Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

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Lucien Hinderling @lhinderling.bsky.social · 7d

Want to get started with smart microscopy? 🧠🔬
Check out our online repository with implementations from labs and industry -- lots of practical tips and links to sample code! smartmicroscopy.github.io/implementati...

More details in the ✨updated preprint!✨
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

screenshots of some of the sample implementations

Screenshot of smartmicroscopy.github.io/implementations.html, showing an overview of collected implementation examples

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John Ngo @johntngo.bsky.social · 16d

🚀 Our new paper is out @natmethods.nature.com!

Kuffer & Marzilli engineered conditionally stable MS2 & PP7 coat proteins (dMCP & dPCP) that degrade unless bound to RNA, enabling ultra–low-background, single-mRNA imaging in live cells.

🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
🧬 www.addgene.org/John_Ngo/

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Daniel J. Cohen (Princeton) @djcohen.bsky.social · 21d

SCHEPHERD--the bioelectric cell herding platform built for YOU. Single cells, monolayers, organoids--this herds them all + new tricks. Plz try it-- we will *give* you parts! Teaser here of a steering a single cell. GS Yubin Lin's lifeblood with J. Yodh on piano; Celeste R. and Paul K. Thread 1/N

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jared toettcher @toettch.bsky.social · 27d

Congrats, Daniel!

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Daniel Krüger @danielkrueger.bsky.social · Sep 6

Out in @science.org! We found that the intestine doesn’t just push out cells when crowded. Instead, cells are in a mechanical tug-of-war, and weaker ones are extruded. A new view of how our gut keeps its balance and stays healthy.
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Epithelial tension controls intestinal cell extrusion

Cell extrusion is essential for homeostatic self-renewal of the intestinal epithelium. Extrusion is thought to be triggered by crowding-induced compression of cells at the intestinal villus tip. In th...

www.science.org

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Dr. Allyson Sgro @allysonsgro.bsky.social · Aug 21

Very excited to be co-organizing this meeting next February. Fellow collective behavior enthusiasts, this one is for you!

EMBL Events @events.embl.org · Aug 21

✨ How do bird flocks form or diseases emerge?

Join the brand-new EMBO | EMBL Symposium #EESCollectivity and explore how collective behaviours arise from fundamental principles across biological systems 🧬🦠🐒

💻 s.embl.org/ees26-01-bl
✒️ Submit your abstract by 18 Nov

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jared toettcher @toettch.bsky.social · Aug 23

Check out those figure making skills! She should do Illustrator tutorials.

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jared toettcher @toettch.bsky.social · Aug 23

On kid number 3 (kid 1 born in my last year as a postdoc) and this has been my weekend schedule for the better part of a decade :)

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Michalis Averof @michalis-averof.bsky.social · Aug 8

Latest paper elifesciences.org/articles/107... closes an important cycle in our efforts to study regeneration: week-long recordings allow us to observe the behaviour of cells during the entire course of regeneration in a crustacean leg – bright objects in movie are fluorescent nuclei of cells. 1/6

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Rita Strack @ritastrack.bsky.social · Jul 29

🤩Wow huge opportunity alert!

Manuel Thery @manuelthery.bsky.social · Jul 29

EMBL Cell Biology and Biophysics department is searching for a new director. A major position to lead this field in Europe and beyond.
embl.wd103.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/EMBL/j...

Head of the Cell Biology and Biophysics Unit

The European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) is Europe’s flagship life sciences organisation, and one of the world’s leading research institutions. An intergovernmental organisation of 29 Member S...

embl.wd103.myworkdayjobs.com

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jared toettcher @toettch.bsky.social · Jul 22

And for your Friday afternoon, some in vivo ERK and RTK biosensor eye candy :)

Emily Kolenbrander Ho @emkolen.bsky.social · Jul 22

pYtags - our in vivo biosensors for receptor tyrosine kinases - in all their beauty on the cover of Cell Reports! Read more here: www.cell.com/cell-reports...

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Drug Monkey @drugmonkey.bsky.social · Jul 17

NIH will only accept six applications per PI per calendar year. drugmonkey.wordpress.com/2025/07/17/n...

NIH will only accept six applications per PI per calendar year.

