Hannes Maib

#membrane seminars are back this THURSDAY for a super session with @dr-downes.bsky.social from the @giuliazanetti.bsky.social lab and Xin Zhou from the Ikonen lab! @felixmendu.bsky.social @ishier.bsky.social

I completely agree. And local concentrations can be very variable and what is a competitor for one person might be an interesting interaction partner for another

And having high affinity, site specific binding to protein A does not rule out having weak and transient interactions with protein B

In no word have I mentioned LLPS. But to state that fuzzy interactions don’t occur or might not be physiologically important seems very limited. As you said yourself “fuzzy interactions are soluble in cytosol”. Therefore fuzzy interactions with partners in the cytosol exist and can be very important

Surely protein-protein interactions come at all scales of affinities and AlphaFold is very good at the high affinity interactions but less so for weak and transient ones

In most papers the spectre of the two phases need not be involved at all. The argument has become largely semantic and few people are actually thinking about LLPS that you described and are focused on multivalent (classical) biochemistry but have been tricked into selling this as phase separation.

However, as the result of this hype a lot of good science has been done around the importance of these multivalent interactions in many diverse processes. Also IDPs have gotten a lot of attention now and are being appreciated to be functionally crucial components of protein-protein interactions.

When LLPS hype first began, I tried hard to understand it and still found it quite difficult to make real sense of. I think some leading researchers have used language deliberately crafted to confuse people into reframing ordinary, weak, multivalent interactions as mystical “Phase Separation”

That’s exactly it! I think the hype around LLPS has made people rediscover the importance of weak, multivalent, “fuzzy”, interactions as drivers of many diverse processes. I don’t really think most people think of the “true” liquid liquid phases and it has just become the trendy word now

Dont think liquidity is anything that can be inferred. I used to FRAP clathrin coated pits a lot during my PhD. They are very ordered lattices and recover in seconds. Wonderful dynamic structures but very much not liquid

* can’t trust…. (Sorry for the obvious typo)

This is making the rounds and people are be worried about fake data being published.
I don’t see the point. All data can already be faked. All graphs and numerical data can freely be made up. Controls and samples can be switched.
If we can trust scientists and institutions we might as well stop.

Thank you so much for having me! It’s been a great visit and I can’t wait to show the prime quality photo we collected to everyone. Some great science coming up!

Really glad to show our recent work using recombinant phosphoinositide probes to investigate membrane identity changes during endosomal trafficking. Should be a great mini symposium to highlight the power of fluorescent microscopy techniques for cell biology!

In what world do 15 hours courses send the right messages towards a healthily work life balance in academia? And this is definitely not balanced by a plate race or anything like that. It is no wonder that phd students get more and more burned out

SNAP-tag2 for faster and brighter protein labeling - Nature Chemical Biology SNAP-tag is a widespread tool for labeling protein for bioimaging. Now, Kühn et al. report SNAP-tag2 with increased labeling kinetics and brightness, which translates into a better performance in live...

📣Paper alert! Interested in faster and brighter protein labeling than before? 👀 @steffi-k.bsky.social & other colleagues have developed an improved tool for labeling proteins with synthetic fluorophores for bioimaging. Also works in STED microscopy 🤩🔬 Congratulations!🥳
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Shit.

In all my interactions with @jacoates.bsky.social I can vouch for his sincere commitment and drive towards open science and engagement. Moving on from his role with ASAPbio will be a great opportunity for whomever he will work with next!

A graphic for the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA), showing a historical portrait of Marie Skłodowska-Curie overlaid with an image of four young researchers walking down a hallway. The European Commission logo is in the top left. Text reads: "Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions – €404.3 million to support postdoctoral researchers”

Choose Science. Choose Europe.

A new Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellowships 2025 call is now open.

With a budget of €404.3 million, it will support around 1,650 researchers from Europe and beyond.

Apply by 10 September → europa.eu/!fBTMgF

I’d prefer one meeting a day. Having one meeting freshens up my mind and gets me thinking, which also helps with writing. Many meetings a day drag me down and exhaust me, which is also worse for the other person in the meeting as they won’t be able to get the best out of me

Looking for a student or postdoc!

Want to combine evolutionary analysis + structural modeling with in vitro biochemistry & fluorescence microscopy?
Help us uncover new protein-protein interactions — from in silico to in vitro.

Join us at @istaresearch.bsky.social 👉 looselab.org
🧬💡🔬🎡

If using Bloomigton #Drosophila Stock Center stocks, pls. acknowledge them & their NIH funding (P40 OD018537). Papers listing this no. are being harvested as evidence. We massively depend on the @bdsc.bsky.social & they need our support in these dire times! @flybase.bsky.social @fly-eds.bsky.social

Pls re-skeet! There's a postdoc job available to join us in Bristol! We're looking for a molecular cell biologist to help us investigate plasma membrane proteostasis in neurons. Apply here by 23 April: www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DMO097/r.... If interested, do contact me and check out grieve-lab.com! Thanks!

Only 10 days left to apply!

We are looking for a passionate protein biochemist for the reconstitution of lipid kinases. We have long term funding and you will be trained in the use of supported lipid bilayers.

If you are interested just get in touch or apply directly!

First time playing around with single molecule STORM imaging of PI3P on endosomes using recombinant biosensors. This was great fun with our new fellow Ruby Peters and I see lots of potential for this in the future!

It is the scourge of our times and as a foreigner in the UK it does not feel any better. It is clear that the spirit of open borders and free movement is coming to an end but Germany is still as strong part of the EU. And at least in Germany there is clear and vocal opposition to the far right

Research Associate in Reconstitution of Lipid Kinases at University of Sheffield An opportunity for an academic position as a Research Associate in Reconstitution of Lipid Kinases is available, as advertised on jobs.ac.uk. Apply now and explore other academic job openings.

🚨Long term postdoc position available on the reconstitution of lipid kinases!🚨

Do you have a passion for protein reconstitution and lipid signalling? You will reconstitute lipid kinases from eukaryotic expression systems to determine their kinetic regulation.

www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DLW981/r...

Science is Under Siege: The Open Science Community Must Act and Lead by Example Worldwide, science is under attack by anti-scientific movements. The new US administration has thrown the entire academy into chaos, threatening global health. This article is a call for the open scie...

The open science community must lead by example in defending science.

We are ideally positioned to combat the efforts by Trump, Musk & others that are anti-science & anti-inclusion.

Time to practice what we preach!

#academicsky #openscience #metasci #ScholComm

Cell polarity and membrane dynamics The ability of cells to polarize is essential for organismal development and physiology, and its impairment underlies numerous diseases. The establishment and maintenance of cell polarity requires a …

Registration is open for the 2025 iteration of the wonderful @EMBOevents workshop on cell polarity and membrane dynamics #EMBOcellPolarity25 I am organizing with Ed Munro! Wonderful lineup wonderful please please sign up and share! meetings.embo.org/event/25-cel...

Incredibly honoured to have my first paper as PI highlighted in this collection! The idea was do a quick tool paper as my start into independence and it turned out to be much more useful than I thought. Read about how to use recombinant biosensors to stain for lipids in fixed cells!