Thrilled to share our work using live imaging to understand how Epiblast (future embryo proper) and Primitive Endoderm (future extraembryonic tissues) cell fates segregate in the preimplantation mouse embryo. Gargantuan effort led by amazing @rpkimyip.bsky.social, David Denberg and Denis Faerberg!

pYtags - our in vivo biosensors for receptor tyrosine kinases - in all their beauty on the cover of Cell Reports! Read more here: www.cell.com/cell-reports...

Excited to share that our work building in vivo biosensors for receptor tyrosine kinases (pYtags!) is now out www.cell.com/cell-reports...

RFK Jr. told Congress no working scientists were fired, but these top NIH brain scientists are still facing job cuts "As far as I know, we have not fired any working scientists," RFK Jr. had told Congress.

Some of NIH's top brain researchers got layoff notices last month

While they were asked to keep working in labs for now, their layoffs were never rescinded

"As far as I know, we have not fired any working scientists," Secy Kennedy had told Congress

www.cbsnews.com/news/rfk-jr-...

Excited that our work revealing the structure and function of the monster stress response silencing factor, the E3 ligase SIFI, is now out! Congratulations to the most amazing team of Zhi Yang, Diane Haakonsen, Michael Heider and Sam Witus!

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

I'd like to share a little bit of happy lab news in these chaotic times: a new preprint, driven by the brilliant Qinhao Cao!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
We address a big challenge in synbio: If you give me a protein "X", how can I give you a version of X whose activity is controlled by a kinase?

Large-scale control over collective cell migration using light-activated epidermal growth factor receptors Programmable control over tissue movement is a fundamental challenge for tissue engineering and wound healing. Suh, Thornton, et al. discovered that a light-controlled EGF receptor controls long-range...

I'm so happy to report that our preprint on light-induced collective cell migration has now been published in Cell Systems! This project was a lot of fun and will be the basis for a lot of our ongoing & future work.

C-terminal amides mark proteins for degradation via SCF–FBXO31 - Nature SCF–FBXO31 scans proteins for C-terminal amidation and marks them for subsequent proteasomal degradation.

scary but fascinating - cells have a degradation pathway that hunts down C-terminal scars (amides!) on damaged proteins. just wow. chemical biology plus CRISPR at its best. big congrats to all authors!

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

Mitochondrial YME1L1 governs unoccupied protein translocase channels - Nature Cell Biology Hsu et al. show that mitochondrial import blockage stress activates the ATP-dependent protease YME1L1, which degrades mitochondrial presequence translocase TIM23 subunits to promote cell growth.

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

Read below for the latest from Emily Ho in my lab on in vivo receptor tyrosine kinase biosensors. This has been a *dream* project, seeing endogenous RTK activity in live embryos for the first time. Surprise: they don't always match those of downstream signaling pathways!

On the spontaneous emergence of cell polarity - Nature A mathematical model shows that favouring chance recruitment of a given signalling molecule to sites at the cell's membrane where it is already bound-a positive feedback-is sufficient to allow the spo...

This is a go to favorite of mine for thinking about maintaining spatial patterns in cells: www.nature.com/articles/nat...

Pyroptotic cell corpses are crowned with F-actin-rich filopodia that engage CLEC9A signaling in incoming dendritic cells Nature Immunology - Pyroptotic cell death results in inflammation. Here the authors find that F-actin-rich structures formed during macrophage pyroptosis persist after cell death to activate...

Have you ever wondered whether pyroptotic corpses have functions beyond the grave? We made the surprising discovery that pyroptotic corpses are flagged by #filopodia to alert #DendriticCells they need autopsy. A short Bluetorial (1/13)👇with movies!
Link: rdcu.be/d2mjm

The cell is the building block of life. How do they work, how do they interact with each other, and what goes wrong in disease?

Meet the newest cohort of Allen Distinguished Investigators and their bold #FrontierScience projects. 🧵

Apropos *first* post! We’ve discovered a central mechanism for how activation of STING induces NFkB related immune signaling - M1-linked/linear ubiquitin chains! I’m so excited to share it with you all, out now in t.co/zCIf2E4h2z a thread 1/X:

Messages loud & clear: Chris & Alex designed destabilized MS2 and PP7 coat proteins, which are degraded in cells except when bound to their cognate RNA hairpins. We used these probes to image distinct single mRNAs simultaneously in live cells, 'background-free.' AddGene soon! tinyurl.com/27p7hyt9