Yeasts in liquid nitrogen. Now out @elife.bsky.social elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre...

Shashi Thutupalli @stpalli.bsky.social · 2y ago

We exposed yeast to -196 C freeze-thaw (without cryoprotectants) and interesting things happened -- the survival went up from about 1% to close to 80% in just 25 cycles! The preprint is out and feedback is highly welcome -- www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

With all the discussion about the 45mer, here is our story of what might precede that. And this story has a 42 — the atomic number of Molybdenum. If the origins of complex molecules, protocells and perhaps life, interest you, read our latest preprint — arxiv.org/abs/2601.11013

De novo emergence of metabolically active protocells

A continuous route from a disordered soup of simple chemical feedstocks to a functional protocell -- a compartment that metabolizes, grows, and propagates -- remains elusive. Here, we show that a homo...

arxiv.org

Shashi Thutupalli @stpalli.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Protocells from three inorganic salts, some formaldehyde and water? They grow? They synthesise organic molecules of core biomolecular classes: amino acids, sugars, lipid-like motifs? And, there are similar structures in today's oceans? Yes! Read on. arxiv.org/abs/2601.11013

Protocells from three inorganic salts, some formaldehyde and water? They grow? They synthesise organic molecules of core biomolecular classes: amino acids, sugars, lipid-like motifs? And, there are similar structures in today's oceans? Yes! Read on. arxiv.org/abs/2601.11013

De novo emergence of metabolically active protocells

A continuous route from a disordered soup of simple chemical feedstocks to a functional protocell -- a compartment that metabolizes, grows, and propagates -- remains elusive. Here, we show that a homo...

arxiv.org

With all the discussion about the 45mer, here is our story of what might precede that. And this story has a 42 — the atomic number of Molybdenum. If the origins of complex molecules, protocells and perhaps life, interest you, read our latest preprint — arxiv.org/abs/2601.11013

De novo emergence of metabolically active protocells

A continuous route from a disordered soup of simple chemical feedstocks to a functional protocell -- a compartment that metabolizes, grows, and propagates -- remains elusive. Here, we show that a homo...

arxiv.org

Shashi Thutupalli @stpalli.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Protocells from three inorganic salts, some formaldehyde and water? They grow? They synthesise organic molecules of core biomolecular classes: amino acids, sugars, lipid-like motifs? And, there are similar structures in today's oceans? Yes! Read on. arxiv.org/abs/2601.11013

Protocells from three inorganic salts, some formaldehyde and water? They grow? They synthesise organic molecules of core biomolecular classes: amino acids, sugars, lipid-like motifs? And, there are similar structures in today's oceans? Yes! Read on. arxiv.org/abs/2601.11013

De novo emergence of metabolically active protocells

A continuous route from a disordered soup of simple chemical feedstocks to a functional protocell -- a compartment that metabolizes, grows, and propagates -- remains elusive. Here, we show that a homo...

arxiv.org

Non-motile microbes are not prisoners of diffusive transport. Just their metabolic activity can be sufficient to stir up the ambient fluid and cause explosive long-range dispersal -- a "metabolic firework". Our latest work -- arxiv.org/abs/2512.16288

We're looking for creative engineers/tinkerers/tool builders that want to engage with cutting-edge research questions in our lab at the @ncbsbangalore.bsky.social Please help me share the word!

The Skysynth feature of from the Vera Rubin Observatory (@vrubinobs.bsky.social) is absolutely magical. Explore cosmic sounds. To get an idea, turn on your speakers for the movie below -- it's amazing! rubinobservatory.org/news/rubin-f...

As always, Will is a master storyteller! Here’s a great thread about our recent paper.

Will Ratcliff@wcratcliff.bsky.social · last yr.

1/27 We have a new paper out! Turns out that snowflake yeast have been hiding a secret from us - they've evolved a (very!) crude circulatory system. Not with blood vessels or a heart, but through spontaneous fluid flows powered by their metabolism. 🧪🔬 www.science.org/doi/full/10....

We have a new paper out on an issue that has been discussed for more than a century -- how can fundamental biophysical constraints on nutrient transport be overcome to solve one of the most significant challenges associated with the evolution of multicellularity? www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

We’re celebrating the newest graduate from my lab — Dr. Charuhansini Tvishamayi! Those of you in Bangalore, free next Sunday and interested, please come, it will be a pleasure! Poster courtesy: members of the lab.

Such a cool finding, this! So great to see this since my group and I have discussed for years about how measuring the "energetic content" of cells using so called "bomb calorimetry" can be very misleading -- all gradient information is lost that way and clearly it is significant!

André Nadler@nadlerlab.bsky.social · last yr.

Why are biological membranes asymmetric, with different lipids in the two bilayer leaflets? Discovered in the 70s, lipid asymmetry is linked to many cellular processes, but why the cell needs it is largely unclear. @pavelbarahtjan.bsky.social addresses this question: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

We exposed yeast to -196 C freeze-thaw (without cryoprotectants) and interesting things happened -- the survival went up from about 1% to close to 80% in just 25 cycles! The preprint is out and feedback is highly welcome -- www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Convergent cellular adaptation to a quiescence-like state in response to freeze-thaw stress

Rapid freeze-thaw is an extreme mechano-chemical perturbation that results in very low survival of many organisms (as low as a fraction of a percent). Here, using experimental evolution, we show that ...

biorxiv.org

I first visited KITP-UCSB as a grad student in 2003, and immediately fell in love with it. Here is the story of how my notebook from a 2010 KITP program I co-ran, on evolutionary cell biology, became the source of research questions that keep me busy to this day! www.kitp.ucsb.edu/sites/defaul...

Before I start posting about newer results on this platform, here is a video from our most recent paper -- www.nature.com/articles/s41...