It's funky axons time 🔬 🧪

Check out our new release on BioRxiv
co-lead by @pm-mueller.bsky.social

👉 rb.gy/lnrizk

special🙏 to
Severine Kunz #MDC
@leventallab.bsky.social
@andimicroscopy.bsky.social
@ewerslab.bsky.social and Kedar Narayan @NCI CCR VolumeEM

Are the days of discovering new cellular structures over?? /1

Chief Executive Officer | Inspired Selection

A unique opportunity to lead the most wonderful company in scientific publishing (I might be slightly biased here). The Company of Biologists are searching for a CEO.

www.inspiredselection.com/jobs/jo00000...

Cell body getting taken for a ride in this early stage neuron. Microtubules🔵 and Actin🟣 labeled and imaged for 16hr on a Zeiss LSM880. Happy #FluorescenceFriday

SPY555-Tubulin and SPY650-FastActX wound up looking good together for 11hrs. Thanks for the helpful info!

Another fiery 💥 probes combination by @j-today.bsky.social, this time with SPY555-Tubulin and SPY650-FastAct_X.

🤩

As Fran was nice enough to highlight this, I thought I'd put up a brief thread. 3 in 10 proteins that our cells make are either embedded in membranes (ion channels, adhesion molecules, etc.) or secreted (insulin, antibodies). They move through the secretory pathway.
1/

So excited to share the preprint with the bulk of my PhD work in the Beach @myosincity.bsky.social and Oakes @pwoakes.bsky.social Labs at Loyola University Chicago! We investigate the structure, recruitment, and function of septin networks around the nucleus. A thread:
doi.org/10.64898/202...

a woman in a suit and tie has the words wait what written on her face ALT: a woman in a suit and tie has the words wait what written on her face

Two new 🔥pre-prints 🔥 TODAY by us & @pwoakes.bsky.social @myosincity.bsky.social
change the way we think about the septin cytoskeleton

Septins buffer mechanical stress on actin and membranes!

Septins are like intermediate filaments

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Cytosolic factors govern vimentin network architecture and mechanics www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01...

Disordered linker of Kank1 forms rigid protein rod upon binding to 15 LC8 molecules and bridge the gap between membrane and microtubule.

New collaborative preprint!
A striking result: a disordered linker in KANK1 binds as many as 15 LC8 dimers, forming a protein rod that bridges cell membranes and microtubules!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Membrane-associated periodic skeleton regulates major forms of endocytosis in neurons through a signaling-driven positive feedback loop Endocytosis enables neurons to internalize molecules, maintaining homeostasis and responsiveness. The neuronal membrane-associated periodic skeleton (MPS), an actin-spectrin-based cytoskeletal lattice...

New preprint showing how the membrane-associated periodic skeleton (MPS) restricts endocytosis in neurons: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
It nicely confirms our work from last year (science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ado2032) and extends it to other compartments in more mature neurons

Paul Nurse describing the main job of a PI

(From ‘The Thinking Game’, 2024)

Meet Paul Maddox Paul Maddox is a world-renowned cancer researcher, two-time entrepreneur, and native son of Western North Carolina–and now, a candidate for U.S. Congress. ....

🧪hey all, a friend and colleague, @maddoxfornc.bsky.social, is running for Congress in North Carolina. He is a scientist, professor, and parent, perspectives that are especially important right now. I hope you will support his run for Congress. Find out more here: www.maddoxforcongress.com/about/

Thrilled to announce the launch of my lab
@cri-utsw.bsky.social at UTSW this January!

We will explore how cells sense and respond to mechanical forces, focusing on membrane mechanics to reveal how tension and signaling work together to shape cell behavior.

We hire!
The CytoMorpho Lab is looking for an engineer with a background in cell and molecular biology to join our team in Paris. This is a 18-month contract position, but we're open to exploring long-term opportunities.
More details here:
cytomorpholab.com/index.php/jo...

A myosin hypertrophic cardiomyopathy mutation disrupts the super-relaxed state and boosts contractility by enhanced actin attachment Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is a leading cause of cardiac failure among individuals under 35. Many genetic mutations that cause HCM enhance ventricular systolic function, suggesting that these H...

A myosin hypertrophic cardiomyopathy mutation disrupts the super-relaxed state and boosts contractility by enhanced actin attachment

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

The UI Department of Biology invites applications for a tenure-track assistant professor position in genetics, beginning in the academic year 2026. Review of applicants will begin on November 1, 2025. For more information about the position and to apply, please visit: jobs.uiowa.edu/faculty/view...

