Nature - Lab-made organoids that mimic reproductive tissues could point to treatments for common conditions such as pre-eclampsia and endometriosis.

Human cells face a wide range of external mechanical stimuli that vary with cell type, state, and pathological conditions. The rapidly growing field of mechanobiology investigates how cells sense and ...

An approach combining bioorthogonal chemistry with genetically encoded fluorogen-activating proteins enables subcellular imaging of phospholipids and glycans, as well as the visualization of lipid tra...

Super-resolution fluorescence microscopy (SRM) has enabled visualization of nanoscale cellular structures, but systematic evaluation of resolution assessment methods across diverse biological structur...

Rawal et al. combine intracellular cartography and biophysical modelling to reveal how edge curvature governs endoplasmic reticulum (ER) morphology, showing that curvature-dependent ER reorganization ...

Science and Research Opportunities in India

Directional, non-vesicular lipid transport is responsible for fast, species-selective lipid sorting into organelle membranes.

Repositioning of Rab25 vesicles containing formin and integrin cargos to the cell periphery promotes protrusion formation.

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...

Carlos Nobre, who has fought for decades to save the rainforest, says up to 70% of it could be lost if a tipping point is reached

Nature Cell Biology - Kletter et al. show that cell state-specific cytoplasmic density controls spindle architecture and scaling in neural differentiation, suggesting that the physical properties...

Academia relies on unpaid labour — but researchers should think carefully about what kind of work they’re willing to give to for-profit organizations for free, says Dritjon Gruda.

Microscopy preprints - applications in biology - News

OME 2025 from April 28 - May 1 at Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA

Spatiotemporal control of proteins is crucial for cellular phenomena such as signal integration, propagation, as well as managing crosstalk. In membrane-associated signaling, this regulation is often enabled by lipids, wherein highly dynamic, sequential recruitment of interacting proteins is key to successful signaling. Here, we present dual SLIPT (self-localizing ligand-induced protein translocation), a lipid-analog tool, capable of emulating this lipid-mediated sequential recruitment of any two proteins of interest. Dual SLIPT self-localizes to the inner leaflet of the plasma membrane (PM). There, dual SLIPT presents trimethoprim (TMP) and HaloTag ligand (HTL) to cytosolic proteins of interest (POIs), whereupon POIs fused to the protein tags iK6eDHFR, or to HOB are recruited. A systematic extension of the linkers connecting the two mutually orthogonal headgroups was implemented to overcome the steric clash between the recruited POIs. Using Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET), we verify that the resulting probe is capable of simultaneous binding of both proteins of interest, as well as their dimerization. Dual SLIPT was found to be particularly suitable for use in physiologically relevant concentrations, such as recruitment via tightly regulated, transient lipid species. We further expanded dual SLIPT to the photocontrollable dual SLIPTNVOC, by introducing a photocaging group onto the TMP moiety. Dual SLIPTNVOC enables sequential and spatiotemporally defined dimerization upon blue light irradiation. Thus, dual SLIPTNVOC serves as a close mimic of physiology, enabling interrogation of dynamic cytosol-to-plasma membrane recruitment events and their impact on signaling.

This work challenges a major assumption in cell biology by showing that lipid bilayers can have drastically different phospholipid abundances between their two leaflets. This lipid abundance asymmetry...