Jonny Nixon-Abell

Increased HCN1 activity in human excitatory neurons drives excessive network bursting in Dravet syndrome Dravet syndrome (DS) is a severe childhood epilepsy caused by mutations of the sodium channel NaV1.1. These mutations are thought to compromise the ability of inhibitory interneurons to regulate netwo...

I may be a little biased here but I think this is SUCH a cool story….a new HCN1-focussed mechanism in Dravet syndrome (infant epilepsy). Helps to explain why current treatments haven’t worked and offers a novel genuinely druggable target.Awesome 🤩🤩🤩
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

😍😍😍. Congrats folks.!!

My recent postdoctoral work is out today in @nature.com! We found that physical confinement makes melanoma cells more invasive and drug tolerant. Thanks to all who made this work possible @whitefishlab.bsky.social @mskcancercenter.bsky.social #NIH #NCI www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Congrats Miranda!!!

SNAP-tag2 for faster and brighter protein labeling - Nature Chemical Biology SNAP-tag is a widespread tool for labeling protein for bioimaging. Now, Kühn et al. report SNAP-tag2 with increased labeling kinetics and brightness, which translates into a better performance in live...

Finally out in Nature Chem Bio:
SNAP-tag2 for faster and brighter protein labeling
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Thank you Steffi and Veselin.

The german research foundation DFG will fund the new graduate school for

"Biomolecular Condensates: from physics to biological function" here in Dresden

This new graduate school is part of 18 new graduate schools funded by the DFG in germany!

Structural basis of lipid transfer by a bridge-like lipid-transfer protein - Nature The LPD-3 complex structure reveals protein–lipid interactions that suggest a model for how the native LPD-3 complex mediates bulk lipid transport and provides a foundation for mechanistic studies of ...

Hugely significant finding for contact site research - can’t wait to read properly!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Do you see any underlying driver/correlator for these numbers?

Number of canceled NIH grants by institution:

1 Columbia U 163
2 Johns Hopkins 12
3 Emory 6
4 U. Michigan 5
5 U. Minnesota 5
6 U Miami Med Sch. 4
7 UCSF 4
8 U Chicago 3

Source: taggs.hhs.gov/Content/Data...

Thanks Alex!

ANXA11 biomolecular condensates facilitate protein-lipid phase coupling on lysosomal membranes - Nature Communications Nixon-Abell et al. show that ANXA11 condensation on lysosomal membranes causes a coupled phase transition of the underlying lipids and mechanical stiffening of the overall ensemble involved in RNP gra...

ANXA11 biomolecular condensates facilitate protein-lipid phase coupling on lysosomal membranes!

Annexin A11 tethers RNP granules to membranes in a Ca2+ dependent manner.

@abelljonny.bsky.social, @michael-e-ward.bsky.social, et al.

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

Thank you 😊

ANXA11 biomolecular condensates facilitate protein-lipid phase coupling on lysosomal membranes - Nature Communications Nixon-Abell et al. show that ANXA11 condensation on lysosomal membranes causes a coupled phase transition of the underlying lipids and mechanical stiffening of the overall ensemble involved in RNP gra...

😊 Very happy to see this out! A real group effort from the Hyslop lab (@thecimr.bsky.social) including brilliant collaborations with
@knowleslab.bsky.social,
Vendruscolo lab, @michael-e-ward.bsky.social lab,
@deriverylab.bsky.social lab,
@profmarciniak.bsky.social lab
🎉🎉🎉

Interview with Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz ABSTRACT. Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz is a Senior Group Leader and Head of 4D Cellular Physiology at Howard Hughes Medical Institute's (HHMI) Janelia Research Campus. Throughout her career, Jennifer ...

Great interview with the always inspiring JLS - absolutely shaped so much about mine and so many others careers…

Thanks! 😊

Yep. Even with the starter packs ‘active’ 🤷

I have not - it’s another useful suggestion I should try. Thanks!

Then where are the less established folks haha?!? But yes your point about US is surely a factor.

Plenty of good starter packs…even so, I find I encounter far fewer papers that are relevant for my interests here…maybe this trick from @flodebarre.bsky.social will help though!

*Please repost* @sjgreenwood.bsky.social and I just launched a new personalized feed (*please pin*) that we hope will become a "must use" for #academicsky. The feed shows posts about papers filtered by *your* follower network. It's become my default Bluesky experience bsky.app/profile/pape...

I had not seen this but this is great!! Thanks for the suggestion. Only downside is that it’s only papers from followers right. Although still a big improvement from my current feeds!

This is true on ‘discover’ and even the ‘following’ feeds. Any suggestions on how to help with this?!

I have to say…unlike the Twitter heyday (and even still X now), I just don’t get good science content on Bluesky. In particular, I can’t find people posting new cell biology/microscopy/neurobiology papers at anywhere near the same frequency. My feed on Twitter used to be 90%+ of this content…

Such a cool story! Congrats guys…

We are experiencing an assault on science unparalleled by anything I’ve seen in my life. It’s not one issue or another anymore, the entire institution is under attack by the most powerful individuals in the country.

This Friday, where will you be?

standupforscience2025.org

This is such a great programme and a big thanks to Venkat Pisupati who has done all the heavy listing from our group to make this possible.

Improvements in LM (top) and EM (bottom) of our micro-sam model (finetuned) compared to the default SAM model.

After a long journey, Segment Anything for Microscopy is now published in Nature Methods! We significantly improve SAM for interactive and automatic segmentation in light and electron microscopy and build a user-friendly tool.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

So much happening in the segmentation space for bioimage analysis. These two papers that were published online today really stood out to me as noteworthy (a thread).

Colourful microscope image of malaria parasites infecting human red blood cells. Rayner lab

Con-focal microscope image of glutamatergic neurons with axons labelled in yellow/ orange and somatodendritic compartments in blue. Nixon-Abell lab at CIMR

Hello! Although we are still in the other place, this will become our main social media feed. We're part of the University of Cambridge Clinical School
Cell biology, molecular mechanisms of human disease

Happy birthday dudey!!

Microscopy preprints - applications in biology - FocalPlane Microscopy preprints - applications in biology - News

Our first preprint list for 2025 is focussed on research using microscopy tools to answer questions in biology. As always, please let us know if there are other preprints that you’d like to see on our list.
focalplane.biologists.com/2025/01/10/m...