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brettcollins.bsky.social
Structural biologist studying proteins that move things from A to B. University of Queensland, Institute for Molecular Bioscience. Centre for Cell Biology of Chronic Disease. He/Him. https://imb.uq.edu.au/research-groups/collins
117 posts 2,101 followers 2,752 following
Prolific Poster

🚨 #LaureateFellowships #FL25 announcement: ❗️Outcomes announced publicly for Australian Laureate Fellowships 2025❗️ See ARC's RMS for list ➡️ https://rms.arc.gov.au/RMS/Report/Download/Report/a3f6be6e-33f7-4fb5-98a6-7526aaa184cf/280 /bot

We have a 3-year funded postdoc position to work on structures of #amyloid filaments. If you are an expert in protein biochemistry, structural biology or #cryoEM / #cryoET, this could be for you! Feel free to email me with any questions. Come join us! 🤩 www.nature.com/naturecareer...

Our paper on Lymphostatin is now out (rdcu.be/etk2v). It shows #cryoEM structures of this huge virulence factor revealing amazing domain reorganisations. Very enjoyable collaborating with the Stevens Lab in Edinburgh and the Boersch Lab in Jena to see how it gets into cells. @uni-wuerzburg.de 🧪❄️

The ESCRT complexes are a fascinating membrane cutting machine with roles in countless cell pathways, but they are also ubiquitous in disease and offer new opportunities as drug targets. See our new review with Alyssa Coyne, Marta Miączyńska, and Harald Stenmark at tinyurl.com/yex3trem

Steve is getting ready to go to the pub.

In about a week we (Biological Sciences @ Monash Uni in Melbourne, Australia) will be opening a search for 3 (!!!) permanent academic positions (40% research, 40% teaching, 20% service) at Lecturer/Senior Lecturer. 1 Genomics, 2 Ecology. Please share, email me, DM, follow, send carrier pigeons…

ARC says Linkage Projects (LP24r2) will fiiiinally be announced tomorrow (25th June). Announcements tend to happen around 11am AEST, but it varies.

The #MembraneTrafficking online seminars are back this Thursday (June 26th, 5pm CEST). We'll hear from @jnuechel.bsky.social about how to find the right partner for a TANGO, and from Maohan Su about the organizational principles of the Golgi. @ishier.bsky.social @franbottanelli.bsky.social

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

If anyone needs it today, sometimes Hop falls asleep wedged between the bed and the bedside table

problem is politics has never been so insane. it simply doesn't give you time to chat about anything else

Alvarez, Y. D., van der Spuy, M., Wang, J. X., Noordstra, I., Tan, S. Z., Carroll, M., Yap, A. S., Serralbo, O., & White, M. D. (2024). A Lifeact-EGFP quail for studying actin dynamics in vivo. The Journal of cell biology, 223(9), e202404066. #EpithelialMechanics buff.ly/71cLssp

In these turbulent times, beautiful microscopy always cheers me up 😍. Here's a quail neural tube just doing its thing for #FluorescenceFriday. Imaged by the very talented @vanderspuy.bsky.social #devbio 🧪🔬👩‍🔬

Woo! Very excited to share our collaborative work on the centriole's Luminal Distal Ring ⭕. This project started 13 years ago with @hugovdhoek.bsky.social & @stearnslab.bsky.social, and then beautifully came together with @computingcaitie.bsky.social & @centriolelab.bsky.social. #TeamTomo #UExM 🧪🧶🧬🔬

Congratulations to @kellythd-nguyen.bsky.social, Group Leader in the LMB’s Structural Studies Division, who has been awarded the 2025 Research Prize from @thelisterinstitute.bsky.social . Read more here: www2.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/kelly-nguyen... #LMBNews

More support that these footprints in New Mexico, USA are from 22-24,000 years ago, supporting an earlier arrival of humans to the Americas. Story by @jenlucpiquant.bsky.social at ArsTechnica arstechnica.com/science/2025...

They could just read the research literature.* Or, easier still, just ask people who’ve worked in this space for years. It’s widely reported that the biggest part of the apparent "rise" is changes in diagnostic criteria and more awareness. Note Bhattacharya conflates two questions (cont’d) 1/3

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... @vcmentowski.bsky.social reports a direct interaction of BUB1 with the RZZ that is necessary for RZZ recruitment when CENP-E is depleted. This may complete the identification of the receptors of the RZZ required for fibrous corona assembly

Here is are some otters to help calm your nerves.

Check out the view today from the venue—scoping for the IUBMB Focussed meeting on (pseudo)kinases! Abstracts and early bird registrations closes this week! www.ivvy.com.au/event/IUBMB25/ @pseudokinase.bsky.social @iubmb.bsky.social

Chan Lee @harperlabhms.bsky.social reports CASM-driven V-ATPase recruitment to lysosomes for acidification upon TRPML1 activation via DMXL1-RAVE loader. With Magdalene Moran(Caraway), Sophie Helaine lab, Joao Paulo, & HarperLab teams(HMS). Funds: Warren Alpert FND/NIH www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Steve takes down a vicious predator.

