An in vivo examination of Dynein-Cargo complex formation. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.08.02.742322v1
Xin Xiang
@xianglab.bsky.social
dynein, dynactin, Lis1, kinesin-1, Aspergillus nidulans as a genetic system. Opinions are my own.
Our latest review is out. We take a deep dive into the human mutations in microtubule motors that drive devastating neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative diseases. Taking in motor protein biophysics, animal models of disease as well as patient phenotypes. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
Our newest review on septins as makers & breakers of membrane contacts in J Neurochem Fun writing with new PhD grad (and FASEB Septin Conference A/V Assistant Extrordinaire) TJ Holt Thanks @mcmurraylab.bsky.social @sergemostowylab.bsky.social for input. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Septins in the Middle—Makers and Breakers of Membrane Contact Sites
Septins are a family of GTP-binding proteins that assemble into heteromeric oligomers and polymers, associating with specific membrane domains and organelles according to their subunit composition. G...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Very excited to share our new review on the complexity of SMA genetics, now online @cp-trendsgenetics.bsky.social! General interest in complex genetics? Want to know more about long-read sequencing? Segmental duplications? ✅✅✅ Have a look! www.cell.com/trends/genet...
The SMN locus in the T2T era: Structure, gene conversion, and clinical implications
Long-read sequencing, paralog-aware variant calling, and telomere-to-telomere (T2T) human genome assemblies now enable the resolution of copy-, haplotype-, and nucleotide-level complexities in segment...
cell.com
Peer-reviewed version of our study led by @aliceeseola.bsky.social first seen on @biorxiv-cellbio.bsky.social showing the exquisite level of control of organelle trafficking & autophagy exerted during plant infection by the blast fungus. Thanks to all co-authors. www.cell.com/cell-reports...
Synchronous spatiotemporal control of autophagy and organelle trafficking is necessary for infection by Magnaporthe oryzae
The blast fungus forms a force-generating appressorium for plant infection. Eseola et al. show how individual spore cells adopt distinct fates, trafficking organelles to the appressorium or undergoing...
cell.com
Aga Kendrick and I are co-chairing a session, “Intracellular Transport Logistics across Scales” at #CellBio2026, December 12-16, in San Diego this year! 🔬🌞 Abstract deadline for talks is JUNE 9. To be considered for our session, select “Cytoskeleton and Motility” as a topic area. See you there!
Really happy to share our latest work on the dynactin complex. We were so surprised to find that overexpression of dynactin p50 causes part of the dynactin complex to form clusters that contain our recently discovered dynactin assembly factor VezA/vezatin. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
New preprint alert! Ever wonder if cells can talk to each other? Tunneling nanotubes (TNTs) are tiny bridges between cells used to pass organelles, nucleic acids, proteins & even viruses but we've never seen inside them clearly. Until now! 👇🧵 biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.27.728322v1
Huntingtin polyglutamine expansions misdirect axonal transport by perturbing motor and adaptor recruitment: iScience www.cell.com/iscience/ful...
Huntingtin polyglutamine expansions misdirect axonal transport by perturbing motor and adaptor recruitment
Molecular network; Molecular neuroscience; Cellular neuroscience
cell.com
New preprint from the lab, looking at how multiple different adaptors interact with dynein! Work led by @amicoennio.bsky.social. Available now on BioRxiv: doi.org/10.64898/202...
doi.org
Ennio@amicoennio.bsky.social · 3mo agoNew preprint! We asked a simple question: How do very different activating adaptors all activate dynein? Turns out: same architecture, wildly different implementations 🧵👇 doi.org/10.64898/202...
New work from Niccolo Mencacci @feinberg.northwestern.edu et al., with contribution from @depaceraffa.bsky.social in our lab at the NIH, identifies pathogenic variants in BORCS5, encoding a subunit of the BORC complex, as a cause of a severe neurodevelopmental disorder. www.jci.org/articles/vie...
A wonderful write up of what motivates our work! madeforthis.duke.edu/stories/lear...
Learning the Secrets of Mega-Cells - Made for This: The Duke Campaign
BY ADRIANA V. DIFRANCO What do fungi in the forest and human placentas have in common? It sounds like a riddle, but it’s actually a fascinating biological conundrum. Fungi and placentas have two of th...
madeforthis.duke.edu
Happy to share that the bulk of my PhD work is now on bioRxiv! We followed SsdA, the A. nidulans ortholog of yeast RNA-binding protein Ssd1, and found it forms motile mRNP puncta in hyphae. [1/7] www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Check out our first lab preprint: A real team effort to understand the Plasmodium GAPM proteins, which form part of a essential bridge between the parasite's cytoskeleton and motility apparatus. Below is a sneak peek of some beautiful microscopy - light and electron! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Excited to share our work on the structure and function of cytoplasmic lattices within mouse embryos. A collaborative effort with @niakanlab.bsky.social and work led by @kashishsingh.bsky.social and @inaharasimov.bsky.social . It is now out on BioRxiv: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Delighted to announce the posting of our latest preprint, which links stress-induced relocalisation of multiple organelles by dynein to adaptive changes in gene expression in the nucleus (1/n) 🧵 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Congratulations to Prasanna Satpute-Krishnan (@pskcellbio.bsky.social) for winning the USU Henry C. Wu Award for Excellence in Basic Science Research!
