Luis Bonet-Ponce

What looks like art is actually biology — a rat liver cell seen under the microscope.

Those glowing strands are actin and microtubules, the scaffolding that lets the liver filter blood, detoxify chemicals, and even regrow itself.

Credit to Dr. Francisco Lázaro-Diéguez!

#Science #Microscopy

Join us in sunny California for the 2026 GRC Autophagy meeting! Excited to co-chair with Oliver Florey and vice chairs Helene Knaevelsrud and @robzonculab.bsky.social
Keynote speakers incl. Eileen White, @idikic.bsky.social and Sharon Tooze- Registration is open: link⬇️ www.grc.org/autophagy-in...

Interesting question. For me as a visually-driven person, consistency and formatting qualities have a direct effect on my understanding. I see high quality as an inclusion strategy - bad presentation will keep some people from getting it

We hire!
The CytoMorpho Lab is looking for an engineer with a background in cell and molecular biology to join our team in Paris. This is a 18-month contract position, but we're open to exploring long-term opportunities.
More details here:
cytomorpholab.com/index.php/jo...

Really cool work, congrats Heidi!

🚨 We’re hiring a postdoc! 🚨
Interested in lysosomes, Parkinson’s disease, cell biology, microscopy — or all of the above? Come work with us at the Bonet-Ponce Lab!
Reach out directly: luis.bonetponce@osumc.edu
Learn more: bonetponcelab.com
Let’s chat!

New paper - MAPL strikes again! Interested in mitochondrial signalling, inflammation, lysosome biology, pyroptosis, and Parkinson's disease? Have a look, there's something for everyone! Feeling grateful! @mitocollier.bsky.social Funded by #CIHR, @asapresearch.parkinsonsroadmap.org.
rdcu.be/eKKz1 🇨🇦

I’m happy to share some plugins I’ve been developping this summer: "Channels and Contrast" and LUTs Manager!
I can’t find new bugs and ideas by now so I need your help to please test them in your machines and report bugs, feedbacks and ideas! forum.image.sc/t/looking-fo...

On the left - western blot of B16F10 cells wt and KO for CDK8. Our in house produced antibodies give a lot of unspecific bands. On the right same probes with antibodies preincubated with fixed CDK8 KO cells - there is a specific band and faint unspecific bands, which can be probably eliminated with increase of amount of KO cells.

Neat trick if you polycolonal ab's suck. Incubate them with fixed cells with a KO of your protein of interest, then spin. Protocol here: www.med.upenn.edu/markslab/ass...
I was amazed how well it worked on first try (I'm sure that I can completely eliminate unspecific bands)
#WesternBlot #cellsky

Nanotubes everywhere between neurons! A bit skeptical about these "dendrite-dendrite nanotubes" from a phalloidin staining in culture, but let's read on… www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Impaired hematopoiesis and embryonic lethality at midgestation of mice lacking both lipid transfer proteins VPS13A and VPS13C VPS13A and VPS13C are bridge-like lipid transport proteins with distinct subcellular localization and function, and their absence is linked with chorea-acanthocytosis and Parkinson's disease, respecti...

"Impaired hematopoiesis and embryonic lethality at midgestation of mice lacking both lipid transfer proteins VPS13A and VPS13C" out now in PLOS Biology
journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

Huge compliment coming from you, tempted to put it on my CV 🙂!

Beautiful live-cell imaging of lysosome tubulation along microtubules in this work just out from @lysoluis.bsky.social et al:
rupress.org/jcb/article/...

In @jcb.org, @lysoluis.bsky.social, @markrcookson.bsky.social et al. show how two distinct pRAB effectors and RHD members, JIP4 and RILPL1, provide antagonistic motor force to regulate #lysosome tubulation. rupress.org/jcb/article/...

@lysoluis.bsky.social, @markrcookson.bsky.social et al. show how two distinct pRAB effectors and RHD members, JIP4 and RILPL1, provide antagonistic motor force to regulate #lysosome tubulation. rupress.org/jcb/article/...

Much needed good news!! Our paper is just out in @jcb.org. We found a crazy antagonistic motor function that explains the elongation/retraction phenotype we see during LRRK2-dependent lysosomal tubulation. I am especially proud of Tsion, Nuria, Mia and Irene's contribution. Check it out!

I'm microscope-starved these days so I jumped on the occasion to help @bertrandvernay.bsky.social quality-check our SIM scope at the @ncis-marseille.bsky.social! COS cell stained for DNA 🔵, ER 🟠, mitochondria 🟢, and actin ⚪ (an 8-month old sample!)

ATG16L strikes again! New findings link #lysosome stress and physiology. Alison Klein and Michael Overholtzer @mskcancercenter.bsky.social discuss new study from @thabataduque.bsky.social et al. of the Deretic group (rupress.org/jcb/article/...) in Spotlight: rupress.org/jcb/article/...

Structural basis for mTORC1 activation on the lysosomal membrane - Nature Cryo-electron microscopy was used to study human mechanistic target of rapamycin complex 1 (mTORC1) activation on lysosomal membranes, showing progressive recruitment by RAG–Ragulator, RHEB and R...

