Volodya Gelfand; Northwestern University

There are 2 previous historical cases of countries destroying their science and universities, crippling them for decades: Lysenkoism in the USSR and Nazi Germany. The Trump administration will be the 3rd.
It's not just budgets but research, institutions, expertise, and training the next generation.

See the cover for the May issue with Wen’s image (Drosophila larval brains, the upper left one is the control, while the lower right one is with kinesin-5 neuronal knockdown).

‘Mitotic’ kinesin-5 is a dynamic brake for axonal growth in Drosophila Summary: Kinesin-5 modulates microtubule sliding in neurons, acting as a brake to ensure precise axon pathfinding during Drosophila neuronal development.

Our paper on the role of “mitotic” kinesin Eg5 in neuron development has been published in Development (see journals.biologists.com/dev/article-...). A great work by Wen Lu and colleagues!

Happy to officially introduce FilaBuster - a strategy for rapid, light-mediated intermediate filament disassembly. Compatible with multiple IF types, modular in design, and precise enough to induce localized filament disassembly in live cells.

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

Thank you @KlumppStefan for writing a commentary on our paper on vimentin filament dynamics in the Journal of Cell Biology @jcb.org Please see doi.org/10.1083/jcb....

So intermediate filaments are dynamic! Time to revise textbooks. Thank you to all the coauthors for the .great teamwork

Challenging the view on #vimentin! our latest work shows VIF is an active, dynamic filament loosely held together

rupress.org/jcb/article/...

Thanks to @vgelfand.bsky.social @aaandmoore.bsky.social @nu-bsa.bsky.social @hhmijanelia.bsky.social @jcb.org #NUCDB #nikon #CrestOptics #livecellimaging

So intermediate filaments are dynamic! Time to revise textbooks. Thank you to all the coauthors for the .great teamwork

Exciting 3-year postdoc opportunity with @carter-lab.bsky.social within a programme aimed at identifying the links between microtubule motors and axonal cargos.
Read more about the role here:
www.nature.com/naturecareer...
Apply by 30 DEC
#ScienceJobs #CambridgeJobs #PostdocJobs #GenomeEngineering

The Department of Cell and Developmental Biology, Feinberg School of Medicine seeks a full-time tenure track Investigator at the rank of Assistant Professor. Click here to learn more.
www.feinberg.northwestern.edu/sites/cdb/do...
For questions, contact
Vanessa Gonzalez vanessa.g@northwestern.edu

Beautiful work! Just heard the talk at the ASCB meeting.

Apical clathrin-coated pits control the location, timing, and scale of microvillar growth Epithelial cells from diverse contexts assemble apical specializations to serve tissue-specific functions. In virtually all cases, these features consist of arrays of microvilli: micron-scale, actin b...

the @tyskalabactual.bsky.social strikes again with more beautiful work on MV growth!

Apical clathrin-coated pits control the location, timing, and scale of microvillar growth
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Developmentally regulated actin-microtubule crosstalk in Drosophila oogenesis Actin-microtubules (MT) interactions are essential, but how those mechanisms are orchestrated in complex developing systems is poorly understood. Here we show that actin-MT crosstalk regulates actin c...

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

Check it out!

Optogenetically Induced Microtubule Acetylation Unveils the Molecular Dynamics of Actin-Microtubule Crosstalk in Directed Cell Migration Microtubule acetylation is implicated in regulating cell motility, yet its physiological role in directional migration and the underlying molecular mechanisms have remained unclear. This knowledge gap has persisted primarily due to a lack of tools capable of rapidly manipulating microtubule acetylation in actively migrating cells. To overcome this limitation and elucidate the causal relationship between microtubule acetylation and cell migration, we developed a novel optogenetic actuator, optoTAT, which enables precise and rapid induction of microtubule acetylation within minutes in live cells. Using optoTAT, we observed striking and rapid responses at both molecular and cellular level. First, microtubule acetylation triggers release of the RhoA activator GEF-H1 from sequestration on microtubules. This release subsequently enhances actomyosin contractility and drives focal adhesion maturation. These subcellular processes collectively promote sustained directional cell migration. Our findings position GEF-H1 as a critical molecular responder to microtubule acetylation in the regulation of directed cell migration, revealing a dynamic crosstalk between the actin and microtubule cytoskeletal networks. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors declare that there is a pending patent application related to optoTAT.

!!

Optogenetically Induced Microtubule Acetylation Unveils the Molecular Dynamics of Actin-Microtubule Crosstalk in Directed Cell Migration

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

@myosinactncrazy.bsky.social Please add me.
Thank you.
VG

@myosinactncrazy.bsky.social

A new microtubule end-binding protein (called EB-SUN) was discovered in Drosophila by Sun Kim, a graduate student in our lab together with Steve Rogers, a former graduate student, now on faculty in UNC.
www.molbiolcell.org/doi/10.1091/...

Please add me in

Dom't you think it looks like this:

Transport and Organization of Individual Vimentin Filaments Within Dense Networks Revealed by Single Particle Tracking and 3D FIB-SEM bioRxiv - the preprint server for biology, operated by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a research and educational institution

See how amazingly dynamic vimentin intermediate filaments are!

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

Thank you, Tim. Good reference.

Do not forget about Chicago Cytoskeleton meeting on October 20. Hope to see you there!

Thank you for letting me know. How about now?

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Our PNAS paper is out pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... We showed that mRNA for microtubule polymerase XMAP215 is recruited to Drosophila oocyte by dynein. It produces more XMAP215 so that dynein can recruit more XMAP215 mRNA. This feedback loop is required to maintain oocyte identity.