! @oxfordbiochemistry.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Structural basis for prostaglandin and drug transport via SLCO2A1
Nature Communications - SLCO2A1 (also known as OATP2A1) is responsible for the transport of eicosanoids, including prostaglandins (PGs), as well as of a subset of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory...
nature.com
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/...
Research Group Leader Tenure Track - Structural Studies - LMB 2775 - Medical Research Council
Location: Cambridge. Vacancy: Research Group Leader Tenure Track - Structural Studies - LMB 2775. Closing Date: 16/03/2026, 23:55
mrc.tal.net
Mechanistic insights into RNA chaperoning by Ro60 and La autoantigens: Cell www.cell.com/cell/fulltex... Excited to share our collaborative work with the Wolin group examining RNA folding
Mechanistic insights into RNA chaperoning by Ro60 and La autoantigens
Structural and functional analyses elucidate the mechanisms by which two ATP-independent RNA chaperones, Ro60 and La, recognize and unfold misfolded RNAs. Diverse noncoding RNAs are associated with th...
cell.com
#StJudeResearch - Jim Downing reminds us of the founding documents for St Jude placing research at the heart of new treatments for catastrophic childhood disease - knowledge generation as our core activity
and apparently reanimation as well as Elvis will be in the house later..the full Memphis experience for my first Faculty Retreat #StJudeResearch
Berks and @smlea.bsky.social labs also found yet a different BAM architecture in Flavobacterium johnsoniae, another member of Bacteroidota. doi.org/10.1038/s415...
A new paradigm for outer membrane protein biogenesis in the Bacteroidota - Nature
Structural and biochemical studies of the β-barrel-assembly machinery from Flavobacterium johnsoniae reveal a subunit composition and assembly that are distinct from those of the canonical Escherichia coli complex.
doi.org
Congratulations to Xiaobo @xiaobozhong.bsky.social on his great paper! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
The stomatin-like protein StlP organizes membrane microdomains to govern polar growth in filamentous actinobacteria under hyperosmotic stress - Nature Communications
Actinobacteria grow by inserting new cell wall material at the cell poles. Here, Zhong et al. show that a stomatin-like protein modulates polar growth under hyperosmotic stress by facilitating the for...
nature.com
Last few days to apply for this:
Brian Ferguson@viropractor.bsky.social · last yr.There is a Postdoc job available in my lab to study fundamental mechanisms of antiviral immunity, specifically in the context of viral nucleic acid sensing. Please take a look here and contact me if interested: #immunosky #virology 🧪 www.jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/50254/
Less than half an hour ago, a peaceful transfer of power has taken place at #BPS2025! Join me in welcoming Madam President of the @biophysicalsoc.bsky.social, Professor Lynnmarie Thompson! And Madam President Elect, Professor Karen Fleming! 👏👏👏👏👏
A new structural paradigm for outer membrane protein biogenesis in the Bacteroidota https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.02.17.638638v1
It really is amazing. Another related point is that Academia wouldn't actually be doing its job if it *didn't* send the bulk of its knowledge and highly trained individuals into other parts of society.
Also, it is a pyramidal structure. Not all post docs can progress to become PIs. I would wish that there were some mid-level permanent staff scientist positions for those that would like to continue bench work instead of taking a more administrative role as PI, but as things are now, it is PI or out
Hive mind: I seem to remember having seen a plot/analysis showing that pLDDT is correlated to conservation but my mind or Google-fu isn’t finding it
It is a great honour to invite you to a symposium to celebrate the career of Mark Carrington. An exciting set of talks, particularly if you are fascinated by trypanosomes.
1/ Thrilled to announce Dr. Elizabeth Wright as the inaugural winner of the June Almeida Award for #cryoem! 🎉Elizabeth’s pioneering work in both cryo-ET methods and structural virology made her a perfect fit for this award. Congrats, Elizabeth!
19F modified amino acids such as trifluoromethyl-Phe integrated into proteins can give strong, clean signals for complex samples, but the results are difficult to interpret in terms of structure This study uses "ring current design" to increase 19F chemical shift dispersion and interpretability 🧬🧶🧲
Sammy Chan@sammyhschan.bsky.social · 2y agoOut now! How to rationally design 19F labels to study structures of large biomol complexes, incl in cells. Using engineered ring currents, and designed with MD and AF. With co-first author Julian Streit, and Saifu Daya and John Christodoulou. #nmrchat #compchem www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Americans are now one-third less likely to die from cancer at the same ages as Americans in 1990
Clap in the face reminder when judged on PhD/post doc years even after >12 years: "Kovacs' record in microbiology is somewhat lighter, particularly early career lack of first-authored leadership on high level publications" ... and I am still in academic science #nevertheless
You may recall, we used a similar technique to find plasmid-dependent phages, by putting the same plasmid in two different bacteria. Now we do it for all sorts of phages! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Diverse and abundant phages exploit conjugative plasmids - Nature Communications
Some phages use plasmid-encoded conjugation proteins as receptors to infect their bacterial hosts, making their host range dependent on horizontal transfer of the plasmid. Here, the authors present a ...
nature.com
Phages! At the Disco! Here's Ellie (the first author's) thread on our new preprint on how to discover weird new phages using glowing bacteria:
Ellie Rand@ellie-rand.bsky.social · 2y agoGet ready to dance, our paper – Phage DisCo: targeted discovery of bacteriophages by co-culture – has been pre-printed! 🪩 This has been a really fun project to work on with @sianowen.bsky.social, @baym.lol, @nquinoneso.bsky.social, and our two talented undergrads Kesther and Carmen!
We will be hosting 3rd Full Circle Symposium for Native Biologists hosted at UCSF in April 2025! We aim to build community and provide meaningful opportunities for Native scientists. If you are a Native biologist who is interested plz fill this out to stay up to date: forms.gle/AN7nfkhdB3Fv...
I am about to be recruiting two post-docs to work on cryoEM and cryoET of amyloid aggregates... Anyone interested please drop me a line while the wheels of our HR department turn.............
Can I ask you to share a PhD advert at Bristol Uni please? Rhomboid proteases play a role in neurons that is essential for life- but it is not characterised. Got a student interested in cell biology, electrophysiology and neurobiology? Send them our way! tinyurl.com/56f24f7c