LIM Domain Proteins link molecular and global tension by recognizing strained actin in adhesions Mechanotransduction is fundamental to cell signaling and depends on force-sensitive adhesion proteins. How these proteins differentiate and integrate their responses to tension remains an open questio...

Our new preprint is out! Led by @stefanosala89.bsky.social sky.social we investigate the difference between molecular tension sensing and global tension on the focal adhesion. Follow along for a thread of our findings:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Interested in nuclear #mechanobiology? Join us for the first ever FASEB Science Research Conference on the Mechanobiology of the Nucleus #MBNSRC.
Find more information and register at: events.faseb.org/event/Mechan...
Submit abstracts by August 31, 2025. Please share and see you in October!

The PCM scaffold enables RNA localization to centrosomes As microtubule-organizing centers, centrosomes direct assembly of the bipolar mitotic spindle required for chromosome segregation and genome stability. Centrosome activity requires the dynamic assembl...

👏new paper👏 ! Our preprint is now accepted at MBoC @ascbiology.bsky.social

Congrats to co-1st authors Junnan (new PI at OSU!) and Weiyi (now a Yale grad student) and 🙏 to collaborators Melissa & Jordan @myosincity.bsky.social

Funded by NIH grants & NSF GRFP!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Good times exploring Santiago, Chile with #neurocyto2025 rock stars @stephgupton.bsky.social @myosincity.bsky.social and Melissa Rolls

From a source at NIH:

“Right now NIH’s ability to buy things is dead. Nearly all people with the power to make an order — purchasing people — have been removed.
The NIH hospital can’t buy medicines, the labs can’t buy petri dishes. X-Ray machine breaks? Too bad.
Everything is stopped”

A headline reads: “U.S. Turned Away French Scientist Over Views on Trump Policies, France Says.” More text reads: “The French authorities said the academic had been traveling to a conference near Houston when border officials blocked his entry because of conversations found on his phone.”

The U.S. authorities denied entry to a French scientist and then deported him because his phone contained message exchanges with colleagues and friends in which he expressed his “personal opinion” on the Trump administration’s science policies, said the French government. nyti.ms/4iAZR2l

This is horrible to post, but I may as well post it. We are essentially shutting down research operations in my group, which is focused on treatments for pediatric brain cancer. I’m a well funded investigator, and there’s no choice. Science can’t function without the stability of NIH

Another household kept alive by American aid was that of Jennifer Inyaa, a 35-year-old single mom, and her 5-year-old son, Evan Anzoo, both of them H.I.V.-positive. Last month, after the aid shutdown, Inyaa became sick and died, and a week later Evan died as well, according to David Iraa Simon, a community health worker who assisted them. Decisions by billionaires in Washington quickly cost the lives of a mother and her son. "Many more children will die in the coming weeks," said Margret Amjuma, a health worker who confirmed the deaths of Peter and Achol.

Take a moment today to read about a few of the young children whom Trump and Musk killed by shutting down USAID. The blame for these deaths falls on them.

There will be hundreds of thousands more dead kids before their lethal crusade against foreign aid ends. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

A 5 alarm fire for US governance and democracy and for you. 🚨

If Trump and Musk can do this criminal shredding of USAID w/ no consequence they will come for you next.

Democratic Senators and House members shld stop their days and head down to USAID w/ the Capitol Police and cameras and stop this.

It’s like letting your little sibling have a video game controller that isn’t plugged in.
“Go’head. Have yer lil study meetings.”

Without councils, there’s no point. Passing any CR without guaranteeing NIH money goes out the door is pointless.

NIH to ax grants on vaccine hesitancy, mRNA vaccines Move reflects vaccine skepticism of health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The NIH is abruptly terminating at least 33 research grants for projects studying vaccine hesitancy. Projects studying mRNA vaccines may be next.
Important story by my colleague Sara Reardon in @science.org
🧪 #IDsky

French University to Fund American Scientists Who Fear Trump Censorship The program, called ‘safe place for science,’ offers American scientists funding to continue their research in France.

I wish my US colleagues and friends will have better times and I'm supporting them with all my heart. That said, there's also a possibility to come and be my colleague in beautiful Marseille!
www.404media.co/french-unive...