Exciting to see this out in its final form! Wonderful work led by @probablycarmen.bsky.social. Want to know why protrusions are better at initiating immune signaling in #Tcells? Look no further. Link to Carmen’s 🧵 on the preprint bsky.app/profile/prob...
Have you wondered what the wet lab success rates are for current AI-driven protein design models? Look no further!
In our new review, @kevinkaichuang.bsky.social
@avapamini.bsky.social, @sarahalamdari.bsky.social, and I report wet lab success rates for *over 200* different protein design tasks 🧬💻
Want to simulate large nonconfluent tissues? Try the finite Voronoi model! 1) @wwang721.bsky.social and I show past implementations need a correction to avoid issues, and 2) we provide a new fast code that we'd like people to try! Preprint: arxiv.org/abs/2604.15481 code: github.com/wwang721/pyafv
My first post here, we have a new preprint out from @aicjanelia.bsky.social! Upright LSFM is fantastic for live imaging, but not amenable to all samples - especially those requiring an air-liquid interface. We worked with Tokai Hit to try to fix that.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Finding molecular tags that localise fluorescent proteins to the cell membrane was the goal of our latest paper, now published in Development @dev-journal.bsky.social. The tags act as address labels, sending proteins to the cell membrane, where they highlight the shape and arrangement of cells. 2/9
Figure 2. FORCE1s reports in vivo neuronal activity with high fidelity under resonance scanning 2-photon microscopy (A-I) 2P-guided whole-cell patching and resonant-scan imaging in anesthetized mice. (A) Experimental schematic. (B) 2P images of a representative FORCE1s-Kv-expressing neuron are shown at high resolution (i) and the size and resolution used during voltage imaging (ii). The patching pipette is outlined. (C) Simultaneous electrophysiological recording (top, 10 kHz) and FORCE1s-Kv fluorescence imaging (bottom, 440 Hz). The fluorescence trace was low-pass filtered at 150 Hz to enhance the visualization of the spikes. Dashed boxes: epochs shown in panels D-E. Vertical lines: detected spikes. Gray triangle (left, and in panels D-E): -70 mV. (D-E) Zoomed-in subthreshold (D) and bursting (E) epochs. Panel D’s optical trace was low-pass filtered at 50 Hz to enhance the visualization of subthreshold fluctuations.
This is beautiful data. 2p optical reporting of subthreshold voltage, validated with simultaneous patch clamp. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... FORCE1s by François St-Pierre's group, with a bunch of great people joining in.
Bit like healthcare where you need to disclose pre-existing conditions. "So Dr Nivard ... your CV looks great and all, but would you care to disclose to us if you recently applied for an ERC and failed?"
Thinking about this more, the 2 and 3 year bans are real career killers… who’d hire a tenure track candidate, or an (associate) professor that has one of those hanging around their necks?
Eating its own tail, the central dogma of molecular biology has come full circle!
🧬
20ish% of the submitted Starting Grants get a C. That means 80% of them are high quality. People are submitting their best work already. This will narrow down the topics and who gets funded. This will backfire splendidly.
Certainly makes me rethink when/how to apply for ERC funding 🤔 potential of being banned for such a long period is very scary.
I guess this may increase university internal triages and reviews to ensure quality upon submission which could be a plus but yet more time spend before even submitting.
ERC : "We're overwhelmed with funding request, it's becoming unmanageable. We need to find a way to reduce the number of applications."
French Government: "You need to go get the money from Europe, you bunch of losers!"
🫣
Applied retrospectively, too.
I don’t know if you saw the MASSIVE news announced by @erc.europa.eu today: from now on, if you get a B at step 1 you are eligible to apply at N+3(!!!) years. Say you got a B in STG2026 step 1, you thought you could apply in STG2028, but no: only in STG2029! erc.europa.eu/news-events/...
CenSpark story is now published in @natchembio.nature.com. We engineered a dual-ligand fluorescent probe to selectively "light up" centrioles & cilia. Massive thank to Pierre Gönczy, @lreymond.bsky.social and @ghatzopoulos.bsky.social for the guidance. Check it out 👉: doi.org/10.1038/s415...
"Applicants who have received a C score at Step 1 in the other three main grant calls of 2024, 2025, or 2026, or a B score at Step 1 of those calls in 2025 or 2026 cannot apply to any 2027 ERC main grant calls" Does this mean if you get a C they went from 2 to 3 years ban?
Out in @natmethods.nature.com: More dyes. They work. Quite well. And blink. Pick the one that fits your target, your technique, and your labeling density. With too many collaborators and institutes to list, but anchored at @hhmijanelia.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...
The UK rejoining Erasmus is the best science news for a while! #AcademicSky
www.gov.uk/government/n...
New #preprint: "Control of lumen morphology by lateral and basal cell surfaces", a great #biophysics collaboration with Chandraniva Guha Ray, @markusmukenhirn.bsky.social, Alf Honigmann @biotec-tud.bsky.social @poldresden.bsky.social.
arxiv.org/abs/2509.04316
@mpipks.bsky.social @mpi-cbg.de
Image of a calcium calibration curve, calcium concentration traces of individual cells and lifetime images of cells
📣 New preprint alert! Co-authored by @spalaciosm.bsky.social and @andreacaldarola.bsky.social :
Quantitative imaging of calcium dynamics with a green fluorescent biosensor and fluorescence lifetime imaging
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
We tracked a zebrafish tail tip for 30h of light-sheet imaging.
It didn’t exist at t=0.
LiLiTTool: CoTracker3 + object detection → real-time microscope steering.
3D, multi-ROI, open source.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
#bioimaging #lightsheet
thanks @jytinevez.bsky.social
Spectral characterization of serapH1.0.
serapH: a photostable pH biosensor based on mStayGold by Kelvin K. Tsao and team:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Overview of HiCaRI design and engineering
HiCaRI: A StayGold-based calcium ion indicator by Robert E. Campbell and team: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Mirror mirror on the wall who is the brightest of them all?
Brightness is a key parameter for choosing fluorescent reporters in bioimaging. As tricky to assess, we present a pipeline to compare chemigenetic labels and FPs in tissue culture and #zebrafish embryos.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
“We employ our [fluorescence correlation spectroscopy] pipeline to compare a set of 10 established fluorescent proteins as well as HALO & SNAP tags for both cellular imaging & measurements of diffusion dynamics w/ FCS. We show that mNeonGreen outperforms mEGFP in tissue culture & zebrafish embryos.“
Confused about Fisher Information and optimisation of Fluorescence Microscopy, #FLIM specifically? I have just completed a tutorial for you
hilight-horizon.github.io/HILIGTHer_FL...
@hilighthorizon.bsky.social
Major part of this work has been performed under guidance of Scott Fraser and Le Trinh at USC during my postdoc and I’d like to thank them and all the other members of the Fraserland for their support and introduction to the squishy zebrafish world.
