James Manton

📣🧠 We're looking for someone to join the Lancaster Lab family as a Research Support Officer (maternity cover).

You'll be studying the origins of human brain specialisations using brain organoids, as part of a great team at one of the world's great research environments.

mrc.tal.net/vx/mobile-0/...

We are excited to be recruiting a new tenure track group leader in the Structural Studies Division at MRC LMB! It is an amazing place to start your own lab.
@mrclmb.bsky.social

Please get in touch if you have any questions.
www.nature.com/naturecareer...

Fiddling around with planchettes can hurt…

Thanks, that's good to know. For our dabbles in cryo-expansion we went straight to high-pressure freezing as that's what our cryo-EM friends recommended, but plunge freezing would make the whole process a bit simpler.

Newton International Fellowships | Royal Society This fellowship is for non-UK scientists who are at an early stage of their research career and wish to conduct research in the UK.

The Royal Society Netwton International fellowship for non-UK early career researchers opens soon.

If anyone in the world of #upconversion is interested, please let me know because I can host.

royalsociety.org/grants/newton-international/

Introducing Cyclically Multiplexed Expansion Microscopy (Cy-ExM): a workflow for 3D nanoscale, high-plex imaging in whole cells. Cryo-preserved ultrastructure + iterative labeling + expansion microscopy → 20 targets in one dataset with ~70 nm lateral resolution.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Interesting stuff! I'm surprised plunge freezing (rather than high pressure freezing) worked nicely for the thicker parts of the cells, particularly the one undergoing mitosis in Figure 1c. Do you think this is because issues from crystalline ice formation don't appear at this resolution?

Organelles do NOT have a single uniform pH.
And if you think they must, because “protons diffuse fast,” this paper is for you.
A thread on why that assumption is wrong; and what we found instead. 🧵 1/n

Now published with peer-review-induced improvements in Biomedical Optics Express: doi.org/10.1364/BOE.579043

We continue to recommend the use of Sarstedt lumox dishes for ease of use and high-quality imaging performance: bsky.app/profile/jame...

GenBio DTP Optional supporting text

I’m excited to announce that I will be starting my research group on computational enzyme design at the Generative Biology Institute, Oxford, UK (@eitoxford.bsky.social)! PhD applications are open, deadline is Jan 8th (www.chem.ox.ac.uk/genbio-dtp). Email kiarash.jamali@eit.org with any questions!

Leopard-EM: an extensible 2D template-matching package to accelerate in situ structural biology In situ cryo-EM coupled with 2D template matching (2DTM) holds the potential to visualize the cellular structureome in context, but further developments are required to make this a reality. We describ...

Now out in full form. Again, a big thanks to #teamtomo and @alisterburt.bsky.social for developing the infrastructure to build this on. journals.iucr.org/d/issues/202...

96.5 C (this is 1 mmol * the Faraday constant). Many ExM protocols call for ~20 w/v% sodium acrylate (words can barely describe my contempt for this unit presented alone!) which works out as roughly 1 mmol in the volume of a 5 mm radius sphere. It's an insane amount, but that's kind of the point...

Introduction to Image Analysis 2026

Applications for the next @royalmicrosoc.bsky.social “Introduction to image analysis” workshop are now open!

Join us for 3 days in Cardiff in May to learn the foundations of #bioimageanalysis using Fiji, Python and @napari.org

www.rms.org.uk/rms-event-ca...

NUKEMAP by Alex Wellerstein NUKEMAP is a website for visualizing the effects of nuclear detonations.

Given @miguelcmestre.bsky.social's recent experiments, he'd easily have annihilated most of Cambridge...

nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt...

A calculation of the energy released by four-fold swelling of a 5 mm expansion microscopy hydrogel, containing 1 mmol of sodium acrylate. The calculation assumes a sphere of uniform charge density, in water, and gives an energy of 9.4E13 Joules, or approximately 22.5 kilotons of TNT.

