Roger Castells

Awesome team work! 💪😊
@heskethemma.bsky.social @naranson.bsky.social @davelawson101.bsky.social
Tsutomu, Jack and George!

Using cryo-EM, we captured five structural intermediates of the Nudaurelia capensis omega virus (NωV) as it matures from procapsid to infectious virion. It's incredibly exciting to see the complete maturation pathway of a eukaryotic virus described at this level of detail.

Hot off the press!

I'm thrilled to share that our paper "Unravelling the Maturation Pathway of a Eukaryotic Virus through Cryo-EM" has been published!

Link to the paper: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Nature is full of remarkable protein nanomachines, and now we can watch one more in action.

Structural studies have provided new insights into lenacapavir's unique mechanism of action. Using electron cryotomography, researchers found that treatment of intact HIV capsids with lenacapavir causes capsids to rupture, with ruptures occurring first in areas of the capsid with the highest level of curvature. The walls of lenacapavir-treated capsids were observed to flatten during early time points and fragment over the course of the experiment. This process is shown in the animation, created by Rachel Torrez in collaboration with Owen Pornillos (University of Utah). The animation was created using pdb_00009pry and pdb_00009y7j and their corresponding models in the EM Data Bank, EMD-71816 and EMD-72657.

Researchers found that treatment of intact HIV capsids with lenacapavir causes capsids to rupture, with ruptures occurring first in areas of the capsid with the highest level of curvature. #ASBMB2026 #ASBMB26
Watch in 3D at PDB-101: pdb101.rcsb.org/motm...

Out today: We discovered new viral proteins that target immune signaling molecules, solely based on their AlphaFold-predicted shapes

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Congrats Nitzan Tal and coauthors! Thank you Kranzusch lab for the fun collaboration!

Linking below previous thread on our findings

Structural biology is in an era of dynamics & assemblies but turning raw experimental data into atomic models at scale remains challenging. @minhuanli.bsky.social and I present ROCKET🚀: an AlphaFold augmentation that integrates crystallographic and cryoEM/ET data with room for more! 1/14.

ROCKET YouTube video by SBGrid Consortium

ROCKET's webinar on cryo-EM+crystal data-guided protein structure prediction is now online 🚀: www.youtube.com/watch?v=_29C...

Thank you to the many of you who attended and stayed overtime for more Q&A, and especially to @sbgrid.bsky.social for hosting us last week!

Group of people attending the symposium

Slide presenting the symposium

We attended the Instruct Integrative Structural Biology Symposium at the IQF Blas Cabrera and had a great time learning about the latest advances in cryo-EM and structural biology methods. Great talks and discussions! 🧬🔬

Please share!
PhD position (4 years) available in my group @zmbp-tuebingen.bsky.social. We look for candidates with solid aptitude in computer science to cross disciplines and use cutting edge imaging to understand host infection by destructive plant pathogens.
uni-tuebingen.de/universitaet...

Please share!
My group at @zmbp-tuebingen.bsky.social is offering a post-doctoral position (4 years). We look for a structural biologist with experience in Cryo-EM/Cryo-ET to investigate the mechanisms of host invasion by pathogenic fungi. Deadline February 28th!
uni-tuebingen.de/universitaet...

Thanks a lot, Tuli!

showing how microscope resolution has improved more than 10,000× over the past 200 years. The horizontal axis shows year (1800s to 2025). The left vertical axis shows feature size, from 1 micrometer (small bacteria) down to 0.01 nanometers (atomic nuclear structure). The right vertical axis shows resolving power in inverse angstroms. A blue curve at the bottom represents light microscopy, limited by visible-light diffraction to about 200 nanometers. A tan curve rising sharply in the mid-20th century represents electron microscopy, reaching nanometer-scale resolution. A red region near 0.1 nanometers shows aberration-corrected electron microscopy surpassing the electron diffraction limit. A blue region at the top shows ptychography achieving the highest resolving power through overlapping diffraction patterns and computation. Dots label key scientists and institutions at milestones. Overall trend shows steady, then dramatic gains in resolution over time.

The resolution of microscopes has increased over 10,000 fold over the last 200 years.

