JLee Lab

Happy to share the latest work from the lab, led by @mudgal17.bsky.social‬, in collaboration with the Weis lab @ethzurich.bsky.social.
How do nuclear membranes fuse during NPC assembly? We answer this question in our latest work, where we identify a new mechanism for membrane fusion… (1/13)

I'm thrilled to share that our story is now out in Science Advances! 🎉 We use quantitative imaging to map the mito central dogma, define translation hubs in the mitochondrial matrix, and show that they're replaced by Mitochondrial Stress Bodies (MSB) when mtRNA processing is perturbed 1/4

An open letter to graduate students and other procrastinators: it’s time to write - Nature Biotechnology Nature Biotechnology - An open letter to graduate students and other procrastinators: it’s time to write

A beautiful article about writing, which also advocates against the use of LLM when learning academic writing

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

Are lipids actively sorted during clathrin mediated endocytosis like proteins? @mathilda95.bsky.social addresses this key open question together with our collaborators from the Honigmann and Modes labs using a new Lipid-STED workflow.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Hey #chemsky and beyond, with all that is going on, I am curious what expensive, high margin molecules we could provide to the community for free. What things do you use all the time, cost way too much, and would make a difference? Alexa Fluor 488 NHS? Other dyes? Other molecule?

A proper ☃️ for a legit snow day in HOUSTON!!? Mother Nature, never let them know your next move!

Structured protein domains enter the spotlight: modulators of biomolecular condensate form and function Biomolecular condensates are membraneless organelles that concentrate proteins and nucleic acids. One of the primary components of condensates is mult…

It's about time we have a conversation about the role of structured protein domains in form and function of bimolecular condensates. Proud of graduate student Nate Hess for taking the lead on synthesizing these ideas and identifying important gaps in the field!! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

I am excited to report the preprint of my postdoc work in the @olzmannlab.bsky.social! We have discovered the first lipid droplet quality control pathway with broad implications for lipid physiology and diseases associated with LD accumulation and oxidative stress! #lipidtime

shorturl.at/2HqFd

Is chromatin ordered or disordered? It all depends on the linker DNA length.

Check our latest work with Mike Rosen and Sy Redding. We explore how changes in linker DNA length (as small as 1 bp) fine-tune chromatin structure, between order and disorder, and the properties of chromatin droplets

Looking for some holiday reading material? Our latest paper identifying a new player in mitochondrial fission is now out @jcellbiol.bsky.social! A wonderful early present to see this now online!

rupress.org/jcb/article/...

Gearing up for our lab’s holiday party! Grilling pizza, meats and veggies!!

Great thread from @levin-ferreyra.bsky.social about her latest work in the lab, out today in @emboreports.bsky.social ! 👇

Title and abstract of the memoriam in the Journal of Cell Biology in the link

In September the world lost one of the great biologists of our time: Joe Gall. He bridged the transition from the histology era of cell biology to our molecular present, contributing a remarkable set of insights in his 9 decades 1/n 🧪
rupress.org/jcb/article-...

Thank you!!

Great list!! I just migrated over. Could you please add me?

Heterogeneity of late endosome/lysosomes shown by multiplexed DNA-PAINT imaging This study developed a multiplexed and quantitative DNA-PAINT super-resolution imaging pipeline to investigate the distribution of late endosomal/lysosomal

I’m posting here for the first time to announce our new paper published in JCB on identifying heterogeneous populations of lysosomes using DNA-Paint imaging. Check it out at: rupress.org/jcb/article-...

Really proud of this paper just out in JCB. At almost every turn, SURF4 surprised us. Amazing PhD student, Julija Maldutyte, sleuthed it out.
rupress.org/jcb/article/...

Lastly, I want to thank the editors and reviewers @jcellbiol.bsky.social for a constructive review that significantly improved the paper. They also provided an excellent example of peer review to the trainees in our lab, many of which have never published before this paper. Very grateful 🙏

13/Please check out their beautiful paper where they developed a complementary approach to evaluating interactions within condensates using FLIM fluorescence cross-correlation spectroscopy www.nature.com/articles/s41...

12/Eleonora Perego and Giuseppe Vicidomini (vicidominilab.github.io) gave excellent insight into what we were seeing, and provided us the opportunity to demonstrate our approaches translate to data captured from different FLIM platforms.

11/A huge bottleneck in our quest to understand our data and automate our pipelines came from an inability to convert raw TCSPC data from Leica LasX to G and S coordinates.. Our solution came from an open source GUI (FLUTE) from Chiara Stringari's Lab. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

10/Josh Marcus spearheaded our Python scripts for a wavelet filter to resolve subtle fluorescence lifetime differences, and machine-learning segmentation of condensate lifetime clusters! Leyla Fahim wrote our automated FLIM-FRET scripts! github.com/LeeLabBCM

9/I was super excited to connect with Alessandro Rossetta (www.flimlabs.com) in Feb2023 to learn more about FLIM and phasor plot analyses. He has been a great guide and catalyst, which helped Leyla and Josh build momentum towards automating our analyses.

8/P-bodies are thought to be sites of mRNA storage, however we see precise control of a key interaction for mRNA decapping. Are P-bodies multifunctional like most organelles? Can storage and decay both occur within P-bodies? Stay tuned for more work in this space!

7/Not only are Dcp2-Dcp1A interactions diminished during stress, but they also do not return after 2-hrs of recovery even when stress granules have disassembled, and presumably when mRNA translation has resumed.

6/Leyla only observed FRET shifts within P-bodies expressing Halo-Dcp1A (top). Thus, JF549 is a suitable FRET acceptor for mNeonGreen, and these data show Dcp2 and Dcp1A can interact within P-bodies. But what happens during stress?

5/mNG-Dcp2 cells acutely expressing Halo-Dcp1A (top), or Halo-DDX6 (bottom-neg control). DonorOnly images were captured -> spike of JF549 -> recaptured same cells for FLIM-FRET. **Halo-expressing cells (green/magenta outlines). Non-Halo-expressing cells (white) served as an internal control.

4/Leyla cleverly thought to express mNeonGreen-Dcp2 as a donor together with an acceptor tagged with Halo, so a reference donor fluorescence lifetime could be captured in the absence of JaneliaFluor-549 ligand. How does it work?

3/Around this time, Leyla Fahim joined the lab to develop FLIM-FRET for live tracking of interactions on ER membranes and within condensates, such as function-critical interactions between the decapping enzyme, Dcp2, and it's coactivator Dcp1A in P-bodies.

2/The challenges of studying membrane-less condensates are rooted in the presence of condensate-enriched components within surrounding spaces. 1.5 years ago, Josh Marcus and I realized we could use filtered fluorescence lifetime phasor plots to separate stress granule pixels.