TJ McCorvie

Today I am sharing a new preprint and accompanying blog post. Hundreds of published papers include impossible western blots showing protein expression in cell lines that have deleted or mutated genes. These clumsy mistakes are widespread and repeated by LLMs.

Your monthly reminder that if you're using ChatGPT to do your science, you're failing your colleagues, community, and all of us. Here, ChatGPT makes up data and presents it as the real thing — then apologizes when confronted.

RIP Walter❤️

Paper now out in Nat Comm by the Gatsogiannis group (wit us): Fantastic cryoEM structure of #VCP/p97-Ufd1-Npl4 with FAF1 showing how the accessory adapter coordinates Ufd1-UT3 to feed #ubiquitin into p97. Plus incredibly detailed dynamics of the complex. Thx for a great collaboration.

CryoEM structures of human NHE6 and NHE9 - Na⁺/H⁺ exchangers that help fine-tune endosome pH. Excited to be a part of this study lead by @chembiohub.bsky.social, Jesper Hansen, and Ashley Pike with Gamma Chi, Giulio Superti-Furga, @madamescientist.bsky.social and Bayer doi.org/10.1038/s414...

interesting details here on the data processing used to get the small particle to high resolution, including the use of HR-HAIR

Open position! ❄️ The @irmaquerques.bsky.social Lab is looking for an experienced researcher with a strong practical background in cryo-EM ➡️ tinyurl.com/mr22fkty

The greatest challenge of our time isn’t to figure out how to get to Mars or become interstellar, but to figure out how to live sustainably on Earth.

This is dumb.

It is done. My magnum opus. My legacy.

RIP to this angel

Great opportunity here! #CryoEM

🍩!

Together, we’re suing the National Institutes of Health; NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya; United States Department of Health and Human Services; HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and the United States DOGE Service. 16/

Together with other scientists I’m suing the 🇺🇸 US National Institutes of Health for violating our 1st Amendment rights & censoring our health science. I’m ready to shine a light on the darkest days. Buckle up, read on. This gets pretty wild… THREAD

Our AM-3 paper is out in Cell. Opioids are indispensable therapeutics, but have severe side effects. Because they are administered systemically, it is hard to dissect how they work, and to separate side effects. So we built one you can switch on and off with light. 🧵 www.cell.com/cell/abstrac...

Just make it exist first, you can make it good later.

5/5 A dream collaboration 🎉🥳, with theory and experiment hand in hand 🙌 with Deb Maji on the experiments, @steve-bonilla.bsky.social , Alex de Marco @rocovino.bsky.social labs, @larsdingeldein.bsky.social @minhuanli.bsky.social computational front. Check it out: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Our paper on the #CsMT workflow to reconstruct microtubules in #Cryosparc is now online. Fantastic work from several undergrads in the lab and Asuva Arin, and fantastic collaboration with the Cianfrocco lab. Please try it out; it is simple and quick. #OpenScience doi.org/10.1107/S205...

A practical approach for ligand validation during structure determination is outlined and key pitfalls are illustrated by re-examining several deposited PDB entries #LigandValidation #XRayCrystallography #StructureGuidedDrugDiscovery doi.org/10.1107/S205...

Product-stabilized filamentation by human glutamine synthetase allosterically tunes metabolic activity pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42862727/ #cryoEM

New on the #cryoET Data Portal: three datasets benchmarking the crossed laser phase plate (xLPP) ⚡ Data by Reza Paraan and the @biohub.org team with collaborators at UC Berkeley. Full credits at the end of the 🧵 cryoetdataportal.czscience.com/depositions/10363

🔬 I’m hiring a postdoc to join my group at the Rosalind Franklin Institute! Contact me if you’re interested in using cryo-ET to study the molecular organisation of human brain tissue! 📍 Harwell, UK 📅 Deadline: 8 Nov opportunities.rfi.ac.uk/vacancy/rese...

Assembly and activation of the AAA+ motor of the multi-subunit cobaltochelatase www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.09.757910v1 #cryoEM

In summary: - the graph that is circulating looks fishy - it is not clear what the source data for this graph is - the person who posted it first (?) is evasive. Could we (and especially politicians, journalists and scientists who should know better) please stop sharing unverified images?