It's allowed scientists to examine not only cells, but bacteria, then viruses, their protein structure, and, eventually, the individual atoms that comprise them.

Roger Castells-Graells @rcastellsg.bsky.social from #CNIOStopCancer about the challenge of funding his own lab: "t is deeply fulfilling to watch young researchers develop their talent. But it implies dealing with bureaucracy, and this takes patience and resilience" 

Roger Castells-Graells @rcastellsg.bsky.social, de #CNIOStopCancer, sobre el reto de montar su propio laboratorio : "es muy gratificante ver cómo nuevos investigadores desarrollan su talento. Pero exige lidiar con la burocracia, y tener paciencia y resiliencia",

https://bit.ly/4s02qjt

In praise of experts: distinguishing sense from nonsense in the age of AI Can chatbots flag bad science? In a sea of polished, plausible noise, expertise matters more than ever.

I just published: In praise of experts: distinguishing sense from nonsense in the age of AI

Can chatbots flag bad science? In a sea of polished, plausible noise, expertise matters more
than ever.

medium.com/p/in-praise-...

I’m grateful every day for the amazing mentors, colleagues, friends, and new lab members making this possible. 😊

TEAM = together everyone achieves more

@cniostopcancer.bsky.social

I’m very happy (and grateful!) to share that I’m featured in a Nature Cancer Viewpoint about starting my lab at CNIO.

In the Lab (www.rcglab.com) we’re combining AI, protein design and structural biology to study protein structures and design novel protein therapeutics for cancer. 🔬

Thank you Roger Castells-Graells @rcastellsg.bsky.social for the shoutout! 🙏

Love seeing the next gen of cancer biologists getting started 💥

#CelebratingAlumni

doi.org/10.1038/s430...

Thanks a lot Sophien!! 🙏🙏

A saltwater crocodile, I think? It's grey-green, with a semi-open mouth revealing very white teeth of irregular heights and lengths. A small reptilian eye gazes at the camera. It's on a brown muddy river bank. CREDIT: RAVI PATEL

Pay careful attention to the SHAPES of the scales on this saltwater crocodile (Crocodylus porosus).

See how they're regular on the neck & back, but irregular polygons on the face/head? Why do you think that is?

As of 2012, we have an answer! A special process guides scale formation on the head.

A few py2Dmol updates 🧬

py2dmol.solab.org
Integration with AlphaFoldDB (will auto fetch results). Drag and drop results from AF3-server or ColabFold for interactive experience! (1/4)

MISO: microfluidic protein isolation enables single-particle cryo-EM structure determination from a single cell colony.

Or from a single dish of HEK cell culture in the case of two membrane proteins.

Out in Nature Methods now! lnkd.in/gpyBSceg

Wonderful collaboration with the Efremov lab.

Many congrats @yuhenglau.bsky.social 🥳🥳

Congrats Víctor!! 🥳🥳

🎉Congratulations to @victorsmh6.bsky.social at the GMI of the @oeaw.bsky.social who received the @viennabiocenter.bsky.social PhD Award for his thesis “Leveraging evolutionary diversity to discover new autophagy mechanisms in plants”.

More about Victor here: www.oeaw.ac.at/gmi/detail/n...

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...

Glad to see our antibody design paper finally out in
@nature.com
(and congrats to lead authors and everyone involved )!
At Xaira we are excited about pushing antibody design further to bind harder targets and make drugs for unmet medical needs.
Paper:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Congrats!!!! 🥳🥳🥳

New lab / new life 🌱

The Julian Lab is now open at the Institute of Molecular Plant Biology (IMPB), BOKU University 🇦🇹

We explore how plants defend their vacuoles and how vacuoles defend them! 🛡️

Excited to collaborate with @angegross.bsky.social’s lab.

#PlantBiology #Vacuole #VQC #BOKU #IMPB

In @nature.com: Using AI and other cutting-edge techniques, the Klinge lab has captured the first near-continuous "molecular movie" of ribosome formation—revealing, frame by frame, how cells build the protein factories that make life possible.

More here: https://bit.ly/3LbHTaF