Levental Lab

Thank you so much Anirban, I'm humbled! It was a real joy to chair this session on the evolution of membrane phenotypes...it was an incredible lineup from ancient protosterol "fossils" to unified laws of membrane elasticity. I've pasted the key papers from the session below! 🧵 #BPS2026

Haha interesting compliment! @jamessaenz.bsky.social often makes me feel bad about myself…. but in a BAD way! Usually bad decisions we make together.

The origin of life wasn't fat-free James Sáenz studies how fatty molecules might have helped life get started

Lipids are kind of the ignored middle children of origins of life research. It's time they got a bit of attention, too!

This week's post is a Q&A with geoscientist-turned-??? (interdisciplinary folks know the struggle) @jamessaenz.bsky.social about why there's no cutting the fat from origins. 🧪

Almost half of the session themes for the @biophysicalsoc.bsky.social meeting came from member submissions. So feel free to suggest ideas every year!

A photo of Lynmarie Thompson, the current president of the Biophysical Society, presenting plaques to Ilya Levental and Ariane Briegel, the Program Chairs of the 2026 Annual BPS Meeting

Thank you Lynmarie Thompson, @leventallab.bsky.social and
@arianebriegel.bsky.social for your service to the @biophysicalsoc.bsky.social and in organizing the 2026 BPS Meeting!

The Lipid Interactome: an interactive and open access platform for exploring cellular lipid–protein interactions AbstractSummary. Lipid–protein interactions play essential roles in cellular signaling and membrane dynamics, yet their systematic characterization has lon

This is SO COOL!!!

academic.oup.com/bioinformati...

We’re missing you!!!

kind of amazing that everything trump does can be understood through the lens of narcissism and it's related needs (e.g., self aggrandizement, revenge, domination, grievance validation). i don't think any character has been so one-dimensional, not even wile e coyote or scrooge mcduck

Pleased to share the final version of this behemoth of a paper, now finally published. I guess I can retire now?
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

More functional data, many thousands of words removed, and a few other updates from last year's preprint.

Precisely!

Sam. We are longer friends. That phrase is a worthless abomination that should be grounds for defenestration.

Including this as a figure in my next NIH biosketch

You look so professional Falki!! I barely recognize you 😜

Important.

How your email finds me

Shitty "Meta AI" cartoon filter of a photo of me

The original photo, where I am staring intently at a computer monitor with my glasses on, which show a reflection of the screen

A zoom-in of the previous photo, showing that the reflection in my glasses is Jar-Jar Binks

Every time I visit Facebook (already a mistake, I know), they try to sell me on their stupid AI filters like the one here. But it's actually an amazing example of AI completely missing the point and deleting the one part of the picture that actually mattered: the punchline of the original photo.

Ha!!

A diagram of the evolution of whales, from land dwelling mammals to the ocean giants we know today.

Whale evolution makes me uncomfortable

I'd argue that a bit more careful public messaging is in order. Not taking anything away from the authors, but lipid regulation of EGFR has been described: "Regulation of human EGF receptor by lipids" by @lipid.bsky.social in 2011. www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...

The key to processing cryoEM is to capitalize on your priors. People will tell you to un-bias your science. You cant remove bias from science. What you can do is limit and control negative bias while capitalizing on positive bias. Knowing and utilizing priors, having proper controls is good science

I really like this. Prior more than bias, but that’s just bit of semantics.

Comic. [2x2 chart. Top left quadrant: seem like dinosaurs x are dinosaurs. Silhouettes of dinosaurs stegosaurus, triceratops, tyrannosaurus, velociraptor, and long-neck dinosaur. Top right quadrant: seem like dinosaurs x are not dinosaurs. Silhouettes of mosasaur, quetzalcoatlus, dimetrodon, plesiosaur, and pteranodon. Bottom left quadrant: don’t seem like dinosaurs x are dinosaurs. Silhouettes of penguin, egret, ostrich, pigeon, falcon. Bottom right: don’t seem like dinosaurs x are not dinosaurs. Silhouettes of squirrel, stapler, plant, person, and bicycle.]

Dinosaurs And Non-Dinosaurs

xkcd.com/3204/

He looks like a vampiric gerbil.

Not something you see in textbooks very often: tripolar mitosis.

17 squares packed into a larger square. It looks dumb. But it's not.

I remade an old render with a more exact version. The most efficient packing possible of 17 squares into a larger square. I use it as an inspiring example: just because something looks stupid doesn't mean it's not the best that you can do.

Lipids challenge ligands to control receptors

The behaviour of a receptor protein can be influenced by the presence of certain lipids in the membrane it is embedded in.

🔗 buff.ly/G1Zl6cZ

An intracellular meteor shower. EB3 comets tracking growing microtubule plus-ends in a cultured cell.

There's no time for anything but joy Reflections on reaching a final

Love every moment

The biographer of cancer writes a new chapter | The Observer Siddhartha Mukherjee is the disease’s great chronicler and adversary. He tells cancer survivor Chris Power why it will always be part of who we are

AI CEOs: "We will cure cancer in a decade."
Media: "Wow, yay!"
Actual cancer researcher and clinician: "Cancer's end is not conceivable."
observer.co.uk/culture/inte...

Colleges See Major Racial Shifts in Student Enrollment

Interesting data

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/03/u...