Chris Caffalette

CUNY and SUNY colleagues: ICYMI Please sign and share this letter to the NY Congressional Delegation asking them to protect NIH and NSF funding!

docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Former MIT researchers advance a new model for innovation Developed by former MIT researchers, focused research organizations (FROs) undertake large research efforts and have begun to contribute to scientific advances.

MIT News reports on focused research organizations (FROs), non-profit startups, developed by some of our group members and alumni. FROs can work on problems that are a poor fit for academia or the for-profit startup world. news.mit.edu/2025/former-...

Cryo-EM structure of the vault from human brain reveals symmetry mismatch at its caps The vault protein is expressed in most eukaryotic cells, where it is assembled on polyribosomes into large hollow barrel-shaped complexes. Despite its widespread and abundant presence in cells, the bi...

The amazing Sofia Lövestam initiated the below project, when she became interested in the vault particles that we sometimes observe in #cryoEM images of brain-derived #amyloid filaments.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

This isn’t just numbers on a table–it’s my lab and the labs of my colleagues. Terminated grants mean shuttered projects, lost talent, and stalled progress against deadly pathogens. The damage to science–and to public health–is real and immediate. Thanks @peterhotezmdphd.bsky.social for speaking out.

Whaaaat that’s so cool!

Back to @mblscience.bsky.social Woods Hole - teaching on the Pair Up Microscopy Course. Great experience and awesome participants.

Wild - last time here I was a student (Physical Biology of the Cell Course in 2018). Now introducing my lab.

Thanks Abhishek Kumar for organising and the invitation.

If people of means are interested in establishing a 2025 “Institute for Advanced Study” for displaced/defunded biomedical scientists, I know many people who will help, including myself.
@mcuban.bsky.social
@arcadiascience.com
@arcinstitute.org

Just found out my two related NSF grants (on discovery of phages that target antibiotic resistance vectors and building synthetic systems to understand the biology of those vectors) were also caught in Harvard’s mass grant termination

Here’s another spectacle of New York spring entomology: Eastern tent caterpillars (Malacosoma americanum) are among the most social lepidopterans. In May, you can find their silken tents, in which they aggregate (and defecate).

They have three daily feeding bouts, during which they exit the nest and move together to distant feeding sites. They mark their route with silk and trail pheromone. Successful “scouts” can even recruit the colony to new food sources. They’re kind of the ants among the butterflies.

Woodstock, NY.

I struggle with the duality of the CISR idea being both awesome…and part of the administration’s plan for states to take over the role of research funding

If you have any social connections to former academics in leadership roles within research departments, I feel like getting in touch with them would really be the only way…or at least it could be clearer whether they’re pressured to stay low

My lab at NYU is hiring a postdoc interested in RNA biology and local translation in neurons following axonal injury/neurodegenerative diseases!! Apply here: apply.interfolio.com/165681

Tomorrow at the Systems Virology Journal Club, @tamanash.bsky.social will present his beautiful work with @harmitmalik.bsky.social on optimizing temperature-dependent trade-off between protein production and processing in alphaviruses through stop codon selectivity pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40249804/

Thanks!

Curious to know if you find that plasma, like Xe, consistently gives better contrast than Ga, or if it just looks that way by eye?

Haha, it took a second back when I snapped the picture: “salt bridge”

Virginia license plate “NACLBRJ”

Virginia has some good ones!

nyc?

Cell membranes sustain phospholipid imbalance via cholesterol asymmetry This work challenges a major assumption in cell biology by showing that lipid bilayers can have drastically different phospholipid abundances between their two leaflets. This lipid abundance asymmetry...

Groundbreaking study in Cell from @leventallab.bsky.social: phospholipid asymmetry is a defining feature of the plasma membrane and cholesterol fills the holes — major implications for how this membrane works. A #lipidtime must-read! www.cell.com/cell/abstrac...

I second goodrx, if that’s an option (I’ve had good luck with it in the past). I also found this singlecare site in a reddit thread, but not sure about since I just stumbled upon it
www.singlecare.com/prescription...

Rachael, thank you for this. We can all benefit from the example of your courage and wisdom in speaking out.

Structural insights into the coupling between VCP, an essential unfoldase, and a deubiquitinase. New study from Lauren Vostal, Tarun Kapoor and colleagues @rockefelleruniv.bsky.social: rupress.org/jcb/article/...

#StructuralBiology #Biochemistry #ProteinHomeostasis #CryoEM

WE GOT THE COVER!!!

The final version of our work on the in-cell architecture of the mitochondrial respiratory chain is now online in @science.org 🎉
You can find the full story here www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
@verenaresch.bsky.social did a wonderful job on the cover and animation, she really brought it to life 👩‍🎨

Congratulations to first authors @rufeili.bsky.social and @tshindmarsh.bsky.social !!!!

Here is the paper, worth a read for those interested in behavior, neuroscience, and mating competition: www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Macrophotography of a pink flower in the center on a green background. Three Drosophila flies are on the flower, two of which interact with one another

Proud that one of my photographs has made the cover of Cell. (first 'official' photograph publication) Very happy to contribute the pic and highlight the latest publication of the Ruta lab.

In preparation for the lecture tomorrow, I opened "The Cell in Development and Heredity" by E.B. Wilson (Columbia Univ), and realized that this 3rd edition was published in 100 years ago.

So many things happened since then, including the fact that I, a Japanese Prof in NY, own and read the book.