Stephen Royle

🚨🚨🚨Attention, cell biologists! @jcellsci.bsky.social are recruiting a new EiC to follow in @drmichaelway.bsky.social’s footsteps & are seeking community input - link to survey 👇

Fill out our community survey to help shape the future of JCS Journal of Cell Science logo Line drawing of a group of people with speech bubbles above their heads

After 15 years as Editor-in-chief (EiC), Michael Way @drmichaelway.bsky.social will be stepping down at the end of 2026 & we are seeking feedback from the cell biology community as part of the consultation process for appointing a new EiC.
We'd love to hear from you: www.surveymonkey.com/r/GZCC9F9

I watched much of Ian Chapman's (Head of @ukri.org) appearance this morning at @ukparliament.parliament.uk Science, Innovation and Technology Committee..

A few points and new information that bioscientists may find interesting...

A 🧵

COS-7 cell labeled for actin (gray), microtubules (red), clathrin (green) and DNA (blue). Image taken in 2018 using an OMX structured illumination microscope.

Peeking inside a cellular galaxy #cellfie 🧪

Did you wash it down with some PBS from that Duran bottle?

Last week, RPN broke a string of stories on significant changes to funding across a number of research councils (see thread below)

This morning, UKRI chief executive is appearing at the Commons science committee, where he is being asked about them by MPs

Here are some key moments so far 🧵

In case you ever wondered about the differences between magrittr pipe and base pipe 🤔

This table is taken from a great stackoverflow answer by @GeorgKindermann

stackoverflow.com/questions/67...

#rstats #dataviz #phd

Mitosis lovers, get ready for Dubrovnik! 🔬🎉
I’m super excited to be organizing the 4th Mitotic Spindle Conference with Nenad Pavin, and we can’t wait to see you there!
Want your abstract to be selected for a talk? Submit by Feb 8!
www.phy.pmf.unizg.hr/~mitosis/
#SpindleCroatia2026

Quick science policy thread 1

Changes in the governance of UK science since the mid 1980s make it extremely hard to be strategic (that was the point), in terms of both process (dropped) and capability (hollowed out).

How do librarians decide which peer-reviewed biomedical journals are worth subscribing to?

Genuine question from a journal editor who’s realizing this is a huge blind spot.

Structure of the adaptor protein 4 (AP-4) complex revealed! AP-4 exists in a dynamic equilibrium between closed and open conformations in solution. ARF1 does not shift this equilibrium but is required—together with cargo—for membrane recruitment. rdcu.be/e1ozM

We switched from Slack to self-hosted Mattermost. Instant messaging is great, mobile apps are good. I could import everything across from slack, so we have our full history with attachments. The only problem is they have limited the free offering.

The reforms to UKRI under Ian Chapman are only just starting, but there are already worries about what they mean for the bread and butter, applicant-led funding calls at research councils

While UKRI insists comparisons with previous years are impossible, figures from December suggest...

Do you want to know more about how Retromer regulates Rab7 activity in yeast? Of course you do. Check out the new collaboration with Andreas Mayer with work led by Catarina Alves and Kevin Chen.

Excited to announce that our #PUFFFIN plasmids are finally available on @addgene.bsky.social to make PUFFFIN neighbour labelling even more accessible. You can find the plasmids here www.addgene.org/Sally_Lowell/ and our paper here link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Big thanks @cellysally.bsky.social!

Join us this Thursday (Jan 29) at 5pm CET for the first #MembraneTrafficking seminars of 2026, featuring two outstanding scientists, Giovanni D'Angelo (EPFL) and Sean Munro (@cellbiol-mrclmb.bsky.social), and the shared topic of protein trafficking, retention & sorting at the #Golgi 🥞

Huge congrats to @manuelthery.bsky.social and all the Cytomorpho lab. The "Living Architectures" performance at @museeorsay.bsky.social was breathtakingly beautiful

Using micropatterning & thousands of hours on the microscope
@manuelthery.bsky.social and the #CytoMorphoLab reimagined the Musée D’Orsay. Accompanied by an orchestra and poet, their images transported us into the cellular universe. I remembered why I am a cell biologist. All of this is in us. Wow!

Just to chip in that this the address given in the paper: Cancer Research Department, London Hospital Research Laboratories,
London, E.1.
I was intrigued by this thread because TIL.

#Addendum to 1970 paper, “CYTOPLASMIC FILAMENTS OF AMOEBA PROTEUS: I. The Role of Filaments in Consistency Changes and Movement,” includes eight video sequences originally recorded on 16-mm films. No technology was available at the time to include this data. 🎞️ rupress.org/jcb/article/...

#Actin

Fantastic news. Congrats!

A Modular Encapsulation System for Precision Delivery of Proteins, Nucleic Acids, and Small Molecules Targeted nanoparticles have the potential to revolutionize therapeutics for medical applications. Here, we demonstrate the utility of a flexible precision nanovesicle delivery system for functional de...

Excited to share our work engineering caveolin-derived nanoparticles “caveospheres”. We show their use for targeted transfection in cultured cells and effective targeted delivery and tumor killing in vivo.
pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10....

Mechanochemistry of molecular motors and cytoskeletal filaments - a meeting at the university of warwick, 8-9 May 2026

Early bird registration including on campus conference accommodation for our #motors and #filaments meeting will close 29th January 2026. You can still register after that, but need to find your own accommodation. Grateful to @embo.org
and @biologists.bsky.social for sponsoring this event!

UKRI pauses several funding calls amid priorities shake-up

The applicant-led MRC funding calls on pause include research grants, partnership grants and new investigator research grants made available through the council’s research boards.

www.researchprofessional.com/news-article...

Amazing to hold @lottepedersen.bsky.social & my @jcellsci.bsky.social Special Issue on #Cilia and #Flagella in all its glossy glory & muscle-engaging brain-boosting weight! So much fabulous content from the community! Fab cover @centriolelab.bsky.social 🥰🥰 journals.biologists.com/jcs/pages/ci...

Two weeks left to apply to be the BSCB Postdoc rep

Thank you @ucdlibrary.bsky.social for sourcing this fantastice read by @steveroyle.bsky.social for me. Highly recommended for anyone interested in learning more about #cellbiology #biologicalimaging #imageanalysis #datavis also more people should read the #quantixed blog.

Thank you Madeleen!

Very nice! Congrats all!

Seriously, preprinting means your science is accessible to everyone, virtually immediately. No paywalls. Sunlight is also a disinfectant and the number of sloppy preprints I've encountered is tiny.