Dear Lipid and Membrane Enthusiasts,

There is only one month!! left to register and submit your abstracts for the @embo.org Workshop “Lipid Code to Life”, which will be held from September 7–11, 2026, in Dresden, Germany.

Workshop program and registration page: meetings.embo.org/event/26-lip...

Happy Whacky Wednesday everyone!

Opening Slide - Microverse meets MibiNet

#ThrowbackThursday to #VAAM2026 in BER! 🧫
“Microverse meets MibiNet” drew 80+ participants—one of our highlights. Chaired by Kirsten Küsel & Julia Frunzke, keynote by Leo Eberl.

Thanks to everyone for inspiring exchange!
🤝@vaam-microbes.bsky.social, @mibinet.bsky.social &@kuesellab.bsky.social

Nutzpflanzenforscherin aus dem „Klaus Tschira Boost-Fund“ gefördert Die Pflanzenforscherin Dr. Eliza Loo, Arbeitsgruppenleiterin am Institut für Molekulare Physiologie an der Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf (HHU), wird für die kommenden zwei Jahre für ein Projek...

Huge congrats to Dr. Eliza Loo! The associated MibiNet researcher has secured a "Klaus Tschira Boost Fund" grant to explore targeted programming of plant microbiomes. Fantastic news for @hhu.de and the MibiNet team!
#MibiNet #HHU
@elizaloopi.bsky.social
www.hhu.de/en/detail-re...

History in the making! 🎓 Huge congratulations to Nora Zöllner, who successfully defended her PhD - earning top honors!
Nora is the very first graduate of our MibiNext cohort. We couldn’t be prouder! A massive achievement for her and a major milestone for the entire network.

#MibiNet #MibiNext

2D classes of a 58 kDa particle collected on a 100 kev Tundra electron microscope

2D classes of the 58 kDa sample collected on the 100 keV Tundra TEM with a Falcon C detector at @nusbf.bsky.social @newcastleuni.bsky.social. Still much work to do to optimise the sample & data collection but its cool to see what a 100 keV TEM is capable of. #cryoEM @recon4imd.bsky.social

Dear colleagues, With deep sadness I share the news that Andreas Engel passed away last Wednesday, at the age of 82, after a courageous fight against an aggressive caner. Only half a year ago, he was out hiking in the Italian mountains with his wife Barbara, walking 160 km in a single week. Andreas trained as a physicist in Bern, Switzerland, before heading to John Hopkins University in Baltimore for his postdoctoral work. He then led a research group at the Biozentrum in Basel, and in 1985 took on the role of a group leader in research and development at Ilford Ltd. in Fribourg, Switzerland. In 1987, he joined forces with his colleague Ueli Aebi to establish the Maurice E. Müller Institute at the Biozentrum of the University of Basel. Together, Ueli and Andreas served as professors for structural biology there for almost a quarter century, leaving a lasting mark on the field of structural biology as we know it today. Andreas Engel was a true pioneer. He was among the first to apply atomic force microscopy (AFM) with the tip operating under water, and one of the earliest researchers to perform 3D reconstructions using scanning transmission electron microscopy, achieving remarkable high-resolution maps of porin 2D crystals by STEM. He became a leading expert in membrane protein 2D crystallization, and his group played a key role in the determination of the first aquaporin structure, in collaboration with Peter Agre and Yoshinori Fujiyoshi. As he approached retirement from Basel, Andreas founded the Center for Cellular Imaging and NanoAnalytics (C-CINA) of the University of Basel, which in 2009 operated among others one of the very early Titan Krios instruments. From 2008 also held a professorship at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, followed by a position at TU Delft in the Netherlands in 2013. In 2020, he was among the founding members of CryoWrite, a company in Basel that he led as CEO until recently. His contributions to science, to the tools of str…

Photo of Andreas Engel

Sad news on the passing of Prof. Andreas Engel, a pioneer in the field of cryo-EM (shared with the 3DEM community by Henning Stahlberg).
Andreas' kindness, warmth, and enthusiasm for science and his colleagues will be missed.

First conference of the newly founded interfaculty Center of Membrane Research at HHU. Two days of exciting talks about all areas of membrane research. Thanks to all speakers and participants for a great time. For sure worth to be repeated!

Dissecting the RNA-binding capacity of the multi-RRM protein Rrm4 essential for endosomal mRNA transport Abstract. RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) utilize multiple RNA-binding domains (RBDs) to engage with extensive messenger RNA (mRNA) networks. Understanding the

Breakthrough article 😊
Joint effort of teams Zarnack & König & Feldbrügge clarifies how multiple RNA-binding domains cooperate to identify functional important binding sites in vivo
doi.org/10.1093/nar/...
@zarnack-group.bsky.social
@könig-lab.bsky.social
@mibinet.bsky.social
#EMBOrnaLocalization

AlphaFold as a prior: experimental structure determination conditioned on a pretrained neural network Nature Methods - ROCKET improves experimental structure elucidation by integrating implicit structural knowledge from OpenFold, a trainable reimplementation of AlphaFold2, with X-ray...