Currently, a diagram is making the rounds that is claimed to show a significant reduction in Russian disinformation bot activity after Ukrainian drones hit Yandex data centers. There is no evidence that this plot shows real data. I suspect that this image is AI-generated.

Happy to share my PhD work on the regulatory mechanism of E3 ligase RNF213! RNF213 is not a monomer, but a dimer that switches between inhibited and activated states in an ATP-dependent manner. We tracked the activation mechanism and showed how disease mutations can destabilize the inhibited state.

Our open letter to Nikon closes today Monday noon EST. Join us! The winning submission is gone but help us emphasize the importance of #ImageIntegrity & need discussions on how AI is transforming microscopy. Read the letter: tinyurl.com/OpenLetterSW... Add your name: forms.gle/TyGRELnCxq5z...

There are two types of people

Well deserved 🏅 congratulations

This is a good illustration of how so much of AI theft isn't indirect (ie, data sucked into a model to train the chatbot) - it's actually **direct** copying, but *enabled* by GenAI. Of course it is: chatbots absolutely suck at creating good, new stuff.

Meanwhile in the UK. Was. "Let's make our universities financially dependent on overseas students." Then. "Let's make overseas students feel increasingly unwelcome." Now. "Screw that, let's just withdraw our offers so they don't come in the first place." Next. "Who needs universities anyway?"

So if you think you can do structure prediction (or improve structure prediction with MD, etc), you should look at the CYP challenge that we at @openadmet.bsky.social are running right now: huggingface.co/spaces/opena...

Anyone else seen this? CryoEM models without any volume reconstruction. Straight from the micrographs, inferred structures restrained by the actual particle data. So sequence + limited particles = structure?! Bypassing all that time making a map just to still model after arxiv.org/html/2610.01...

just when you thought it couldn’t get worse

We are looking for a new team member! Interested in structural biology, gene expression and organelles? Then apply now to our open PhD position: umg.recruiting-portal.com/r/z11okjqp6v...

📢 We are recruiting again! 📢 We are looking for a new associate professor in any area of the cellular and/or molecular biology of cancer. Please share! The deadline is the 20th of November. www.path.ox.ac.uk/vacancy/apca...

Zelenskyy says Trump has betrayed Ukraine.

Nikon just announced it has withdrawn first place in this year’s #SWiM after finding winning video did not comply with its generative AI rules. www.nikonsmallworld.com/news/nikon-s... Letter still open until Monday- this is a starting point to engage & discuss how AI is transforming microscopy 🔬

Microscopy images are scientific evidence, and that image processing must be transparent and faithful to the underlying biology. Reinforce those standards, especially now-insist Nikon uphold them. #NikonSWiM2026 Read the letter: tinyurl.com/OpenLetterSW... Add your name: forms.gle/TyGRELnCxq5z...

Absolute trash, by trash people who are not scientists

📣Our department is hiring a new group leader!📣 Want to start your team in a vibrant scientific environment in the center of Paris? I was very lucky to do that 10 years ago, reach out if you have any question. Apply by December 18th: jpi-recruitment-curie-umr3215-u934.curie.fr

We have 2 new preprints on @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social that describe reconstitution of #Alzheimers paired helical filaments in experimental model systems: one in human brain organoids and one in murine primary cultures. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

We are recruiting! Excited by ribosomes, translation, cryoEM and maybe malaria parasites? Then we have a fully funded, 3-year PhD position at the Institut Pasteur in Paris waiting for you. All info here: research.pasteur.fr/en/job/phd-p... ⏰ Deadline: November 6, 2026

Cover image alert 🎨🚨👇🏼 - check out the amazing drawing of Sophia Zimmermann from our group in Nature Microbiology @natmicrobiol.nature.com ! Fun fact: Sophia initially drew it as a present to Dorentina @humollidorentina.bsky.social when we celebrated her recent paper on TnSeq with phages 🥂😊.

Our latest on KCNQ1, in collaboration with David Fedida and Luca Maragliano: cryo-EM shows how the inhibitor UCL2077 breaks the symmetry of KCNQ1 and causes a conformational change that blocks the pore. Cryo-EM work spearheaded by Efthymios Kyriakis. www.science.org/doi/full/10....