Everyone loves archaea don’t they?

great article in @quantamagazine.bsky.social by natalie wolchover on the bacterial flagellum and proton motive force. alas, I missed this great model on what happens to the stators during gear-shifting. see it in STC:
smallthingsconsidered.blog/schaechter/2...
#MicroSky

How is the mullet drivechain for urban cycling?

Crick Crash Course: Embryo development

I am giving a "Crash Course in Embryo Development" for the general public (no science background needed! pitched around GCSE-level) in London on 21st May www.crick.ac.uk/whats-on/cri... We'll dip into development, with a splash of embryo models, and a pinch of ethics. And it's free! Book online 👍

New OpenFold3 preview out! (OF3p2)

It closes the gap to AlphaFold3 for most modalities.

Most critically, we're releasing everything, including training sets & configs, making OF3p2 the only current AF3-based model that is functionally trainable & reproducible from scratch🧵1/9

‘Once information has got into a protein it can’t get out again’

‘Once information has got into a protein it can’t get out again’

Minor heresy. Not worth nailing to the door of the institute.

Breaking from the Herd: How Biopharma Can Escape Moloch's Trap - Plenge Gen @rplenge Until a few months ago, I hadn’t given much thought to Moloch, the ancient figure associated in historical texts with extreme and costly sacrifices. But as I prepared for a conversation at SXSW with W...

Target crowding in biotech is 'Moloch’s trap'
plengegen.com/blog/moloch/

I am scared that the lab panopticon will give slavedriver PIs ideas!

One for the small molecule drug discovery folks chemrxiv.org/doi/full/10....
#chemsky

A cell with a lightsaber!

Biology being weird again. This microbial protein/RNA complex makes poly(GT/AC) dsDNA as some form of defense against phages.

I think the point is that when you're not carrying a load of excess weight you don't need as much muscle to acheive the same (or better) function. It would be very interesting to compare GLP-1 users and non-users of same hieght and weight.

Strength persists after a mid-life course of obesity drugs Muscle mass increased or remained stable relative to body weight in middle-aged mice and humans on GLP-1 drugs.

GLP-1 agonist-associated muscle loss is adaptive, not maladaptive
www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Fully specified Führerbunker

About one quarter of the 20659 proteins in the human proteome have TMDs. Most have 1 TMD, there's about 1000 with 7 TMDs. Details are in the post, which is linked.

How many proteins in the human proteome have transmembrane domains? And of those, how many examples with n TMDs are there?
Couldn't find an answer, so I calculated it from Uniprot data with some #RStats magic (and I did some model organisms while I was at it). 🧪

quantixed.org/2026/04/16/m...

Transformers are robots in disguise

The Race to Rescue Antibiotics - with Jeannine Hess YouTube video by The Francis Crick Institute

Join Group Leader @jeanninehess.bsky.social as she explains how her lab is reimagining the fight against drug-resistant infections.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzhx...

Florence Bell in Astbury’s lab certainly took some x-ray patterns from DNA fibres. I think it was Wilkins who used sperm. I can’t remember exactly but read it in this book www.profgarethwilliams.com/unravelling-...

London at night

Arguably first x-ray diffraction patterns of DNA were from salmon sperm

SPRIND | SPRIND A home for people with radically new ideas – SPRIND supports ideas, discoveries and inventions that bring sustainable, economic benfits.

www.sprind.org/en

On the action point, have you encountered SPRIND?

Berlin is nice tho

have you got eduroam down there?

UK Glia 2026 UK Glia 2026 meeting will highlight the pivotal role of glia in brain physiology, offering invaluable insights for those investigating glia function in both health and disease. Find out more about the...

This meeting looks like its going to be bigger and better than 2024.

Come to Bristol in June for the chance to mingle with the glia glitterati of the United Kingdom

#neuroscience #glia #science #events #conference #networking

www.physoc.org/events/uk-gl...

Good news for Hungary and Europe

Great race, great result 🎩 WvA