Sonja Welsch

If I could ask all #cryoEM samples for one thing, it’d be to *please* behave like 1um TetraSpecks.

Only a few days left to apply for the great PhD Programme of @vbcscitraining.bsky.social 👇🏻

Correlative MS Imaging for cellular identification and analysis of in situ cryo-ET www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.16.676641v1 #cryoEM

❗️🤩👇🏻

I see at least 4 that I’d swear aren’t apo

Illuminating druggable dark matter in RNA virus replication using in situ cryo-EM Viral proteins typically exist in the context of complex virions or in the even more complex host cells in which they replicate. Hence, meaningful ins…

Since it was published at peak holiday season, I'm taking the liberty to re-introduce our recent review article. We hope it will be a useful overview of RNA virus replication strategies, and how in situ cryo-EM have helped us understand them:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Ever wondered how to position organelles in bacteria? Wonder no more!
Happy to have contributed to this fantastic story from @cellforganized.bsky.social' lab.

The avenues this opens in the synthetic biology space are enormous!

Movie: Carboxysomes positioned in E. coli!

Preprint: shorturl.at/D6xVg

We welcome our new faculty member Ramachandra Bhaskara! His group uses simulations and modeling to study complex biological systems at the interface of biology, physics, and data science.
#imprs #imprs_cbp @goetheuni.bsky.social

We followed with a day packed with CryoEM! We heard about the cryoEM from Werner Kühlbrandt, STEM-EELs from Bonnie Murphy and CryoET from Martin Beck.

A productive morning with Profs. Dötsch, García-Sáez and Helfrich! We learnt about transcription factors, cellular death and biosynthetic pathways. All before lunch time! #sciencemorning #gradschool @mpibp.bsky.social @goetheuni.bsky.social

At what number of hidden layers do shallow learning networks cross over to being deep learning? One? More? Depends?🤔

I’d also throw “general problem solving skills” in the mix - and requirements for being good at problem solving might indeed change over time (as the nature of open questions tends to shift over time)?

First webinar on the kit this Thu Sep 18th. You can still register in one of the links below.

Great session with Melanie McDowell today!
She shared exciting insights into how proteins find their way into the ER.

#imprs #imprs_cbp #phd #gradschool #biophysics

We're very excited to welcome the new generation of #IMPRS students during our Symposium on Cellular Biophysics 🧪 This morning, we heard spokespersons Volker Dötsch and Martin Beck, and coordinator Pamela Ornelas, introduce the doctoral program to the new students!
#imprs_cbp #biophysics #gradschool

We had a great start of the #IMPRS Symposium on Cellular Biophysics to welcome our new students. Thank you for your fascinating talks Michaela Müller-McNicoll, Bernhard Hampölz and Christian Münch 👏

#imprs_cbp #phd #biophysics

Chinese woman joins handbag in X-ray machine A Chinese woman worried about theft joined her bag on the conveyor belt at train station security.

the perks of such a course: you get to hear about stories like this one: www.bbc.com/news/world-a...

Attending a mandatory radiation safety refresher course today (because where I am: no #cryoEM without certified radiation safety officer) and - right on cue - this came up 😶

We’re looking forward to the IMPRS-CBP Symposium on Cellular Biophysics at the @mpibp.bsky.social ! Join us on Sept 15–22 for a week+ of talks from our faculty as we welcome our new students! 🧑‍🎓Learn more here: imprs-cbp.mpg.de/symposium-on...

Together with colleagues at the Dept. of Microsystems Engineering, we are looking for a PhD student to develop methods for femtoliter-scale sample dispensing in cryoEM sample preparation.

edu.nl/h436k

If you like interdisciplinary research & fascinating physics at ultrasmall scales, please apply!

Optimal tilt-increment for cryo-ET https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.08.20.671201v1

We’re hosting the @embo.org Practical Course on In-situ structural biology by CryoFIB and CryoET in April 2026! 🧬❄️ You can expect hands-on training, cutting-edge methods, and a chance to work alongside leading experts in structural biology. 🔗 Apply by Dec 8, 2025: meetings.embo.org/event/26-in-...

Amazing collection of TEM apertures, some dating back to the 1990’s.

Deryck Mills is always missed dearly @mpibp.bsky.social, but some weeks his absence is more obvious than others. Just bought a new 30um aperture. Opened the bottom drawer of Deryck’s trolley days later - and found this 🤩

Cryo-focused ion beam milling for cryo-electron tomography: Shaping the future of in situ structural biology Cryo-focused ion beam instruments to produce cellular thin sections for subsequent imaging by cryo-electron tomography have become an integral part of…

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Optimal tilt-increment for cryo-ET Cryo-electron tomography (cryo-ET) enables high-resolution, three-dimensional imaging of cellular structures in their native, frozen state. However, image quality is limited by a trade-off between ang...

More great cryo-ET benchmarking work from my colleagues Maarten Tuijtel, Tomáš Majtner, Beata Turoňová, & @becklab.bsky.social: Systematic study of how tilt increment choice affects downstream TM & STA. Preprint has the optimally balanced tilt increment. #TeamTomo www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

superslope is an excellent name for a bike that lives in mountainous land 🙂

The small GTPase Ran defines nuclear pore complex asymmetry Nuclear pore complexes (NPCs) bridge across the nuclear envelope and mediate nucleocytoplasmic exchange. They consist of hundreds of nucleoporin build…

My PhD paper is in press @cellpress.bsky.social and now online: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...!

Contents: weird #NPCs in yeast and flies, #CLEM, in situ #cryoET and more!

Made possible by the amazing @becklab.bsky.social team at @mpibp.bsky.social and collaborators! #TeamTomo

Science came to life at the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics during the 2025 Night of Science of @goetheuni.bsky.social! 🌙✨

The manslaughterers