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Posts by Xiaohan Li

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Introducing GPT-Rosalind for life sciences research OpenAI introduces GPT-Rosalind, a frontier reasoning model built to accelerate drug discovery, genomics analysis, protein reasoning, and scientific research workflows.

😭

openai.com/index/introd...

4 days ago 0 2 1 0
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This is (I think) a Greater Blue-Eared Starling (Lamprotornis chalybaeus) & the amazing chrome job is their super-power.

They've evolved to manipulate light in VERY specific ways, attracting mates, intimidating rivals.

Let's look at the nanostructures that bring this bling into being.

3 weeks ago 7756 1444 193 156
Why I may ‘hire’ AI instead of a graduate student “It can competently perform a lot of the work I need immediately,” this professor writes

If you consider 'hiring’ AI instead of a graduate student, you're saying the quiet part out loud: PhDs are viewed as a PI's labor force not academics studying for an advanced degree... www.science.org/content/arti...

1 month ago 133 32 13 6
Postdoc position:Computational Biophysics of Disordered Proteins, Lindorff-Larsen group, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

https://tinyurl.com/REWIRE-PD
Deadline May 3rd, 2026

Postdoc position: Computational Biophysics of Disordered Proteins, Lindorff-Larsen group, University of Copenhagen, Denmark https://tinyurl.com/REWIRE-PD Deadline May 3rd, 2026

We are hiring a postdoc in computational biophysics and machine learning studies of intrinsically disordered proteins

We aim to study the function of IDPs by combining CG MD, ML and bioinformatics in collaboration with @tanjamittag.bsky.social & @rhp-lab.bsky.social

tinyurl.com/REWIRE-PD

1 month ago 70 42 0 0

This is kinda bonkers.

In addition, 20 amino acids were found on Ryugu, along with uracil and vitamin B3. These have been found in other instances, but since the samples from Ryugu were collected directly from the asteroid and delivered in sealed capsules, contamination on Earth could be ruled out.

1 month ago 208 98 8 7
Low resolution cryo-EM map that looks like Cuban's skull

Low resolution cryo-EM map that looks like Cuban's skull

When you still haven't solved the orientation bias of your protein sample #CryoEM

1 month ago 74 10 0 0
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With Eugene Koonin, we propose a concept of “the selfish ribosome”, under which evolution of life is viewed as a ribosomal takeover, where the ribosome evolved to consume most of the cell’s resources, while other cellular componentry ensures the propagation of the ribosome. arxiv.org/abs/2602.23268

1 month ago 236 103 5 14
Job opening for Research Group Leader in Structural Studies at MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, focusing on macromolecular structures.

Job opening for Research Group Leader in Structural Studies at MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, focusing on macromolecular structures.

Are you a structural biologist pushing the boundaries of molecular science with an ambitious research programme?
Join our Structural Studies Division as a tenure-track Group Leader, with core funding, world-leading facilities & enthusiastic colleagues.
Apply by 16 MAR
www.nature.com/naturecareer...

1 month ago 36 48 0 2
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Congratulations Alex! Been waiting for the in press version since the preprint — really exciting work!

2 months ago 1 0 0 0

Papers are like buses... You wait for ages, then two come along at once.

Huge congrats to @bornanovak.bsky.social and @jefflotthammer.bsky.social for pushing and driving every aspect of this work, preprinted ~1 year ago to the day (Friday before BPS), now published!

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

2 months ago 87 36 6 2

Structural basis of caveolin-driven membrane bending www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02...

2 months ago 10 5 0 2

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/

2 months ago 94 41 2 6
Suyang Zhang smiles in front of a blurred laboratory background

Suyang Zhang smiles in front of a blurred laboratory background

Exciting opportunity for a #postdoc to join @suyangzhang.bsky.social’s group in the LMB Structural Studies Division to investigate co-transcriptional splicing using cryo-EM and biochemistry.
Read more: www.nature.com/naturecareer...
Apply by 11 FEB
#PostdocJobs #ScienceJobs

2 months ago 5 11 0 0
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Why do mated songbirds sing beautifully coordinated duets? My Ph.D. work showed that duets are cooperative signals that pairs use to defend their shared territory. This visual summary is based on Logue & Gammon 2004 Animal Behaviour 68: 521-531 and Logue 2005 Cognition, Brain, Behavior 9:497-510.