For an internal talk, I wanted an easy way to disprove the prevailing myth that expansion microscopy gels expand due to repulsion between charged polymer strands. I did a quick calculation of the supposed energy released during a standard experiment and it's equivalent to a small nuclear bomb...

A great opportunity to come to Glasgow for an interdisciplinary PhD, benefitting from enhanced support and stipend, and a diverse cohort of students alongside you for an inclusive, team experience for your PhD! Please share widely, and spread the word with your undergraduate students.

4Pi-SIMFLUX: 4Pi single-molecule localization microscopy with structured illumination - Nature Methods 4Pi-SIMFLUX is a single-molecule localization microscopy approach that achieves a near-isotropic resolution below 10 nm in whole mammalian cells.

We are happy to share our latest work, 4Pi-SIMFLUX, which combines structured illumination with interferometric detection to achieve near-isotropic 3D localization precision of 2–3 nm and resolve sub-10 nm structural features across whole mammalian cells.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
rdcu.be/eQVxt

StayRose: A photostable StayGold derivative redshifted by genetic code expansion Photobleaching of fluorescent proteins often limits the acquisition of high-quality images in microscopy. StayGold, a novel dimeric GFP recently monomerized through sequence engineering, addresses thi...

Our new paper is published in the Journal of Chemical Biology! 🏮 We share StayRose, a red version of StayGold 🏮 StayRose has an unnatural amino acid-based chromophore, and has the same immense photobleach-resistance as StayGold 💡

Join the LMB's PhD programme! Applications now open for October 2026 Deadline 2nd December 2025

Want to join the LMB as a PhD student in October 2026?
You’ve got two weeks left to apply!
Visit our website for more details: www2.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/students/int...
Applications close on 2nd December 2025.

An Asgard archaeon with internal membrane compartments

Brilliant study led by @fmacleod.bsky.social and Andriko von Kügelgen. Tight collaboration with @buzzbaum.bsky.social and lab. Congrats to all authors!

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

Lots of exciting PhD projects on offer at the LMB, including in our group 😊

We are delighted to announce the Strathclyde Optical Microscopy Course 2026 (SOMC26), taking place in Glasgow from 21st July – 30th July 2026!

Please find more details at shorturl.at/xmUiZ and apply at shorturl.at/MxTlI. Deadline 16 January 2026.

Thanks! Great that it worked for you!

We've now discovered some neat cell culture dishes that feature a 50 micron thick film of a proprietary polymer with refractive index even closer to water than FEP. They work just as well as our homemade FEP assembly and are available in multiwell plate format too!

www.sarstedt.com/en/products/...

A new, nerdy paper. We figured out (some) of the rules underlying cell-permeability of probes and designed ligands that light up, grab, and move proteins around. Awesome @hhmijanelia.bsky.social x @uwmadison.bsky.social x @stjuderesearch.bsky.social collaboration! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Chris Russo and Anastasiia Gusach have developed a new method to prepare #cryoEM samples that avoids protein damage during freezing

Read more: www2.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/a-new-method...

#LMBResearch

Structure of riboflavine

Periodic reminder that the fluorescent compound in mammalian cell culture media, such as DMEM, is riboflavin (not phenol red)

📣 Two week left to apply! 👇

Apply in the link below or, if you have specific questions, reach out!

We present multi-immersion Oblique Plane microscope (miOPM), a light-sheet platform that can be adapted to a wide range of applications, from sensitive live cell imaging to imaging organs and cleared tissues.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Male CNS Connectome A team of researchers has unveiled the complete connectome of a male fruit fly central nervous system —a seamless map of all the neurons in the brain and nerve cord of a single male fruit fly and the ...

Exciting news for #drosophila #connectomics and #neuroscience enthusiasts: the Drosophila male central nervous system connectome is now live for exploration. Find out more at the landing page hosted by our Janelia FlyEM collaborators www.janelia.org/project-team....