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Alex Merz 🇺🇸🇨🇦🇺🇦

@merz.bsky.social

4.8K followers 3.3K following 15K posts

"There are no answers; only choices." – S. Lem I choose one [o] or two-cell [8] organisms and dissonant music. Professor of Biochemistry @ UW-Seattle. Any coincidence of my opinions with my employer's is coincidental.

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Alex Merz 🇺🇸🇨🇦🇺🇦 @merz.bsky.social · 9d

Josef Koudelka, Prague, 1968

Resistance fighter on top of Russian tank

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Reposted by Alex Merz 🇺🇸🇨🇦🇺🇦

emptywheel @emptywheel.bsky.social · 2h

Really good piece on someone everyone should be tracking, Greg Bovino.

"Bovino combines Bull Connor’s aggression with Don King’s showmanship:"

TPM @talkingpointsmemo.com · 2h

In Los Angeles and now Chicago, the White House's aggressive deportation operations have one hype man: Greg Bovino.
talkingpointsmemo.com/news/greg-bo...

Greg Bovino Emerges as Trump’s Man For Conjuring Up a Blue-City Insurrection

Elected officials, activists, and at least one former high-ranking Department of Homeland...

talkingpointsmemo.com

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Alex Merz 🇺🇸🇨🇦🇺🇦 @merz.bsky.social · 53m

In the case of the yeast vacuole, I think the answer is yes. As for other membranes, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Alex Merz 🇺🇸🇨🇦🇺🇦 @merz.bsky.social · 54m

That is a GREAT question, and a distinct possibility. Amazing recent cryoEM studies of V-ATPase in native synaptic vesicles revealed a ring of bound sterol on the integral membrane portion of the complex. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

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Alex Merz 🇺🇸🇨🇦🇺🇦 @merz.bsky.social · 59m

Oil/vinegar is a true liquid-liquid phase separation system and there is at this point a large literature demonstrating same for 2-dimensional synthetic GUVs.

Alex Merz 🇺🇸🇨🇦🇺🇦 @merz.bsky.social · 1h

Ditto, giant unilamellar vesicles and other chemically defined membrane systems.

Alex Merz 🇺🇸🇨🇦🇺🇦 @merz.bsky.social · 1h

Others have. We know that the V-ATPase is not operating when we isolate vacuoles because the vacuole pH gradient has collapsed and re-forms when ATP is added to the system.

Alex Merz 🇺🇸🇨🇦🇺🇦 @merz.bsky.social · 1h

We see phase separation in oil and vinegar salad dressing, and the same considerations apply.

Alex Merz 🇺🇸🇨🇦🇺🇦 @merz.bsky.social · 1h

Depends how you choose to define equilibrium. At chemical equilibrium in an environment with oxygen, lipids don’t exist.

Alex Merz 🇺🇸🇨🇦🇺🇦 @merz.bsky.social · 2h

An important point is that the behavior persists when we isolate the organelle from the cell and don’t provide an energy source other than the ambient thermal energy.

Alex Merz 🇺🇸🇨🇦🇺🇦 @merz.bsky.social · 2h

There are multiple arguments in favor of that interpretation; here’s one of them: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29211996/

Hallmarks of Reversible Separation of Living, Unperturbed Cell Membranes into Two Liquid Phases - PubMed

Controversy has long surrounded the question of whether spontaneous lateral demixing of membranes into coexisting liquid phases can organize proteins and lipids on micron scales within unperturbed, li...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

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Alex Merz 🇺🇸🇨🇦🇺🇦 @merz.bsky.social · 2h

He’s talking about guillotines, right?

Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 1d

ANDREESSEN: Even if AI ends up destroying all the jobs, “the result would be hyper-deflation of prices, which is the thing that people miss. .. Things that today cost a lot of money will all of a sudden be cheap or free.”

@fortune.com
fortune.com/2025/10/08/b...

Alex Merz 🇺🇸🇨🇦🇺🇦 @merz.bsky.social · 2h

As a hater of the UNC Board of Governors I love it, too. But as a fan of the actual university I am sad.

Alex Merz 🇺🇸🇨🇦🇺🇦 @merz.bsky.social · 2h

You are a quivering chickenshit.

Alex Merz 🇺🇸🇨🇦🇺🇦 @merz.bsky.social · 2h

Fuck off. We have the right to assemble and to speak and there is no point to having these rights if they are not exercised.

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Alex Merz 🇺🇸🇨🇦🇺🇦 @merz.bsky.social · 2h

When did you first learn to blame the wrong people for everything

Alex Merz 🇺🇸🇨🇦🇺🇦 @merz.bsky.social · 2h

Here are some more examples (spinning disk confocal and deconvolution). Lock screen for my phone, LOL.

Alex Merz 🇺🇸🇨🇦🇺🇦 @merz.bsky.social · 2h

Since 2013, when Alex Toulmay and Will Prinz rediscovered the domains, several labs including mine, @kaytrue.bsky.social’s, and @ibudin.bsky.social’s have been working to understand the biophysical basis and physiological functions of domain formation.

Alex Merz 🇺🇸🇨🇦🇺🇦 @merz.bsky.social · 3h

I have not but others have. The phenomenon was first noted in 1963 using freeze fracture electron microscopy. In 2017 Takeuchi & al. used immunogold labeling with freeze fracture to prove that the V-ATPase segregates into the particle rich domains seen in 1963.

Refs. in ALTs.

Electron micrograph from 1963

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2106217/

Immunogold EM from 2017
https://elifesciences.org/articles/25960

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Alex Merz 🇺🇸🇨🇦🇺🇦 @merz.bsky.social · 3h

Totally agree. I would be in a study section meeting at this moment if the government was operational.

Reposted by Alex Merz 🇺🇸🇨🇦🇺🇦

Seth Cotlar @sethcotlar.bsky.social · 15h

You can hear them talk about this around minute 24 of this podcast. For context, Republicans have long hoped to end vote by mail in Oregon because they (wrongly) think it's conducive to voter fraud. These two know that voters will never get rid of it, so....
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e...

Ep. 18: September to Remember

Podcast Episode · Kerry McQuisten's Common Sense Sanctuary · 10/07/2025 · 44m

podcasts.apple.com

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Alex Merz 🇺🇸🇨🇦🇺🇦 @merz.bsky.social · 12h

abject filth

Dave Levitan @davelevitan.bsky.social · 1d

Hey cool the NOAA guy who was found to have violated the agency's code of ethics for his role in Sharpiegate has been confirmed as the head of NOAA.

Senate Confirms ‘Sharpiegate’ Meteorologist to Lead NOAA

www.nytimes.com

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Alex Merz 🇺🇸🇨🇦🇺🇦 @merz.bsky.social · 13h

Thank you, Carl. This is badly needed.

Carl Zimmer @carlzimmer.com · 18h

Today my @nytimes.com colleagues and I are launching a new series called Lost Science. We interview US scientists who can no longer discover something new about our world, thanks to this year‘s cuts. Here is my first interview with a scientist who studied bees and fires. Gift link: nyti.ms/3IWXbiE

nyti.ms

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Alex Merz 🇺🇸🇨🇦🇺🇦 @merz.bsky.social · 13h

In fairness to that interpretation, Oregon /does/ claim that the border starts at the northern shore of the Columbia River.

Alex Merz 🇺🇸🇨🇦🇺🇦 @merz.bsky.social · 13h

mood

Mad World performed by Curt Smith of Tears For Fears

YouTube video by Tory Burch

www.youtube.com

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Alex Merz 🇺🇸🇨🇦🇺🇦 @merz.bsky.social · 13h

yep