Finally in @nature.com 🎉
We uncovered step-wise mTORC1 activation on membrane: RAG–Ragulator recruits, RHEB pushes closer, and direct membrane contacts by RAPTOR + mTOR trigger full kinase activity.👉 The membrane is not just a platform — it’s part of the mechanism.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Our new preprint is up! This is the main postdoc work of @wiesner-t.bsky.social focusing on exocytosis along the axon shaft and its regulation by the sub membrane actin-spectrin scaffold: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Read the thread below for a summary of our findings 🧵1/11

New paper alert! I’m very excited to share our paper published in @embojournal.org! @pdc-lab.bsky.social @yaleneuro.bsky.social

Why are α-synuclein aggregates in Parkinson’s disease (PD) toxic at the cell biological level?

Our new study shows that α-syn fibrils hijack the ESCRT membrane repair system, triggering a feedback loop that worsens aggregation.

You can find it at: authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...

CLEM-Reg: an automated point cloud-based registration algorithm for volume correlative light and electron microscopy - Nature Methods CLEM-Reg automates the three-dimensional alignment of volume correlative light and electron microscopy datasets by leveraging probabilistic point cloud registration techniques for fast and accurate re...

Super happy to see CLEM-Reg out in @natmethods.nature.com! A short thread on the algorithm behind it and how to try it out for yourself🧵(1/9)

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

KIF13B controls ciliary protein content by promoting endocytic retrieval and suppressing release of large extracellular vesicles from cilia Rezi et al. show that kinesin-3 KIF13B regulates ciliary protein content by promoting endocytic retrieval and small extracellular vesicle (EV) release of ciliary proteins while suppressing their relea...

KIF13B controls ciliary protein content by promoting endocytic retrieval and suppressing release of large extracellular vesicles from cilia: Current Biology www.cell.com/current-biol...

Thrilled to announce my official promotion to associate professor with tenure at UTSW! So grateful to all the trainees in the lab for their hard work and proud of their accomplishments over the last several years. This an individual recognition but truly a team effort!

CHIP protects lysosomes from CLN4 mutant-induced membrane damage Nature Cell Biology - Lee et al. use an aggregation-prone CLN4 mutant that causes lysosomal damage in neurons and show that in non-neurons, the ubiquitin ligase CHIP prevents CLN4-dependent...

Happy to share an exciting study from Yihong Ye’s lab at NIH, with a minor contribution from our lab: ceroid lipofuscinosis-4 (CLN4)-linked DNAJC5 mutations cause lysosomal damage as a driver of neurodegeneration in iPSC-derived neurons. CHIP safeguards lysosomes via microautophagy 👉 rdcu.be/eChof

👉 New publication ahead of print from our lab: tinyurl.com/ye7pntte
We show that the protein SPG21, mutated in hereditary spastic paraplegia 21, localizes to endolysosomes via RAB7A, where it promotes mTORC1-dependent TFEB phosphorylation, reducing expression of a subset of TFEB regulated genes

Hello imaging friends! Does anyone know a R/FR tag that is still somewhat bright after PFA+GA fixation? I need a two color experiment, and I am already using mEos4b for the G channel. Please RT!!

Organelle-Targeted Laurdans Measure Heterogeneity in Subcellular Membranes and Their Responses to Saturated Lipid Stress Organelles feature characteristic lipid compositions that lead to differences in membrane properties. In cells, membrane ordering and fluidity are commonly measured using the solvatochromic dye Laurdan, whose fluorescence is sensitive to lipid packing. As a general lipophilic dye, Laurdan stains all hydrophobic environments in cells; therefore, it is challenging to characterize membrane properties in specific organelles or assess their responses to pharmacological treatments in intact cells. Here, we describe the synthesis and application of Laurdan-derived probes that read out the membrane packing of individual cellular organelles. The set of organelle-targeted Laurdans (OTL) localizes to the ER, mitochondria, lysosomes, and Golgi compartments with high specificity while retaining the spectral resolution needed to detect biological changes in membrane ordering. We show that ratiometric imaging with OTLs can resolve membrane heterogeneity within organelles as well as changes in lipid packing resulting from inhibition of trafficking or bioenergetic processes. We apply these probes to characterize organelle-specific responses to saturated lipid stress. While the ER and lysosomal membrane fluidity is sensitive to exogenous saturated fatty acids, that of mitochondrial membranes is protected. We then use differences in ER membrane fluidity to sort populations of cells based on their fatty acid diet, highlighting the ability of organelle-localized solvatochromic probes to distinguish between cells based on their metabolic state. These results expand the repertoire of targeted membrane probes and demonstrate their application in interrogating lipid dysregulation.

The 4 chemically targeted Laurdan derivatives (for mitochondria, ER, lyso/endosomes, and the Golgi) that we published last year are now available (at a pretty reasonable price) from Avanti Polar Lipids (cat #880194, 880197, 880193, 880196). These have been very popular! pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10....

2025 Grand Challenges in Parkinson's Disease Join us for 2025 Grand Challenges in Parkinson's Disease at Van Andel Institute Stay informed about exciting upcoming events and activities.

Come join us at the Van Andel Institute for the 2025 Grand Challenges in Parkinson's Disease, September 9-10. There will be an impressive line up of speakers who are experts in Parkinson's Disease research.

Abstract deadline: Aug. 22
Registration deadline: Aug. 29

www.vai.org/event/2025-g...