NIH has issued NOT-OD-25-132 Supporting Fairness and Originality in NIH Research Applications which informs us that NIH will only accept six new, renewal, resubmission, or revision applications fro…

drugmonkey.wordpress.com

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Prof Sarah-Jayne Blakemore @sjblakemore.bsky.social · Jul 16

I was explaining to my Ukrainian colleague the phrase ‘There’s no such thing as a free lunch’. She told me the equivalent in Ukrainian is ‘The only free cheese is in the mousetrap’ - which is so much better

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Alfonso Martinez Arias @amartinezarias.bsky.social · Jul 15

Two new preprints from the @arjunraj.bsky.social‬ on #gastruloids. Both excellent. Exploring the relationship between macroscopic reproducibility v microscopic heterogeneity. Stunning experiments and much to think about
biorxiv.org/content/earl...
biorxiv.org/content/earl...

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David Mick @mick-lab.bsky.social · Jul 13

Beautiful work on the development of protein kinase reporters. Congrats all! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Molecular recording of cellular protein kinase activity with chemical labeling - Nature Chemical Biology

Molecular recorders based on kinase activity-dependent protein labeling track specific kinase activities to understand their link to cellular phenotypes in heterogeneous cell populations and in vivo.

www.nature.com

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Emily Kolenbrander Ho @emkolen.bsky.social · Jul 1

We built pYtags to detect RTK activity in Drosophila embryos and used them to learn about how developmental patterns form bsky.app/profile/emko...

Emily Kolenbrander Ho @emkolen.bsky.social · Jan 7

Have you ever wanted to *see* receptor activity in embryos? If so, our new preprint is for you! In it, we showcase a new live-cell biosensor for visualizing receptor tyrosine kinase activity in living embryos – pYtags!

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

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Emily Kolenbrander Ho @emkolen.bsky.social · Jul 1

Excited to share that our work building in vivo biosensors for receptor tyrosine kinases (pYtags!) is now out www.cell.com/cell-reports...

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Nature @nature.com · Jun 25

Nature research paper: Spatiotemporal orchestration of mitosis by cyclin-dependent kinase

https://go.nature.com/444lRhe

Spatiotemporal orchestration of mitosis by cyclin-dependent kinase - Nature

Experiments in fission yeast show that cyclin-dependent kinase is first activated in the nucleus, from which the mitotic signal is propagated from CDK at the centrosome to the cytoplasm.

go.nature.com

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The Elowitz Lab at Caltech @elowitzlab.bsky.social · Jun 3

Synthetic biology could enable new types of programmable therapeutics. Our new preprint introduces synthetic protein circuits that selectively trigger cell death in Ras-mutant cancer cells, with interesting advantages compared to existing approaches.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

www.biorxiv.org

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Craig McCormick @craigmccormick.bsky.social · Jun 1

This is incredible.

Jack Bateman @jbateman01.bsky.social · Jun 1

Mechanisms and timing of programmed DNA elimination in songbirds www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Mechanisms and timing of programmed DNA elimination in songbirds

It is commonly assumed that multicellular organisms contain the same genetic information in all the cells of an individual. However, there is a growing list of species in which parts of the genome are...

www.biorxiv.org

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jared toettcher @toettch.bsky.social · May 29

This is a beautiful paper first authored by a (brilliant) Princeton undergrad!

brangwynnelab.bsky.social @brangwynnelab.bsky.social · May 28

Nucleoli as biomolecular bubble tea! Congrats to former Princeton ugrad Holly Cheng (now GS @MIT) ->Holly's senior thesis work, a close collab w Roggeveen Wang & @zs-biophys.bsky.social‬ &Stone. Come for the cool movies & stay for the viscoelasticity! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2407423122

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Ed Boyden @eboyden3.bsky.social · May 22

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Michael Baym @baym.lol · May 13

Yesterday, the NIH R35 “Outstanding Investigator” grant to fund scientists in my lab studying antibiotic resistance was terminated for reasons not related to the content of the science, or any actions taken by me or members of my lab

A screenshot of the termination notice showing "Outstanding Investigator Grants"

A screenshot of the termination notice with "This award is terminated effective the date of this award, due to unsafe antisemitic actions that suggest the institution lacks concern for the safety and wellbeing of Jewish students." highlighted

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John Wallingford @jbwallingford.bsky.social · May 11

“Punk isn’t a hairstyle; it’s getting your friends together to make useful stories outside approved systems”

www.nytimes.com/2025/05/11/o...

Opinion | Today’s Young People Need to Learn How to Be Punk

www.nytimes.com

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Colin Carlson @colincarlson.bsky.social · May 1

I talked to Nature about the latest development at NSF, which is a five-alarm fire for American science. The scale of immediate impact is massive. We narrowly escaped this affecting @viralemergence.org for now, but will have to shut down in a few months if this stays.

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

Exclusive: NSF stops awarding new grants and funding existing ones

US science funder also plans to screen grant applications for compliance with ‘agency priorities’.

www.nature.com

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