🔬 Cryo-EM Reveals the Molecular Machinery of Tubulin Assembly In a recent study from @ucdavis.bsky.social, #cryoEM and #CryoSPARC were used to uncover the molecular mechanism underlying α/β-tubulin biogenesis! Read more on the latest CyoSPARC blog 👉 cryosparc.com/blog/tubulin

Delighted that our story on chromatin architecture inside human cells is now published — the last chapter of my PhD. It was a pleasure working with @sergiocruzleon.bsky.social, @johannesbetz.bsky.social, and everyone involved. #teamtomo www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Molecular architecture of heterochromatin at the nuclear periphery of primary human cells - Nature Communications

The 3D organisation of chromatin inside a human cell is still not fully resolved. Here the authors reveal that in situ cryo-ET resolves individual nucleosomes and predicts DNA linkers, thus showing th...

nature.com

Max Planck Institute of Biophysics@mpibp.bsky.social · 2mo ago

How do 2 meters of DNA fit inside a nucleus you can barely see? 🧬 Our new study mapped individual nucleosomes inside human cells.

We're happy to announce our new preprint! 🐸 easymode: general pretrained networks for cellular cryo-ET. Segment ~20 cellular features – ribosomes, microtubules, mitochondria, nuclei & more – with zero model training. 🔗 doi.org/10.64898/202... 🧵👇

Added user defined coloring to coot1-trimmings - color by charge, residue type, density fit, etc. Only for latest commit of coot1 (--HEAD with homebrew); relies on a recent bugfix in coot1. github.com/olibclarke/c...

Job navigation in table view, searchable tags, 3D mesh optimized for masks, and many more features! 👉👉👉 github.com/hanjinliu/hi... Let's make our RELION directory a better place.

Thanks to @uermel.bsky.social from the @biohub.org for helping me upload my unpublished tomograms from my time at Caltech. FIB milled and cryosectionned Arabidopsis cells and Pollen tubes (thread 🧵).

MissAlignment is here to align all our Bananas🍌 and Birds🦅 into beautiful Pineapples🍍 ...Did that make sense? Either way, read Dimitry's thread🧵 for a vivid visual demonstration. This new software cooks! Look how crispy it made the #ChlamyDataset nucleosome👇. #TeamTomo is hitting escape velocity 🚀 🧪

Dimitry Tegunov@dtegunov.bsky.social · 4mo ago

We're super excited to share MissAlignment: a new ML-based approach to reference-free tilt series alignment, spearheaded by @martenchaillet.bsky.social. We think it's going to make your cryo-ET life a lot better. Preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Code: github.com/warpem/miss-... 🧶 Thread:

“vibe code cleanup specialist” is probably a good way of landing freelance gigs at the moment

Fun collaboration with the Herzik lab! Very cool to see #TeamTomo + STA directly capture the effects of the AWI at the single-particle level. we know it’s happening, but it’s striking to see it so clearly!

Brian Cook@bcryo.bsky.social · 6mo ago

7) Using cryoET and STA we find that aldolase particles stuck at the AWI not only adopt a single orientation, but these particles are also partially denatured at the AWI! Only when aldolase particles were pushed into bulk ice with SurfACT did they remain intact.

We're excited to announce the beta-release of #RELION-5.1! 🥳 This release has important updates on our #amyloid processing pipeline, as described in this preprint: doi.org/10.64898/202... There are also some tweaks for #teamtomo. #OpenSoftwareAcceleratesScience

More evidence also that the federal administration is NOT pursuing actual criminal activity- they have forced out the very prosecutors who were working on the social services fraud cases that had been the proclaimed casus belli for sending federal forces to MN.

Don Moynihan@donmoyn.bsky.social · 7mo ago

You should read this. It is the type of detail that experts in authoritarian regimes see as telling. In this case, state agents are offered impunity from higher ups, and the legal system is rendered inoperative as a mode of accountability. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/07/u...

So many lucid points below. Incl on how to think abt free speech issues brought up by backlash on campuses when illiberal right-wingers are invited to speak. Also, and this has agitated me since Jan 2025: those who railed against cancel culture seem at ease with state-enforced speech restrictions.