ROCKET 🚀 inference-time optimization of AlphaFold to fit structural data is published! rdcu.be/fa9YH
Since our preprint, we’ve pushed it to regimes where other methods break: low resolution, weak signal, real experimental edge cases. Here’s what we learned: 1/15

This year‘s Lynen Lecture was held by Bruno Antonny (Valbonne, France). Robert Ernst gave the laudatio for Bruno‘s scientific achievements.

Standing ovations for an incredible Maya Schuldiner, who just received the Otto Warburg Metal at the #MosbacherKolloqium of the @gbmev.bsky.social and delivered the most impressive, passionate speeches one can imagine... beautiful oration by Christian Ungermann and many tears in the lecture hall 🧪💕

You asked, we listened. Millions of AI-predicted protein complex structures are now available in the #AlphaFold Database.

This spans homodimers from 20 of the most studied species, including humans, as well as the World Health Organization’s priority pathogens list.

www.ebi.ac.uk/about/news/t...

We are excited to be recruiting into 3 Associate Professorship's in @oxfordbiochemistry.bsky.social. Come join us as a colleague and benefit from our vibrant and multidisciplinary environment. Reach out to me if you have any questions. Please repost! (tinyurl.com/48deybuu) (tinyurl.com/4pdvjaft).

Thanks to Erwin and his lab for this wonderful collaboration! Very exciting story and a pleasure being part of the larger team.

We are currently recruiting PhD students, postdocs, and a group leader to join the Institute.
If you’re interested, please send me a personal message or email your CV and a brief motivation letter to: johannes.rebelein@hhu.de.

What an amazing development here!
@hhu.de 🤝@fz-juelich.de
Best wishes for great science - and the highest hopes for future collaborations!

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...

Super happy to share that our Chemical Science article ‘Structural control of dynamic covalent cages: kinetic vs. thermodynamic assembly and PFAS removal from water’ (pubs.rsc.org/doi/D5SC02247A) has been selected for the 2025 most popular supramolecular articles collection 🎉

Introducing The Structural History of Eukarya (SHE): The first proteome-scale phylogeny constructed entirely from 3D structure.
We computed 300 trillion alignments across 1,542 species to map the tree of life. 🧵👇 (1/5)

New AI tool “Helixer” identifies genes in newly sequenced organisms. Helixer identifies genes directly from DNA sequences.

Developed by team around @usadellab.bsky.social @fz-juelich.de, @apmweber.bsky.social , @sebtriesch.bsky.social @hhu.de et al. www.fz-juelich.de/en/news/arch...

Beim Neujahrsempfang der @hhu.de spielen gerade die abgezocktesten 12-jährigen Jazzer*innen die ich je gesehen und gehört habe! ❤️
Ganz viel Earworms-Liebe!!!

www.die-earworms.de

We Are very happy that our Paper was published. Thank to everyone involved

pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

@mibinet.bsky.social @mfeldbruegge.bsky.social @frunzkelab.bsky.social

MemPrO: A Predictive Tool for Membrane Protein Orientation Membrane proteins play a vital role in numerous cellular processes, including ion transport, intercellular communication, and antibiotic resistance. Ensuring their accurate orientation within lipid bi...

🌟 New Tool Alert!

We present MemPrO – a toolkit for orienting and building membrane protein systems:

✅ Membrane protein orientation 
✅ Mixed membrane building 
✅ Double membranes & curvature 
✅ Peptidoglycan cell wall support

🔗 github.com/pstansfeld/mempro 
📖 pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

Atomic resolution structure of spinach rubisco reveals protons and dynamics www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.22.696010v1 #cryoEM

We are looking for a team leader to join the cryo-EM facility work at the new Ernst Ruska-Centre 2.0 at the Forschungszentrum Jülich. We have a series of microscopes used by (@irene-vercellino.bsky.social, Schröder, @sachsegroup.bsky.social) and external users.
www.fz-juelich.de/de/karriere/...

We’re hiring 2 Postdocs (f/m/d) in Drug–Microbiome–Host Interactions 🦠💊

Focus: how non-antibiotic drugs shape the gut microbiome, drug efficacy & side effects.

#PostdocJobs #Microbiome #AcademicJobs

Full job ad:
lisamaierlab.com/wp-content/u...

AlphaFold predictions are valuable hypotheses and accelerate but do not replace experimental structure determination - Nature Methods An analysis of AlphaFold protein structure predictions shows that while in many cases the predictions are highly accurate, there are also many instances where the predicted structures or parts of pred...

So structural biology is not dead after all 😋 Not a big surprise The title of this article is exactly in line with what I think.
Same applies to LLMs for scientific writing.

copyright Palina Nepachalovich of ZML Dresden

Ups we did it again! Please mark your calender. EMBO Workshop “Lipid Code to Life”, taking place September 7–11, 2026, in Dresden, organized by Maria Fedorova, @lipid.bsky.social, Valerie O'Donnell, @holthuislab.bsky.social and @molcellbiophys-lab.bsky.social 🥳 Retweets = lipidlove