Great presentation by @francesarnold.bsky.social for the Backer lecture this afternoon! Organized by the Backer Foundation (www.backerfoundation.nl), held at the @rug.nl . About evolving an designing novel enzymes. Very cool! (With quite some machine learning and even some DISCO )
We are looking for an experienced light microscopy specialist, motivated to support our users in the Advanced Light Microscopy Facility at EMBL Heidelberg.
embl.wd103.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/EMBL/j... -closing date 11 May 2026 @eurobioimaging.bsky.social @globalbioimaging.bsky.social
🔹 @kerenlasker.bsky.social et al. (2022) NatComm
doi.org/10.1038/s414...
tldr: engineering of a condensation-driving PopTag
🔹 Heinkel et al. (2019) PNAS
doi.org/10.1073/pnas...
tldr: LLPS in native bacterial membrane transporters
Inspired by:
🔹 @kerenlasker.bsky.social et al. "The material properties of a bacterial-derived biomolecular condensate tune biological function in natural and synthetic systems"
🔹Heinkel et al. "Phase separation and clustering of an ABC transporter in M. tuberculosis"
🔗👇
How does biomolecular condensation and #LLPS look for membrane proteins in bacteria?🔬
See our📜: doi.org/10.1038/s414...
@linnikdmitrii.bsky.social et al. "Structural and functional implications of phase separation of membrane protein LacY in E. coli🦠" #NatComm
🔬💡Excited to share the final piece of my PhD work on 𝐬𝐦𝐅𝐑𝐄𝐓, 𝐆𝐏𝐂𝐑𝐬, and 𝐀𝐁𝐄𝐋 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐩:
"ABEL-FRET bridges the timescale gap in single-molecule measurements of structural dynamics in the A2A adenosine receptor"
🔗CommChem: doi.org/10.1038/s420...
🧬 New paper out!
Thrilled to contribute to our study on CaV1.3 channel clusters in cardiac myocytes using DNA-PAINT (4 nm loc. precision!) revealing flexible (not rigid) cluster organization.
👏 Great work by Niko Schwenzer, @samratb.bsky.social & team!
👉 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
It was fun to share my passion for science at the #EuropeanResearchersNight in Groningen!
✨ Curious visitors
✅matched 🧫 plates with microbes to where they were collected
✅inspected flowers, berries, and lichens under the microscope🔬
✅ created their own “bacterial selfies”📸
See details in the bioRxiv and wish us luck with submission!
Huge thanks to everyone involved:
Valentin Borshchevskiy, Vadim Cherezov, @hofkenslab.bsky.social, @profjelle.bsky.social, Michael Börsch, Thomas Gensch!
doi.org/10.1101/2025.07.22.666123
Finally, how to make sense of (1) sub-ms agonist-induced dynamics seen in confocal, and (2) long-lived states (>100ms) in ABEL trap. How do they not average out?
In our updated model, sub-ms dynamics occurs within long-lived states:
Maybe, these long-lived states can interconvert on much longer timescales - in fact, Wei et al. showed long-lived states with dwell times of seconds before with TIRF:
doi.org/10.1016/j.st...
We conclude that A2A receptors must have long-lived states with different FRET efficiencies with dwell times of at least hundreds of ms. This way, we extend our previous estimation, based on confocal burst data, ~100x fold!
it seems very much like "static heterogeneity":
within a "Gaussian" or FRET values, receptors on the left shoulder of the distribution stay there for 100s of milliseconds, as if they had "memory"
only metaphorically, of course ...
Instead of sharp PR peaks and step-like transitions, we see broad distributions and continuous FRET changes🤔 Is conformational space a spectrum?🙃
Our dynamics analysis (inspired by BVA, FRET-FCS, and RASP) showed that dynamics on 1-100 ms scale is significant but subtle, so...
