James Murphy

We have an open post-doc position in my group to study mRNA cleavage and polyadenylation using biochemical reconstitution and cryoEM.

Please get in touch if you are interested in joining this amazing team! 🔬🧬🤩
#RNA #cryoEM

Thank you for “Open”. So beautiful and also so appropriate. Viva the death protein!

Tenure-track Position in Biophysics at Carnegie Mellon University, Department of Physics Location: Pittsburgh, PA Open Date: Sep 19, 2025 Description The Department of Physics at Carnegie Mellon University invites applications for a tenure-track faculty position in biophysics. The appointment is intended to be at the Assistant Professor level, but exceptional candidates at a higher level may also be considered. We seek outstanding candidates with a strong record in cellular and subcellular biophysics. Topics of particular interest include, but are not limited to, uncovering how key characteristics of living systems arise from the interplay between supramolecular cellular structures, how the emergent cellular circuitry defines goals and enables robust decision making, and how metabolic resources are allocated. This encompasses understanding of how information is learned, stored, transduced, and processed across subcellular structures. Applicants with theoretical, data science, or experimental backgrounds within biological physics are encouraged to apply. The ideal candidate will strengthen and extend research programs of current biophysics faculty in the Department of Physics and collaborate with broader life science activities across many departments at CMU and the wider Pittsburgh area. More details on Interfolio: https://apply.interfolio.com/174360

I am super excited to announce that we have a tenure-track faculty position in biophysics open in the Department of Physics at Carnegie Mellon! 🧪

Interfolio link: apply.interfolio.com/174360

PLEASE, share widely across the blue skies!

Let me briefly explain what we're looking for:

1/10

👇 We want you! Don’t miss out on our inaugural "Indigenous Researcher Award" from the Lorne Proteins conference. Full support to attend the 2026 conference. Deadline October 24.
www.lorneproteins.org/researcher

They don’t make them like they used to…

🎓 Applications are now open for WEHI’s International PhD Scholar Initiative.

📅 Apply by Sunday 26 October 2025

🔗 Learn more about eligibility, scholarships and how to apply: wehi.edu.au/education/ph...

Help us spread the word by sharing with your networks!

Peer reviewers are exhausted. It's common to spend *months* inviting reviewers, getting refusals, inviting more, maybe 12 or more, then 2 agree but 1 doesn't complete, so you go again. That's why your paper is in limbo. I'm very sorry, it's awful, but it's also an untenable academic labour issue.

Congrats! Looking forward to celebrating in Leeds!

Hard to believe that just over a week ago we wrapped the #iubmbKinases meeting. What an epic. Such a spectacular location with such spectacular people and science (and sheepdogs). Hat tip to @petermace.bsky.social for the hard yards. This one will be hard to top

Onward into metabolism. Kicking off the pm session with Grace Gong (LMB) and John Burke (UVic) #iubmbKinases @iubmb.bsky.social We thank @biochemsoc.bsky.social #BiochemJ for their support of this session. The weather couldn’t even lure us away!

Day 3 of #iubmbKinases @iubmb.bsky.social and many of us sprung up to take this photo through the conference room window - even during talks. Queenstown turning on a stunner of a day, matched only by some terrific science

You’d have loved this @jffoley.bsky.social

Another tremendous day in (pseudo)kinase paradise at #iubmbKinases in NZ courtesy of @iubmb.bsky.social Wrapping up the final session with Isa Lucet from @wehi-research.bsky.social kindly sponsored by our friends at Science Signaling @aaas.org

Flying start to the #iubmbkinases meeting in beautiful Queenstown, NZ. Jubilee Award from IUBMB to Kevan Shokat yesterday, and a kinase masterclass from Susan Taylor this morning

Sad but true

I’m the only difference between you and a late lunch

There’s also a weird lack of uptake of preprints so formal publication seems essential

And the editors aren’t stooges. They do science to the highest standards day to day for a job. This is community service. So you know it’s fair

It’s even better on the other side. Picture this- @biochemsoc.bsky.social journals have a philosophy of not asking for more work if your conclusions are supported by data. It’s called Painless Publishing. And it is 100% free open access. And I’m not kidding you

Science typically had the ethos of chuck your ideas out there. If they are bananas, you’ll be rightly challenged. Not easy if that gear is stuck on someone’s hard drive

Why don’t we take the power to put what we do into the public domain with constructive comments rather than spending time and money on tweaking the ultimate message? Society journals are edited pragmatically and allow progress. This is the only way the current publications models will survive

Petitioning the crowd out there. What’s our vibe around supporting society journals vs the for profit crowd? Maybe I got old, maybe I chair a publications committee for a union, maybe I am Editor in Chief for one of the society journals. But I’ve had enough of the obstruction from reviewers

Scientific meeting Plant proteins: functions, regulation, production and utility Leeds, UK 21-23 October 2025 Earlybird deadline: 21 August 2025

Time is running out to submit your abstract for Plant Proteins: functions, regulation, production and utility! Join us in Leeds to hear from four #BiochemAwards winners, advance understanding of plant proteins and unlock new insights! 🧪Abstract deadline: 21 August www.eventsforce.net/biochemsoc/2...

Not a fan of theme restaurants myself

His government need to say “yes” to supporting innovation, R&D and discovery science. Otherwise I’ll see all of NZ’s finest here in Australia or further afield very soon. Most importantly, and simply, he should stop empowering his colleagues to say “no”. Science shouldn’t be a bloodsport

📣 New paper alert! Just out in Cell Reports! pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40644298/
Thrilled to share that we have discovered a brand-new anti-phage defense system! Bacteria have evolved various defense strategies (CRISPR etc) to counter phage attacks. We found a new one - fascinating and dramatic
⚔️🦠❄️🔬

FEBS Press A plant homeodomain (PHD) at the C terminus of additional sex combs-like (ASXL) proteins is recurrently truncated in disease. In the current study, the ASXL PHD was shown not to bind histone modifica...

Excited to see this work led by Cameron Reddington and Annabel Walsh out in @febsj.bsky.social — ASXL proteins share a PHD domain that is not a PHD domain, evolved to bind an MBD domain that is not an MBD domain!

febs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

A cartoon image of a beach with a banner that reads "save the date!" 8th-12th February, 2026, Victoria, Australia. Lorne Proteins 2026.

📣 Save the date for the 51st Lorne Conference on Protein Structure and Function! ✨ Lorne, Victoria, Australia. We have a packed program and we'll be sharing all the details here - Like, Follow and Share - because friends don't let friends miss the epic Lorne Proteins 😊
www.lorneproteins.org

Isn’t it written by an Irish person?