How "Free Speech Culture" Is Killing Free Speech: Part One

Blurring The Lines Between Official Censorship And Individual Criticism Built The Intellectual Foundation For Trump's Assault On Free Expression

popehat.com

I’m no historian, nor political scientist, and the term is definitely overused, but…

Yes, It’s Fascism

Until recently, I thought it a term best avoided. But now, the resemblances are too many and too strong to deny.

theatlantic.com

Initial attempt at replicating in relion (parameters in next post). This is for Aca2-RNA, using a 100k subset of the 2D-classified particles (no prior 3D cleanup). A 1-class ab initio in relion, then local refinement in relion (1.8deg searches+blush) gives a nominally 3.3Å map; 3.5 Å w/out blush.

Sjors Scheres@sjorsscheres.bsky.social · 12mo ago

These results are truly impressive! But I do worry that #cryoEM is moving into a phase where progress is made by optimizing parameter settings for black box programs. The devil is often in the details, and I am not sure how this could be implemented in #relion, as stated, without more info.

A molecular-resolution look into the near-native architecture of the spinach chloroplast🌱. This one was a long time in the oven, but we're happy to finally share our "version of record". What long-standing debates did we settle? Check back for a short thread🧵 on Monday. #TeamTomo #PlantScience 🧪🧶🧬🔬🌾

eLife@elife.bsky.social · 12mo ago

🌱 Using ‘compelling’ methods, including #CryoET, researchers mapped spinach thylakoid membranes at single-molecule precision, revealing how photosynthetic complexes are organised and settling long-standing debates on chloroplast architecture. buff.ly/j3TSIkn

Absolutely!

Alister Burt@alisterburt.bsky.social · 12mo ago

PSA: 9 billion USD in research funds stolen by publishers over a 5 year period for open access fees - this takes away from your ability to pay your people what they are worth. Preprints forever.

If you are thinking about the future of structural biology, we are too! Our two cents (Jürgen Plitzko and I) just got published online here: authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...

New Title Alert: AITom- an open-source platform for AI driven cellular electron cryo-tomography analysis. Learn more here: buff.ly/LLGhjvY #SBGrid #SBGridSoftware #StructuralBiology

Research

Xu Lab of Computational Biology

buff.ly

New preprint: In situ Architecture of #Plasmodesmata. Using #cryoET, #AlphaFold & proteomics, we uncover the native organization of plant intercellular nanopores. 🔗 doi.org/10.1101/2025... 🧪🧵1/n #teamtomo #PlantScience #Physcomitrium #Arabidopsis #cryoEM

Our methods paper made it to bioRxiv: doi.org/10.1101/2025... Full #cryoET workflows for #plant tissues. Plus some general tricks and tweaks on serial Lift-Out and cryo-FLM. 🧪🧵1/5 #teamtomo #PlantScience #Physcomitrium #Arabidopsis #cryoEM #CLEM

'cux good data don't wait!

Outstanding work from Christine, Stan and the whole team on this beautiful story. Wow.

Stan Yatskevich@stanislauy.bsky.social · last yr.

Happy to share our latest work on the structure and assembly of holocentric kinetochores! Huge thanks to Ines for a very fruitful collaboration, Claudio for all the support, and congratulations to Christine and all co-authors! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Neural net picker with a truly general model - no per dataset training required (at least if it works as advertised). Want to try this on some messy/mixed samples where other approaches struggle!

cryoEM papers@cryoempapers.bsky.social · last yr.

Self-supervised learning for generalizable particle picking in cryo-EM micrographs pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40628274/ #cryoEM

Running Phenix and stuck? Now you can ask the new Phenix chatbot anything from the 600-page tutorial about how to run any program. Big thanks to Tom Willinger for making this happen! Try it out: phenix-online.org/version_docs...

Frostbyte 🥶 socks provided by @hammerspace.com

And it’s done! Thanks to everyone who came out for the first edition of FrostByte, our event for the local computational cryo-EMers in the Bay Area ❄️ Special thanks to @joshdcryoem.bsky.social and Ariana Peck for help organizing 🙏

This paper combines two sort-of-crazy (in the best sense) approaches in cryoEM sample preparation: (1) Native, soft-landing electrospray ion beam deposition, followed by (2) deposition of amorphous ice, and reheating and freezing by laser flash melting. Has potential for time-resolved studies.

bioRxiv Biophysics@biorxiv-biophys.bsky.social · last yr.

Cryo-EM Sample Preparation with Soft-Landing and Laser Flash Melting https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.05.657968v1

Dual-axis cryo-ET on cryo-FIB milled lamella 🙂 www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-6... #CryoEM

This is a view from the surface of Comet 67P. The busy particles in the foreground are cosmic rays or bits of dust and ice. The dots moving in the background are stars.