Sjors Scheres

Yes, very clear for amyloidosis. And it is to me very surprising how many scientists doubt that amyloid fibrils in the brain, which are hallmarks of diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, damage that organ! 🤔

Yes, that's more accurate, thanks. Unfortunately seeded assembly in vitro does not necessarily recapitulate the seed structure: yet another exciting, albeit perhaps also annoying, unknown of protein (mis)folding!

We now need to understand how proteins fold and how they change upon perturbation; something AlphaFold does not provide.

PS: Your figure is not of a fibril taken from a patient. It was made from recombinant peptide and its structure is different from those in AD brains (e.g. PDB 7Q4B/7Q4M).

Spring is in the air!

This rings a bell for the same argument of "more car lanes = more traffic". I thought the book below was very good.

Perhaps this sweet book will cheer you up? I much enjoyed its human positivity as a counterweight to the news. 🤗

Because a booking with my local taxi company went wrong, yesterday night I had to take an Uber home. Cost to me £133; driver received £60 and had to pay £8 for the parking. #UsTechValueExtraction

My suggestion: force all ride & taxi services to publish how much they pay the driver.

I would advice caution in pushing this to your patient base. The compound was shown to act on in vitro assembled filaments, which are different from those formed in the human heart; the relevance of the worm model is also doubtful; and evidence presented on heart-derived filaments is very thin.

We are excited to be recruiting a new tenure track group leader in the Structural Studies Division at MRC LMB! It is an amazing place to start your own lab.
@mrclmb.bsky.social

Please get in touch if you have any questions.
www.nature.com/naturecareer...

Oops: being paralysed is much worse than being parallelised! 🤔

I would be interested in hearing people's opinions too. 🤗

February Map of the Month: Aca2–RNA

We reprocessed EMPIAR-11918 and achieved 2.76 Å in 50.5 compute hours.

Sub-3 Å at ~40 kDa is a strong example of what modern cryo-EM workflows (and RELION with Blush) can deliver for small targets.

📧 hi@cryocloud.io

#CryoEM #CryoCloud

Not only does it work worse, but buying into one large system also provides a single point of attack and failure. I'm aware of large organisations being parallelised for many months due to hacks into their unified Microsoft world.

Job opening for Research Group Leader in Structural Studies at MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, focusing on macromolecular structures.

Are you a structural biologist pushing the boundaries of molecular science with an ambitious research programme?
Join our Structural Studies Division as a tenure-track Group Leader, with core funding, world-leading facilities & enthusiastic colleagues.
Apply by 16 MAR
www.nature.com/naturecareer...

I did the same: deleted everything and left >15K followers behind. Never went back. I have fewer followers here (am also less active here). Still, I feel I cannot support that other site, and don't understand why so many organisations do.

Hi Hanjin, sounds cool! Does the GUI write out all the necessary star files? If so, can it then run alongside the normal relion gui, including the locks?

Since last year, I've been making a RELION GUI that supports viewing, navigating and running jobs in a way completely compatible with the original RELION pipeline. Now it's working nicely for both SPA and tomography! Please try it out - github.com/hanjinliu/hi...

Clustering of protofilaments folds of tau, alpha-synuclein, TDP-43, TAF15 and the prion protein based on pairwise APDs reveals that APDs>30-40% are typically associated with distinct diseases, whereas structures with APDs<20% are associated with the same disease.

The APD reports the percentage of residues that either adopt unique cross-beta packing contacts in one of the input structures (red lines) or have a different in-out orientation of their side chains (orange circles). The two mouse-adapted prion strains below have an APD of 38%.

The python scripts and instructions for their use are available from github.com/3dem/APD.

The amyloid packing difference (APD) is a new metric to compare amyloid structures. Analysis of disease-specific structures provides context for the interpretation of APDs for new comparisons. I hope it will be useful! 🤗

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Congrats @olibclarke.bsky.social and co-authors! Happy to see this is out now. 🥳

Want to know more? Feel free to contact me and @lapassmore.bsky.social by email.

This 6-year track includes @ukri.org core funding for your own salary, 2 postdocs and ~2 PhD students, plus free access to our amazing facilities (compute, light microscopy, cryoEM, etc), so you can make your groundbreaking ideas reality, without having to worry about teaching and/or grant writing.

Please spread the word: the Structural Studies Division @mrclmb.bsky.social is looking for a new tenure-track, independent group leader with an exciting plan in any area of Structural (Molecular & Cell) biology, in discovery biology and/or methods development. 🥳

mrc.tal.net/vx/mobile-0/...

#BecomeRELION! 😜

How did life arise from simple chemical building blocks?

New #LMBResearch led by @edogia.bsky.social in @philholliger.bsky.social group has identified a small self-replicating ribozyme that could be the answer.

Read more: mrclmb.ac.uk/news-events/...

🥳🥳🥳

Year 12 work experience infographic Dates 27th - 31st July Apply by 1st March

📣 Applications are open for work experience

🧪🔬 Aimed at local Y12 students from underrepresented backgrounds interested in science

🗓️ 27/07 – 31/07

Eligibility and selection criteria apply

Applications by 01/03

More info: mrclmb.ac.uk/careers-and-...

#STEM #WorkExperience #BiologyCareers

As cryoEM becomes automated people forget
Just Because (JB) it's picked Doesn't Mean (DM) it's a ptcl
JB it's measured DM it's the CTF
JB it's a class ave DM it looks like the ptcls
JB it comes out of ab initio DM its the structure
JB FSC=0.143 DM that's the res'n
JB it's modeled DM it fits the map