Chris Ashwood

Oligosaccharide Elicitors in Plant Immunity: Molecular Mechanisms and Disease Resistance Strategies Short Summary: This review examines how oligosaccharide elicitors from pathogens and plants activate immune responses through membrane receptors, detailing their types, functions, and signaling pathwa...

Now online. This work summarizes plant immunity triggered by cell wall–derived molecules from both sides. Happy to be back in immunity and grateful to be involved. Enjoy! www.cell.com/plant-commun...

Post-Translational Modifications Remodel Proteome-Wide Ligandability Post-translational modifications (PTMs) vastly expand the diversity of human proteome, dynamically reshaping protein activity, interactions, and localization in response to environmental, pharmacologi...

Excited to share a new preprint from the lab. We show that PTMs like phosphorylation & glycosylation dynamically reshape proteome-wide ligandability in cells, including proteins like KRAS. Great collaboration with the Huang Lab, @forlilab.bsky.social and BMS. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

No mention of data availability/MIRAGE which is concerning for a glycomics study of this magnitude.

For those that like GWAS, here’s a #glycotime version

I'm biased towards MS as a solution for most -omic problems because I like having a mass for the thing I'm measuring.

2D gels are good, but, for glyco at least, it's not sufficiently high resolution to know what the modification mass exactly is, which necessitates MS downstream anyway.

International PhD scholarship round for 2026 is open at ANU. Aspiring scholars with Masters degree, or equivalent (eg Australia/NZ Hons), interested in computational chemistry, quantum information, molecular spins, vibronic coupling, or something in that vein - get in touch!

Neil is leading that effort in many ways (funding, awareness, R&D) so I’m hopeful it will be at that level soon.

Engineered lignin composition in Brachypodium distachyon modulates the root-associated microbiome https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.30.667798v1

Also, future directions for timsTOF dev:
"space-charge limitation, likely in the tims cartridge, as higher mobility ions are ejected at a greater rate when space charge effects...limited linearity for the timsTOF Ultra 2 could likely be ameliorated through the design of a higher capacity tims"

Virion motility of sialoglycan-cleaving respiratory viruses - npj Viruses npj Viruses - Virion motility of sialoglycan-cleaving respiratory viruses

New review paper from the influenza group
@utrechtvirology.bsky.social
together with Mengying Liu and Erik de Vries on virion motility of sialoglycan-cleaving respiratory viruses through mucus and on the surface cells in NPJ viruses @natureportfolio.nature.com
doi.org/10.1038/s442...

"high-throughput nanoLC operated at ~10 min per sample, the $10 proteome becomes feasible"
That's 144 samples per day, or 52,560 yearly

The budgeting is good (factoring in 20% downtime), but curious who can keep an instrument fed at that rate.

Another select quote:
"street price of $1,000,000 USD"

Great news!
There are all the articles about brain drain and other countries poaching US scientists but there would have been a decimation of worldwide science research if the 40% cut went ahead.

That's always my biggest concern with education, having to learn /s

you can unclench a little bit....

Mass Spectrometry Technology Specialist, Międzynarodowy Instytut Biologii Molekularnej i Komórkowej w Warszawie, Warszawa Job offer Mass Spectrometry Technology Specialist, Międzynarodowy Instytut Biologii Molekularnej i Komórkowej w Warszawie, Warszawa

🤩 JOB ALERT 🤩 Come work with me and two cutting-edge LC-MS/MS systems at our brand new Mass Spectrometry Facility @iimcb.bsky.social in Warsaw! Apply here tinyurl.com/y47mzafa or send any questions my way. #TeamMassSpec please share widely!

In-source decay with MALDI generates similar oligosaccharide fragmentation patterns, whether the oligosaccharide is modifying a lipid or a carrier protein.
#glycotime

Not a bad idea, only a correction would be needed.
Let’s wait and see.

Oh, absolutely. Whether it is practically useful is another matter, but it will help sell instruments and sources (Optispray Duo, 2027).

It’s a natural response to the MS performance being LC-limited in terms of complexity.
If you’re able to do 270-300 Hz, and there aren’t enough peptides to fragment per cycle, I could see the academic interest in it.
Optispray patents have dual emitter applications, so Thermo will be there soon too.

The Slavov lab’s manuscript could still do that as it is currently unpublished, but then any reader could get the impression that they disclosed second, which isn’t the case.

Both labs tend to file patents, so this could turn into a real interesting case about first to file.

This line in the SynchroSep paper has to sting though: "the first example of label-free multiplexed proteome analysis via parallel LC separations"

Specifically because timePlex was disclosed first (and at least one of the SynchroSep authors were aware of this work before submission)

Thanks to data availability, we can see both labs acquired the data at almost the exact same time.
Coon lab: 20241212_DualColRd07_GradTest_CM_250ngHC_Zoe_250ngHC_1min.raw
Slavov lab:
JD0407_20241229082700

So in the end, two separate studies that just happened to use different publication strategies

Congrats Dr. Milne!

This is pretty interesting, even if only from a publication timing perspective.

TimePlex by Slavov Lab (3 columns at once) was preprinted a month before SynchroSep was submitted to JASMS, but the SynchroSep paper (2 columns at once) doesn't cite it.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

8 months post viva, it's finally official. Dr Lorna Milne 🍬❤️

Neolactotetraosylceramide enables urinary detection of bladder cancer Moreira et al. show that the glycosphingolipid nLc4 is increased in bladder cancer tissue and patients’ urine. nLc4 is selectively expressed in tumor cells and secreted via extracellular vesicles. Its...

🚨 New biomarker alert!
We discovered a sugar in urine, nLc4, released by bladder tumor cells and potentially enabling non-invasive bladder cancer detection.

The study, combining advanced techniques and hundreds of patient samples across Germany, in now online!

📖 www.cell.com/cell-reports...

“…creates pressure on researchers to produce impressive results”
I think this is key. Is there not pressure to produce impressive results for private funding too?

With decreasing NIH funding, one could argue that scientists are at their most vulnerable, and that might compromise their integrity.

As a former-trainee that has presented at a vendor seminar, I don’t see the relevance to this topic.

It’s not their conflict.

For everything else, I think we should agree to disagree.

I'm more talking about the total compensation that vendors provides consultants (instruments and discounts).
This is reflected in the initial joke post, I'd want to know if a lab is dependent on this funding to maintain their research program.
If there are plans to reveal that info, I'd be satisfied