Kate Michie

Oh yeah… can do that.

Diagram describing the change in process of PBD submissions from Oceania in 2026- now going via PDBj

Hey structural biologists submitting PDB’s from Oceania in 2026…. Keep those structures coming via the Japanese PDB node! 🤩

Lots of fun delivering a talk about how to use structural predictions in biological research to Perth Protein Group yearly meeting. Perth is lovely! Wish I could have stayed longer. Great to see old friends and meet some new ones #perthproteins

Wow! That’s rather embarrassing not to be there for that ( sorry about that- I’m mid-air -almost in Perth for a talk at the protein meeting tomorrow) and rather humbling as well. 🙏

It was a great meeting! Highly recommended. Sorry to have missed the last and best part- all those amazing early career speakers and poster prizes!!! Congratulations everyone. Wonderful job to the organisers.

Celebrating the scientific legacy of Shin-Ho Chung to #biophysics at the @aus-soc-biophys.bsky.social meeting #ASB2025 on the Gold Coast with excellent presentations by Toby Allen, Ben Corry, Evelyne Deplazes, Elaine Tao, Jennifer Deuis, and @ciarawallis.bsky.social

Hearty congratulations to Assoc. Prof. Matthew Baker @phatmattbaker.bsky.social who was awarded the MacAulay-Hope Prize for originality and innovation in #biophysics at the @aus-soc-biophys.bsky.social meeting #ASB2025 at Griffith University Gold Coast campus.

LMI4Boltz: Optimizing VRAM utilization to predict large macromolecular complexes with consumer grade hardware AlphaFold2 has revolutionised structural biology by enabling the prediction of protein structures approaching experimental quality. AlphaFold3 extends this framework to support modelling broad biomole...

Follow Tom here: @tlitfin.bsky.social

And preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

🤩 I’m biased but… so sorry to have missed this.

DECRAs are out! Good luck young investigators. If you are unlucky- please don't let this moment define you.
#ARC

Registration for #APSPM2026 closes soon.

Everyone’s welcome! whether you study evolution, structure, or computational methods, join us in Brisbane (and online) Feb 16–18, 2026 to learn how protein structure meets phylogenetics.
biosig.lab.uq.edu.au/strphy26

@official-smbe.bsky.social

The Wollongong crew have arrived in the gold coast for the #ASB2025 meeting! Just missing @lisannes.bsky.social who had presidential matters to attend to.

Looking forward to the week of great science and catching up with the biophysics community in Aus!

Congratulations to Prof. Adelle Coster, UNSW, to whom I was honoured to present the 2025 Australian Society for Biophysics (ASB) Bob Roberston medal during ASB2025 at @griffith.edu.au. Adelle is pictured with ASB President, @lisannes.bsky.social; inaugural awardee Hans Coster; & myself 2009 medal.

Alessandro starting his invited talk opening the Australian Biophysics conference on the Gold Coast

@costalaboratory.bsky.social Nice presentation at the Australian Biophysics conference. Amazing series of Cryo EM structures.

I haven’t tried it. my day-to-day doesn’t use those tools that often. I can give it a go and let you know. I’m sure there will be uses that are helpful. I am very grateful for Alphafold, Boltz, RF diffusion, and BindCraft. They certainly have changed my day to day. There are other bottle necks now.

I’ve seen some doozy traps that people have fallen into that aren’t structural biologists. Could we train another model to analyse the output better? Probably. It still isn’t at the ‘walk away’ phase.

You can give biomolecular DL programs a protein sequence to fold and they will output a result. You need to really understand all the metrics to know if that output is any good. There certainly are examples with high confidence metrics that are rubbish. You need to really be an expert to judge.

I know. It’s sad. Some people in their desire to control and dominate make me sad. There is no prize at the end of life and you can’t take it all with you. Death is inevitable.

One thing that they have taught people with this grab for power is the value of data. Make no mistake that some people have noticed this and things are changing about how data is shared. I can’t imagine what 5 years down the road will look right now. The game has changed. Adapt or die.

We don’t have the fundamental data required to train an AI to do these tasks yet. Science in this area is extremely difficult and there are many examples of very smart people changing fields to ‘fix’ it and who have disappeared into obscurity.

For instance the claim it will solve cancer is deluded. The people that say that don’t have a clue what cancer is. Alphafold3 can’t even tell you which metal atom is in a protein structure. It certainly is not ‘designing’ drugs right now. This is all about attracting venture capital and isn’t truth.

They underestimate the complexity of biology and over estimate human understanding. There is a skill shortage required to scale most of the AI assisted results. Deep understanding of the limitations is required. For now the weight is still on the scientist’s foot. They may have gone hard too early

Assuming deep sea organisms won’t last long and so this is the best thing we can do to try to ‘observe them’. Certainly can’t freeze thaw them and prepare later unfortunately. Heroic taking a plunger onto the seas!

🤩🥰 Exciting! Good luck 😉

At the time the cultures were so complex it was impossible to tell precisely which organism had the vesicles. The cultures contain many different types of archaea- a real treasure trove, and lots of bacteria with lots of ‘weirdness’.

Yes they are! Might have been an oversight, but these cultures were established at UNSW in 2019 in @brendanburns999.bsky.social ‘s lab and funded by Australian research grants. The first tomograms that revealed the exciting internal structures were carried out by @debnathghosal.bsky.social

I was such a huge Frenzal groupie…😂

In Australia your house is actually likely to burn down any time each summer… and the gambling odds are getting worse each year- insurance is insane and it’s driving inflation here. They pride themselves on understanding ‘markets’ so I’m genuinely confused why they going in this direction 🤷🏼‍♀️

Our ‘conservatives’ in Oz are debating dropping ‘net zero’ in favour apparently of burning Rome for personal gain. I do wonder at times if they can read, or if they ever go outside. Too busy counting their own pennies to see the bigger picture. How does this sit with Gen Y and Z? 🤔

I never knew her, but I am sorry for your loss. We need more people like her- good humans inspiring others. Take care of yourself and remember the things about her you valued. She lives on in who she inspired you to be.