With ABEL-trap, we can see individual receptors for up to 2 seconds instead of milliseconds! in solution and without tethers
Consistent with our previous data, agonist NECA increases FRET in double-labeled A2A
This is the final piece of my PhD studies on #smFRET with A2A adenosine receptors #GPCR!
In our previous study, we observed sub-ms agonist-induced conformational dynamics of the A2A, but longer transitions (if any) were invisible in burst-wise data
doi.org/10.1038/s420...
#smFRET-lovers! Imagine, you got nice burst data with freely diffusing molecules 🙌🔬
BUT
1) Immobilization does not work🧲🤬
2) Transitions are longer than diffusion time, but shorter than frametime of your TIRF⏱️
Solution: try ABEL-trap!💕
📜bioRxiv:
doi.org/10.1101/2025.07.22.666123
ABEL-FRET bridges the timescale gap in single-molecule measurements of the structural dynamics in the A2A adenosine receptor www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07....
It was a great Day 1 of the EMBL Symposium "New approaches and concepts in microbiology"! Stepping a little outside of my usual microscopy/biophysics bubble feels like the right kind of challenge - wish me more good ideas, inspiration, and coffee
#EESMicrobiology
Setting up a lab has been no joke. Today, I'm stoked to have one more piece of my postdoc work out in the wild.
Several more manuscripts to go, and I don't have a lot of time for a blue-torial(?) today, but enjoy and happy to get any feedback on this story.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
⚛️Physics Olympiads hold a special place in my❤️
I cherish memories of my teachers and still enjoy the charm of the intellectual puzzles🥲
This year, I designed a few problems for the Dutch Physics Olympiads ⏳
Congratulations to the winners and good luck at #IPhO2025 🥳
beautiful pulsed labelings reveal where new wall form as bacteria grow
👏Loud applause to @linnikdmitrii.bsky.social, who came up with idea and combined so many methods to characterize the system from every possible angle! And thanks to everyone who contributed to the study! 🪅
@membraneenzymology.bsky.social 🔬🧫
@janstevens.bsky.social @cg-martini.bsky.social 🤖🧑💻
🚨 #LLPS: New trick for an old membrane protein!
Homo- and hetero- biomolecular condensates of a native membrane protein in E. coli tagged with PopTag 🔬🦠
LacY-PopTag is functional and localizes at cell poles or mobile foci in a curvature-dependent manner
🔗 doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-6571918/v1
Giulia Viola, Torsten Wittmann @microtubule.bsky.social and colleagues @ctbatucsf.bsky.social use protein nanocages to benchmark fluorescent proteins in live cells.
Highlight: journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/...
Article: journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/...
#OpenAccess #ReadandPublish
Solène’s 4.5 years of postdoctoral work in our lab (she started just before the corona pandemic) has now been published. A heroic effort that revealed -at the single molecule level- that ATP drives the dissociation of an ECF transporter complex under turnover conditions. See rdcu.be/elTKc
Register: forms.gle/4hDdwKNhXMJj...
Happening TOMORROW!
Join us on April 25 at 7PM EAT for a powerful webinar with @atinygreencell.bsky.social on making synthetic biology accessible to all.
Hosted by @synbio4allafrica.bsky.social .
We are looking for a postdoc with microbiology background for #superresolution #singlemolecule #ERC tracking project. Apply by 27.4.2025. 🦠🔬🧫
Pls share!
www.aalto.fi/en/open-posi...
1/8 Exciting new work with Agu @mangiarotti.bsky.social @mpici.bsky.social ! 🚀 Our latest study explores how lipid packing and cholesterol regulate the interaction of biomolecular condensates with membranes. It turns out, it’s not just about membrane phase. Packing is the key! 🧵👇
rdcu.be/eelLq
New Night Science Podcast episode! David Baker was awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He explains how he socially engineers his lab’s "communal brain", where all individuals function like neurons, densely interconnected to maximize idea generation.
nightscience.buzzsprout.com/1744020/epis...
