Ivan Maslov

🧬 New paper out!
Thrilled to contribute to our study on CaV1.3 channel clusters in cardiac myocytes using DNA-PAINT (4 nm loc. precision!) revealing flexible (not rigid) cluster organization.
👏 Great work by Niko Schwenzer, @samratb.bsky.social & team!
👉 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

It was fun to share my passion for science at the #EuropeanResearchersNight in Groningen!
✨ Curious visitors
✅matched 🧫 plates with microbes to where they were collected
✅inspected flowers, berries, and lichens under the microscope🔬
✅ created their own “bacterial selfies”📸

ABEL-FRET bridges the timescale gap in single-molecule measurements of the structural dynamics in the A2A adenosine receptor The functional complexity of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) arises from their structural dynamics, which span timescales from nanoseconds to minutes. Single-molecule Förster Resonance Energy Tran...

See details in the bioRxiv and wish us luck with submission!

Huge thanks to everyone involved:

Valentin Borshchevskiy, Vadim Cherezov, @hofkenslab.bsky.social, @profjelle.bsky.social, Michael Börsch, Thomas Gensch!

doi.org/10.1101/2025.07.22.666123

Finally, how to make sense of (1) sub-ms agonist-induced dynamics seen in confocal, and (2) long-lived states (>100ms) in ABEL trap. How do they not average out?

In our updated model, sub-ms dynamics occurs within long-lived states:

Maybe, these long-lived states can interconvert on much longer timescales - in fact, Wei et al. showed long-lived states with dwell times of seconds before with TIRF:

doi.org/10.1016/j.st...

We conclude that A2A receptors must have long-lived states with different FRET efficiencies with dwell times of at least hundreds of ms. This way, we extend our previous estimation, based on confocal burst data, ~100x fold!

it seems very much like "static heterogeneity":

within a "Gaussian" or FRET values, receptors on the left shoulder of the distribution stay there for 100s of milliseconds, as if they had "memory"

only metaphorically, of course ...

Instead of sharp PR peaks and step-like transitions, we see broad distributions and continuous FRET changes🤔 Is conformational space a spectrum?🙃

Our dynamics analysis (inspired by BVA, FRET-FCS, and RASP) showed that dynamics on 1-100 ms scale is significant but subtle, so...

With ABEL-trap, we can see individual receptors for up to 2 seconds instead of milliseconds! in solution and without tethers

Consistent with our previous data, agonist NECA increases FRET in double-labeled A2A

This is the final piece of my PhD studies on #smFRET with A2A adenosine receptors #GPCR!

In our previous study, we observed sub-ms agonist-induced conformational dynamics of the A2A, but longer transitions (if any) were invisible in burst-wise data

doi.org/10.1038/s420...

ABEL-FRET bridges the timescale gap in single-molecule measurements of the structural dynamics in the A2A adenosine receptor The functional complexity of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) arises from their structural dynamics, which span timescales from nanoseconds to minutes. Single-molecule Förster Resonance Energy Tran...

#smFRET-lovers! Imagine, you got nice burst data with freely diffusing molecules 🙌🔬

BUT
1) Immobilization does not work🧲🤬
2) Transitions are longer than diffusion time, but shorter than frametime of your TIRF⏱️

Solution: try ABEL-trap!💕

📜bioRxiv:
doi.org/10.1101/2025.07.22.666123

ABEL-FRET bridges the timescale gap in single-molecule measurements of the structural dynamics in the A2A adenosine receptor https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.22.666123v1

It was a great Day 1 of the EMBL Symposium "New approaches and concepts in microbiology"! Stepping a little outside of my usual microscopy/biophysics bubble feels like the right kind of challenge - wish me more good ideas, inspiration, and coffee
#EESMicrobiology

Membrane phosphoinositides allosterically tune β-arrestin dynamics to facilitate GPCR core engagement Arrestin proteins bind active G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) through coordinated protein-protein, protein-phosphate, and protein-lipid interactions to attenuate G protein signaling and promote GP...

Setting up a lab has been no joke. Today, I'm stoked to have one more piece of my postdoc work out in the wild.
Several more manuscripts to go, and I don't have a lot of time for a blue-torial(?) today, but enjoy and happy to get any feedback on this story.

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

⚛️Physics Olympiads hold a special place in my❤️

I cherish memories of my teachers and still enjoy the charm of the intellectual puzzles🥲

This year, I designed a few problems for the Dutch Physics Olympiads ⏳

Congratulations to the winners and good luck at #IPhO2025 🥳

beautiful pulsed labelings reveal where new wall form as bacteria grow

👏Loud applause to @linnikdmitrii.bsky.social, who came up with idea and combined so many methods to characterize the system from every possible angle! And thanks to everyone who contributed to the study! 🪅

@membraneenzymology.bsky.social 🔬🧫
@janstevens.bsky.social @cg-martini.bsky.social ‬🤖🧑‍💻

🚨 #LLPS: New trick for an old membrane protein!