3 months ago 28 11 0 1
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Roadmap for Condensates in Cell Biology Biomolecular condensates govern essential cellular processes yet elude description by traditional equilibrium models. This roadmap, distilled from structured discussions at a workshop and reflecting t...

Physicists' perspective on the future direction of condensates in Cell Biology.
arxiv.org/abs/2601.03677

3 months ago 16 6 0 2

Knowledge is about interacting with nature, making reasoning, then communicating the excitements and discovery to the community; not by chewing “decoders” output and then throw random things to “encoders” and sell the outputs again.

3 months ago 1 0 0 0

Really don’t understand why loads of people are advocating delegation of paper reading and reference searching to AI, and even paper-writing using AI. It’s like volunteering to be left out of the discovery process and intellectual works, happily living as a slave to the “transformers”.

3 months ago 0 0 1 0

Experimental structures provide valuable hypotheses and accelerate but do not replace evolutionary and statistical analyses of protein sequences

4 months ago 38 9 1 1
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Very exciting project! Trafficking, IDRs, and structural biology!

4 months ago 2 0 0 0

Apologies I was a bit unclear with "unstructured in functional complex"; I was suggesting the possibility of structured regions interact to provide specificity (frequently enthalpy contributions), IDRs remain unstructured to tune entropic effects of the system, keeping them dynamic.

4 months ago 1 0 0 0
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Intrinsically disordered proteins drive membrane curvature - Nature Communications Proteins that bend membranes often contain curvature-promoting structural motifs such as wedges or crescent-shaped domains. Busch et al.report that intrinsically disordered domains can also drive memb...

For the "remain disordered in functional state", I tend to think most AF2 predicted low pLDDT regions belongs to this class, frequently doesn't involve in a binding event. One quick example in my head is the epsin/AP180 example www.nature.com/articles/nco...

4 months ago 1 0 1 0

I think one classic example of both disordered then to stable helical transition, might be the ACTR-CBP system. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11823864/ pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24449148/

4 months ago 0 0 1 0

In this case we may also want to revisit the definition of IDRs and reclassify…we used to define them as no stable secondary/tertiary structures in solution, but this may simply be a reflection of good solvation. We may redefine “canonical IDRs” as being unstructured even in functional complexes

4 months ago 1 0 1 0

I guess in this case the only case of exception might be when two IDRs interact with each other they co-fold with each other which gives a specific new interface… but considering the amount of entropic penalty from IDR-IDR to complete structure, this might be rare…

4 months ago 1 0 1 0

This is a great point! In this case, would you think it might also be a good idea to treat IDR-IDR interaction differently than IDR-folded domain interaction, independent of the affinity? Maybe as long as one of the partner is folded, the interface would already be specified…

4 months ago 0 0 1 0
Postdoctoral Scientist - Neurobiology - Dr Michel Goedert - LMB 2752 - Medical Research Council Location: Cambridge. Vacancy: Postdoctoral Scientist - Neurobiology - Dr Michel Goedert - LMB 2752. Closing Date: 04/01/2026, 23:55

Postdoc opportunity with Michel Goedert and myself to work on #cryoEM/#cryoET structures of #amyloids. Feel free to email me with any questions you might have.

mrc.tal.net/vx/mobile-0/...

4 months ago 21 23 1 0

Hi Andrea, I really like your paper cited here. The figure highlights the importance of cellular context not just for phase separation studies, but for interpretation of most in vitro data involving interactions between macromolecules in general as well, especially for low affinity ones...

4 months ago 1 0 1 0
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Our review on Integrative modelling of biomolecular dynamics 💃 is now live at COSB

We discuss approaches to integrate computational methods with time-dependent & time-resolved experiments to study protein dynamics

With @dariagusew.bsky.social & Carl G. Henning Hansen
doi.org/10.1016/j.sb...

4 months ago 56 20 1 0
Video

I found a tiny octopus on the tide pool🐙✨️

Small as it is, it’s every bit an octopus ... and absolutely adorable!!

It even shoots ink🫧 ͛.*

4 months ago 1372 235 28 24

I agree. I think protein folding is evidence that one can form specific structures that are thermodynamically driven by non-specific, dynamic interactions, with additional contributions to specificity from h-bonds etc (that probably contribute less to the "driving" force).

4 months ago 5 1 0 0