After years parked at a Polara, I’m excited to share that my PhD work is finally out! We figured out why imaging at liquid helium temperatures wasn’t working—and how to fix it.
🔗 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

New preprint! @tatilab.bsky.social imaged the honeybee GABAA RDL receptor. ~10% of insecticides target insect GABAA receptors. She found a new allosteric modulation pocket, a PIP2 site, a closed avermectin-bound conformation, and maybe an unusual desensitized state.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Here's our newest study: we reveal the molecular principles of neuronal excitation by glutamate, and how physiological temperatures influence this process.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Led by @anish-mondal07.bsky.social, published in @natureportfolio.nature.com

PINK1/Parkin-dependent mitophagy caught in situ by cryo-ET! New preprint www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... led by @kev-in-situ-et.bsky.social. This has been a long-standing goal of team @mito911.bsky.social within the @asapresearch.parkinsonsroadmap.org initiative.

The Cryo-EM: the next 50 years Symposium held yesterday at @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social was a smashing success!!

Now online! Anna’s fantastic work on the structure of the Human adult Muscle-type nicotinic receptor.

Wonderful collab with Yin Dong at the @imm.ox.ac.uk

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

New preprint describing a primed nicotinic receptor state with only one agonist bound, seen at low [agonist]. My fav part: ~7% of particles are in that state on cryoEM grids... that's also the proportion predicted from the fitting of single-channel data! Work led by @mackthompson88.bsky.social

Thank you to John Baenziger, @hugbum.bsky.social, Corrie daCosta, and Lefteris Zarkadas who worked together to create this amazing story - I am so grateful for you all!
Thanks to Christian Tessier who performed the single-channel recordings and Anna Ananchenko and Francois Dehez for the MD

Structural and functional data. Overall, we propose that the nAChR activates through asynchronous conformation transitions that challenge previous paradigms of MWC type mechanisms in Cys-loop receptors.

While the remaining subunits remain inactive, albeit poised for activation. We confirm this state is non-conductive with MD simulations and use single channel recordings across a broad range of ACh concentrations to position it within an improved kinetic scheme that accurately describes both…

So happy to finally share my final paper from my PhD! By collecting cryo-EM datasets at sub-saturating concentrations of ACh, we were able to determine a mono-liganded state of the muscle-type nAChR. This state has a fully activated alpha subunit where ACh binds…

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

The first story from my PhD is now available on bioRxiv!: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

We determined structures of a LRRC8A:D VRAC by cryo-EM and explored the role of pore lipids in their gating. Huge thanks to the whole Brohawn lab, and especially to Steve @stevebrohawn.bsky.social and David!