Homo- and hetero- biomolecular condensates of a native membrane protein in E. coli tagged with PopTag 🔬🦠

LacY-PopTag is functional and localizes at cell poles or mobile foci in a curvature-dependent manner

🔗 doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-6571918/v1

Giulia Viola, Torsten Wittmann @microtubule.bsky.social and colleagues @ctbatucsf.bsky.social use protein nanocages to benchmark fluorescent proteins in live cells.
Highlight: journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/...
Article: journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/...
#OpenAccess #ReadandPublish

Single-molecule visualization of ATP-induced dynamics of the subunit composition of an ECF transporter complex under turnover conditions Nature Communications - The association and dissociation dynamics of the ECF transporter complex for vitamin B12 are visualized by single-molecule FRET, highlighting the original transport...

Solène’s 4.5 years of postdoctoral work in our lab (she started just before the corona pandemic) has now been published. A heroic effort that revealed -at the single molecule level- that ATP drives the dissociation of an ECF transporter complex under turnover conditions. See rdcu.be/elTKc

Register: forms.gle/4hDdwKNhXMJj...
Happening TOMORROW!

Join us on April 25 at 7PM EAT for a powerful webinar with @atinygreencell.bsky.social on making synthetic biology accessible to all.
Hosted by @synbio4allafrica.bsky.social .

We are looking for a postdoc with microbiology background for #superresolution #singlemolecule #ERC tracking project. Apply by 27.4.2025. 🦠🔬🧫
Pls share!

www.aalto.fi/en/open-posi...

Lipid packing and cholesterol content regulate membrane wetting and remodeling by biomolecular condensates Nature Communications - Membrane lipid packing, influenced by cholesterol, lipid chain length, and saturation, regulates the affinity of biomolecular condensates, enhancing their interactions with...

1/8 Exciting new work with Agu @mangiarotti.bsky.social @mpici.bsky.social ! 🚀 Our latest study explores how lipid packing and cholesterol regulate the interaction of biomolecular condensates with membranes. It turns out, it’s not just about membrane phase. Packing is the key! 🧵👇
rdcu.be/eelLq

New Night Science Podcast episode! David Baker was awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He explains how he socially engineers his lab’s "communal brain", where all individuals function like neurons, densely interconnected to maximize idea generation.
nightscience.buzzsprout.com/1744020/epis...

Protein function often depends on protein dynamics. To design proteins that function like natural ones, how do we predict their dynamics?

@hkws.bsky.social and I are thrilled to share the first big, experimental datasets on protein dynamics and our new model: Dyna-1!

🧵

A comprehensive review on covalent chemical strategies for protein self-labeling from @kjohnsson.bsky.social's lab: HaloTag, SNAP-tag et al. www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

Spectrally Resolved Single-Molecule Orientation Imaging Reveals a Direct Correspondence between the Polarity and Microviscosity Experienced by Nile Red in Supported Lipid Bilayer Membranes Molecular-level interactions among lipids, cholesterol, and water dictate the nanoscale membrane organization of lipid bilayers into liquid-ordered (Lo) and liquid-disordered (Ld) phases, characterize...

How is one dye #NileRed (NR) the sensor of both polarity and microviscosity?

Sarkar et al. correlate spectral shifts and fluorophore orientations of single molecules of NR in Lo/Ld supported lipid bilayers

PhysChemB: doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpcb.4c07578
🔓 bioRxiv: doi.org/10.1101/2024.06.21.600028

Single-molecule microscopy is full of surprises:
see how anisotropy can be used to follow the conformational dynamics! 🤯 #24-state-model

"Examination of conformational dynamics of AdiC transporter with fluorescence-polarization microscopy" @jgp.org 🔥🔬

rupress.org/jgp/article/...

Measuring plasma membrane fluidity using confocal microscopy - Nature Protocols Membrane fluidity is a crucial feature in understanding cellular physiology. This protocol describes a robust pipeline for measuring plasma membrane fluidity using confocal imaging and new environment...

New paper out 🎇
It has been 13 years since @owenlabuob.bsky.social and co. published a stellar protocol on how to measure membrane order with smart probes! Since then, there has been new dyes, imaging modes and biology! We wrote a protocol for Nature Protocols:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

De novo design of transmembrane fluorescence-activating proteins - Nature A study describes the design of de novo ligand-binding transmembrane proteins, demonstrating their specific binding and activation of fluorogenic ligands.

Nature research paper: De novo design of transmembrane fluorescence-activating proteins

https://go.nature.com/4k2OAZA