From MBoC… Cells move cargo in clever ways. John Salogiannis (University of Vermont) reveals how the protein AcbdA helps peroxisomes hitchhike on early endosomes—connecting intracellular transport with fatty acid metabolism. www.molbiolcell.org/doi/full/10....
The Reck-Peterson lab at Weill Cornell Medicine is seeking a technician or staff scientist to work on Aspergillus projects. Broad background in fungal biology and techniques required. Bioinformatics skills preferred. Find out more at: reckpetersonlab.org.
#CellBio2025 This Wednesday, Dec 10 at 9:00 AM in Room 122 Please add it to your schedule!
Eric (“VJ”) Rubenstein@vjrubenstein.bsky.social · 8mo agoJust one week away until #CellBio2025! Please plan to join us for a sUPeR speakER lineup at the #EndoplasmicReticulum Minisymposium! Dec 10 at 9 AM @ascbiology.bsky.social
Give the laurels to the one who earned them. A thread that aims to attribute credits to the originators of important ‘firsts’ This is on the making. Please contribute to accurate historical records with comments and reading recommendations 🧵👇
My postdoctoral mentor N. Ronald Morris passed away on Nov. 20, 2025. He was 92. I am forever grateful to his mentorship and his visionary use of Aspergillus nidulans as a genetic system to explore fundamental questions in cell biology. www.hillsboroughfuneralhome.com/obituaries/D...
I had fun checking out the endomap site (endomap.hms.harvard.edu/network). Surprisingly, PRPF40A (pre-mRNA splicing, Huntingtin-interacting, Aspergillus homolog Prp40A involved in cytoplasmic dynein function) connects to axonemal dynein light intermediate chain polypeptide, which is interesting!
EndoMAP | NETWORK
Collection of endosomal protein protein interactions captured by cross-linking mass spectrometry and modeled via AlphaFold multimer.
endomap.hms.harvard.edu
Harvard Med Cell Biology@harvardcellbio.bsky.social · last yr.New work @harvard by Miguel Gonzalez-Lozano @harperlabhms.bsky.social & @ernstschmid.bsky.social in Johannes Walter lab charts structural interactome of endosomes. #XL-MS #Alphafold Funded by @asapresearch.parkinsonsroadmap.org & NIH. Science continues-despite attacks www.nature.com/articles/s41...
www.dha.mil/News/2025/05... Very proud of my colleague @pskcellbio.bsky.social and her lab for this important work on the clearance of misfolded GPI-anchor proteins out of the ER (supported by the NIH)! journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...
dha.mil
Preprint from our lab is out! We identified a peroxisome-localized acyl-coA binding protein AcbdA - that regulates peroxisome movement. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1.... Congratulations to members of my lab and the Christensen lab @christensenlab.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Acyl-coA binding protein AcbdA regulates peroxisome hitchhiking on early endosomes
Motor-driven transport on microtubules is critical for distributing organelles throughout the cell. Most commonly, organelle movement is mediated by cargo adaptors, proteins on the surface of an organ...
biorxiv.org
Beautiful work! Aside from the motor cooperation theme, this paper shows an insightful structure of the FHF complex (initially isolated by Wade Harper lab at Harvard. Xu et al 2008 MBoC). The structure contains FTS, the C-terminal part of Hook3 and FHIP1B. What a journey! Congrats to Abid Ali et al!
Ferdos Abid Ali@abidalilab.bsky.social · last yr.Great to see our story on dynein & kinesin co-dependence published www.nature.com/articles/s41..., and absolutely chuffed that it's made the front cover (thanks NSMB!). A brilliant News & Views too by Steven Markus www.nature.com/articles/s41.... Collab between @carter-lab.bsky.social & Straube lab🔬
Our lab at the NIH (Bethesda, MD) is looking for postdoctoral fellows to join our team studying the molecular mechanisms of protein trafficking and their links to neurodevelopmental disorders starting on or after 10-1-2025. Send your application to juan.bonifacino@nih.gov. Please share and repost!
Happy to share this short spotlight piece kwnsfk27.r.eu-west-1.awstrack.me/L0/https:%2F... published online by @cp-trendscellbio.bsky.social for an interesting paper about an unexpected mechanism behind Kinesin-1-mediated meiotic spindle positioning in C. elegans @cp-cellreports.bsky.social
kwnsfk27.r.eu-west-1.awstrack.me
An interesting read. Neil Gow just gave a fantastic talk at the #ecfg17 on fungal cell wall components- on mannose polymers that can either be a flag or a mask for different immune cells. The part on the malaria parasite is also fascinating.
Neil Gow@neil-gow.bsky.social · 2y agoI was j reviewed, along with other microbiologists. on how microbes disguise themselves from our immune systems. The article is out in The Scientist. www.the-scientist.com/the-art-of-m...