Something I've been feeling a lot lately, but haven't heard much about is the grief that comes with being an early career scientist in America in 2025. I think we all understand that, even if things turn out well, there is no going "back to normal" now. A (sad) thread /1

New work from our lab. Structures of K2P6.1 (TWIK2) that yield a new and suprising perspective on how lipids affect K2P channels. Great work from Abishek Mondal and Sangeeta Niranjan in my lab. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Universities are in trouble. But is Nous Group the answer? The business model of the consultant is sharp and sophisticated. They bought the sector 'benchmarking' data and use it to sell services. Griffith Uni even hired 4 exec staff from them. www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/educati...

Weizmann Institute rn

After being stuck in Hong Kong after ISSCR meeting unable to fly back home, I managed to get on a plane to London to stay with family, only to learn in the air that our institute was hit. My team is all safe. My lab sustained serious blast damage but we shall overcome! #PeaceNow tnx for messages :)

Excellent article by Rock Morton in the Saturday Paper this morning, on consultants Nous. These guys are so endemic in university managements I ended up writing a whole paper about them. They're basically vampires www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/educati...

The Fungal Kingdom as a Rosetta Stone for biological discovery – a long-time Current Biology advisory board member, Joseph Heitman, introduces the special issue on ‘The Fungi’. www.cell.com/current-biol...

Hey there, Our latest paper is out in Cell. We made a knockout collection in a human fungal pathogen, performed over 140 screens, and developed 6 follow up stories. Phenotypic landscape of an invasive fungal pathogen reveals its unique biology Share link: authors.elsevier.com/c/1lFMiL7PXu...

So proud of this work by #rukmini mukherjee on intersection of Cell Biology and Microbiology

Fantastic day sharing knowledge with the brilliant researchers at NIH who valiantly work to advance the frontiers of science for the cause of improving human health. Thank you again for your service 🙏 🇺🇸

I am excited to share our new preprint! Led by @laylanassar.bsky.social , we have found a new JIP4-dependent mechanism that controls the efflux of cystine from lysosomes. Our findings have implications for both lysosome biology and human disease: doi.org/10.1101/2025...

i get so jealous whenever i see someone who can speak three or more languages. i can only speak one language and i'm not even that good at it

Today, my NIH colleagues and I did something scary but really important. We spoke up about egregious harms we are seeing happen to research participants and public health through thoughtless and politicized policies at NIH. 🧵1/3 apnews.com/article/nih-...

Excited to unveil Boltz-2, our new model capable not only of predicting structures but also binding affinities! Boltz-2 is the first AI model to approach the performance of FEP simulations while being more than 1000x faster! All open-sourced under MIT license! A thread… 🤗🚀

We have a preprint for you EHD2 forms rings on caveolae necks, in contrast to most EHDs forming helices. We determined its structure on membranes and show that N-term acts as a spacer By Elena, Vasya @vasiliimikirtumov.bsky.social, Jeff &Oli Daumke www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Join us for the 23rd Melbourne Protein Group Student Symposium, at Bio21, Wednesday 16th July 2025. Generous talk and poster prizes available alongside inspiring keynote speakers. Submit your abstract and register now: tinyurl.com/pjxhw7yd

The history of micropipettes that you didn't know you wanted to know

Nature research paper: EndoMAP.v1 charts the structural landscape of human early endosome complexes https://go.nature.com/3Z6mJ1X

Join us at next month ACDS seminar with two fantastic speakers 🤩

This is really cool and something I expected to see sooner or later - protein structure prediction NNs getting fine-tuned for conformational sampling with the same strategy used for "aligning" PLMs, except the feedback signal is potential energies from MD instead of activity/stability/whatever data

This is how worm people cast their imaging molds. Consider me (i) jealous and (ii) full of questions #DevBio 🧪

#ARCschedule Jun25 Outcomes for Linkage Projects (LP24r2) & Laureate Fellowships expected. Massively delayed. ARC provides no info. Other events: 🔹Linkage Projects (LP25r2) apps due? 🔹Rejoinders: Open for Discovery Projects, DECRA, LIEF; Close for Discovery Indigenous, Linkage Projects (LP25r1)

The mother of all protein structures: from ancient Greeks to 3D graphics, the journey of biomolecular modeling has come a long way (and still going strong)! Who knew computers could help us crack protein codes? -- see tinyurl.com/3p69p568 and tinyurl.com/4ms4ty8t

Structure determination of stubborn membrane proteins by de novo design of huge, cryo-EMable soluble domains www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...