Chen Sun

A stunning first look at the viruses inside us LJI scientists uncover a new avenue for stopping cancers, autoimmune diseases, and more.

Check out the official press release highlighting our latest paper on the structure of the human endogenous retrovirus K (HERV-K) envelope protein! www.lji.org/news-events/...

Human endogenous retrovirus K (HERV-K) envelope structures in pre- and postfusion by cryo-EM Structural snapshots and antibodies illuminate a viral protein within the dark matter of the genome that may be active in disease.

Excited to share our Science Advances paper reporting the first 3D structure of HERV‑K Env—a novel therapeutic target in cancer and autoimmune diseases. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Happy to share our manuscript on the in situ visualization of the copia retrotransposon in its final form today published in @cellcellpress.bsky.social www.cell.com/cell/fulltex.... What’s new?

Streamlit Fourier Shell Correlation (FSC) is the standard method used in the cryo-electron microscopy (cryo...

Just launched a web app for the cryo-EM community!
Upload your half maps → get FSC curves with confidence intervals using bootstrap or Fisher z-transform.
Try it here: fscerrorbar-bpamnw2rerqekapp5veeddq.streamlit.app
#CryoEM #OpenScience #FSC

Thrilled to share these experiments on shaping focused ion beams to explore different ways of milling. Here, we explore using different beam geometries to generate cellular thin sections/lamellae. The video shows elongating the beam on a charging spot burn www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Excited to share our preprint on the molecular architecture of heterochromatin in human cells 🧬🔬w/ @jpkreysing.bsky.social, @johannesbetz.bsky.social,
@marinalusic.bsky.social, Turoňová lab, @hummerlab.bsky.social @becklab.bsky.social @mpibp.bsky.social

🔗 Preprint here tinyurl.com/3a74uanv

Revealed: NIH research grants still frozen despite lawsuits challenging Trump order Nature - The Trump administration is exploiting a loophole to keep a funding freeze in place, leaving researchers in limbo.

Almost all grant-review meetings remain suspended at the US National Institutes of Health, preventing the world’s largest public funder of biomedical research from spending much of its US$47 billion annual budget.

https://go.nature.com/418B5Pm

Delaware’s innovation pipeline could be at risk with new NIH funding policy With a proposed cap on indirect costs for NIH grants, Delaware's life science sector could be hit the next generation of start-ups and researchers.

These NIH funding cuts threaten research happening in Delaware on heart disease, cancer, diabetes, stroke recovery, & more.

This is what this administration is focused on. Not lowering your household costs.

Urge Congress to Support NIH and Protect Medical Research The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) urges you to take immediate action to protect the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and its pivotal role in advancing cancer research, improving p...

Please consider using this link to ask Congress to protect NIH & medical research. It only takes a minute to complete.

Thank you so much!

#NIH #cancer #congress #medsky #cansky #academicresearch #research #science #politics #uspol
#EduSky #PhDSky #AcademicSky #bluecrew #bluesky #megaboost

Introduction to Biological Imaging <p><b>Discover what biological imaging is able to accomplish in this up-to-date textbook</b> <p>One of the fundamental goals of biology is to understand how living organisms establish and maintain th...

Excited to share my friend Manfred Auer’s new book “Introduction to biological imaging”! Dive into the fascinating world of biological imaging and explore cutting-edge techniques. Check it out here www.wiley.com/en-us/Introd... #biologicalimaging #imaging #volumeEM #TEM #structure

🙌📽️🗣️The vEM Technology Forum is now on YouTube!

We have made available online now the sessions and challenge panels held at the vEM Technology Forum last year!

📽️Youtube playlist👉 bit.ly/433ByVM

Thanks to our sponsors and to all participants who made our vEM Technology Forum possible! ✨🤩

AI tool diagnoses diabetes, HIV and COVID from a blood sample ‘One-shot’ approach that uses machine learning to screen immune cells could help to detect conditions with overlapping symptoms.

In a study involving >500 people, the AI identified a range of infections and health conditions, as well as whether participants had received a flu vaccine.

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

Introducing cryoTIGER - a computational alternative to denser sampling during tilt series acquisition in cryo-ET. Congratulations to SCALE @scale-cluster-ffm.bsky.social members Beata Turonova @mpibp.bsky.social, Martin Beck @becklab.bsky.social & Gerhard Hummer @hummerlab.bsky.social

In @justinditrani.bsky.social final postdoc paper (with contributions from many others) we show that forming/purifying vesicles (here from M. smegmatis) allows structure det'n of *endogenous* membrane proteins in their *native lipid bilayer*
🧵 on methods & TB biology...
www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....

If you are interested in postdoctoral research on ligand-gated ion channels and the synapse, or simulation/AI methods for structural biology - drop me a line if you'll be around at Biophysical Society in LA! #bps2025 #bps #biophysics

Attending #BPS2025? Want to know more about tangible steps you can take to challenge the attacks on science in the U.S.? Please attend an Emergency Town Hall Meeting on Tuesday at 1:30! @biophysicalsoc.bsky.social @blackinbiophys.bsky.social Please spread the word!

Excited to give a talk on human endogenous retroviruses at the Cryo-EM Subgroup Symposium today at #BPS2025! Please come check out my poster B99 on Sunday afternoon—looking forward for great discussions!

#Biophysics #CryoEM #Retroviruses #StructuralBiology#HERV

#medsky#pedsky#idsky#immunosky 🧪
In the midst of all of the scary headlines recently, I thought I could take a moment to share a bit of good news: for the first time in history, a malaria vaccine with >90% efficacy seems to be within reach!

Here’s why that’s a really big deal for EVERYONE 🧵

Been thinking about creating a collection of good protein structure figures, as inspiration for my own work.

#1 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🤔❓💻🧫🦠
Do you know that the ImageJ plugin DenoisEM can improve the quality of large-scale volumes of EM imaging?

The authors used this plugin to analyse EM volumes obtained either by FIB-SEM and SBF-SEM using automated analysis.

Paper courtesy of Joris Roels et al.

bioimagingcore.be/DenoisEM

Revealed: the fatty cells that are the ‘bubble wrap’ of the body Previously undescribed cells look like fat cells, but they function to provide cushioning and support in cartilage.

The ear and the nose are squishy and stretchy thanks in part to ‘bubble wrap’ cells that provide extra cushioning and structural support to various body parts, a wide-ranging study shows.

www.nature.com/articles/d41...