Robin Bon

The bureaucracy of science has grown so much, the system is collapsing upon itself:

Scientists have become administrators of grants rather than spending time on science.

Paid administrators are demanding even more administrative work from scientists.

Administrators are eating the science budget.

Pick a color to control TRP channels - Nature Chemical Biology Ideal efficacy photoswitching is introduced as a concept in controlling protein activity with light. Largely independent of the concentration of a light-responsive compound, it enables TRPC4 and TRPC5...

Pick a color to control TRP channels - Check out the associated News & Views by Jana Volaric and Wiktor Szymanski on photoswitchable compounds that can agonize or antagonize TRPC4/5 channels depending on the color of light used

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

Very happy that our group has been able to contribute to this fantastic study. @astburycentre.bsky.social @astbury-bsl.bsky.social

Time to sign up!

Registration for the joint FEBS/EMBO course on ion channels and transporters in Erice, Italy (May 13-19th 2026) is now open:
meetings.embo.org/event/26-ion...

Please share and repost.

Had a great time at the first @rsc.org Peptide & Protein Science Group symposium. Thanks for organising @mitchellchem.bsky.social @louislukpeptide.bsky.social and Louise Walport. I hope there will be many more.

A screenshot taken by someone on Twitter/X of Elon Musk agreeing with a tweet that shows the EU flag being peeled back to reveal a Nazi one. For Elon’s purposes here Nazis are apparently bad, but you can’t rely on that with him, of course.

The latest from an honored member of the Royal Society. Every week he attacks the foundations of society in the UK and the EU and @royalsociety.org is apparently too worried about retribution to do anything about it.

The MRC DiMeN DTP welcomes applications from well-qualified international candidates, but the number of places for these students is extremely limited.

For questions not covered on the MRC DiMeN DTP web site or in the advert, please contact me by email through the link in the FindAPhD advert.

HOME | DiMeN DTP Utilising the combined expertise of five world-leading institutions, the Discovery Medicine North (DiMeN) partnership will train the next generation of researchers to tackle the major health problems ...

Applications need to be made to the MRC DiMeN DTP: www.dimen.org.uk. Applications by email cannot be considered.

While training in all aspects of the project will be provided, previous experience of synthetic chemistry research is desirable.

We are looking for a PhD student in #chembio / #medchem to help progress our drug discovery project targeting incurable brain cancers.

lnkd.in/eaGsgWVr

You would use multi-parameter optimisation to improve drug leads and develop chemical probes to identify their (off-)targets and binding sites.

Powerful messages about the opportunity to learn much more about these channels by studying structural dependence on various factors such as temperature and membrane environment. Experimental structural biology is far from finished!

Thanks to the @proteinsociety.bsky.social for organising an excellent virtual seminar on structural biology of #TRPchannels at different temperatures. Inspiring talks by Alexander Sobolevsky, Juan Du and David Julius, chaired by Yifan Cheng.

Congratulations to former PhD student Dr Aidan Johnson on winning the VC Jordan/PR Radford Prize 2025 for the best @astburycentre.bsky.social PhD thesis.

Also congratulations to PhD student Catalina Onel on passing her transfer viva yesterday.

Alan Kurdi, dead on a beach

It is very nearly the tenth anniversary of that brief moment when, for 2 or 3 days, British newspapers remembered refugees are desperate human beings who need our help, rather than scum that it's okay to threaten with violence.

Great opportunity to perform a #PhD in the field of #OrganicChemistry or #CellBiology / #Biochemistry with a great mentor in the group of Steven Verhelst (@verhelstlab.bsky.social) at KU Leuven!

#ChemBio #Academia

Journal Impact Nonsense

No matter how hard you try, you simply cannot guess the journal withe the highest “impact factor” in organic chemistry last year. Really. Nor will you guess many of the other “winners”:

(-)-Englerin A binds a conserved lipid site of TRPC5 and exposes a Met-aromatic motif in channel activation https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.09.663840v1

(-)-Englerin A binds a conserved lipid site of TRPC5 and exposes a Met-aromatic motif in channel activation TRPC4/5 cation channels are polymodal cellular sensors that play key roles in signal transduction/integration and have been implicated in various human pathologies, including anxiety, pain and cardiom...

We thank our BBSRC @ukri.org, @thebhf.bsky.social, @wellcometrust.bsky.social, @royalsociety.org, @universityofleeds.bsky.social, and the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic for funding, and the incredible @astbury-bsl.bsky.social for facilities and support.

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

This work was led by #cryoEM wizard Seb Porav, in a fantastic collaboration with Sasha Ptakova, @claudiabauer.bsky.social, @kasiahammond.bsky.social, David Beech, Viki Vlachova and @stemuench.bsky.social.

@astburycentre.bsky.social @bioscienceleeds.bsky.social @iphys-cas.bsky.social

In summary, we believe that this work represents a leap forward in understanding the #MolecularPharmacology of TRPC1/4/5 channels that will prove instrumental in TRPC1/4/5 drug discovery programmes.

In addition, our analyses allow us to rationalise the selectivity of EA with respect to related ion channels, as well as the pharmacological profile of TRPC1/4/5 inhibitors in ongoing clinical trials.

Structural similarity between TRPC1, TRPC4 and TRPC5, and the conservation of the EA binding site, suggest that our results extrapolate more generally to the TRPC1/4/5 sub-family – an emerging class of therapeutic targets for the treatment of anxiety disorders, cardiometabolic disease and pain.

We show that EA binds to a conserved lipid binding site between TRPC5 transmembrane domains and alters the aromatic interaction network of Phe520 with surrounding methionine residues. This work underscores the critical function of Met-aromatic motifs in ion channel #StructuralBiology and function.

We present nine new, high-resolution cryoEM structures of the human #TRPC5 #IonChannel in various states that reveal where and how EA binds to TRPC5 and - in combination with functional studies of TRPC5 variants - allow us to understand key molecular rearrangements related to channel gating.

#TRPchannels mediate cellular responses to various #NaturalProducts. #EnglerinA (EA), found in a plant used as a traditional medicine and a poison, is a potent and selective TRPC1/4/5 activator. However, how EA interacts with these channels has remained a mystery – until now.

Structure of human TRPC5 in complex with the plant nature product (-)-englerin A

We are proud to share our latest preprint: "(-)-Englerin A binds a conserved lipid site of TRPC5 and exposes a Met-aromatic motif in channel activation".

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

To see all 16 articles, please follow this link: www.sciencedirect.com/special-issu...

It has been great working with Matthew Langton to edit this themed issue of Current Opinion in Chemical Biology on Ion Transport across Biological Membranes. The collection of 16 articles is now complete.

Thanks to all authors and reviewers!

#ChemicalBiology

authors.elsevier.com/a/1lHil4sz6M...

An absolute pleasure to host @thornsesholdlab.bsky.social in Leeds today for an amazing @astburycentre.bsky.social seminar.

Couple trying unsuccessfully to use the self-scan passport gates at Schiphol, holding up the queue. Border guard over intercom: "Mr and Mrs Campbell, this is for European passports only - you voted for Brexit".