Cornelius Gati

Excited to share our latest @nature.com: How does naloxone (Narcan) stop an opioid overdose? We determined the first GDP-bound μ-opioid receptor–G protein structures and found naloxone traps a novel "latent” state, preventing GDP release and G protein activation.💊🧪 🧵👇 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Protein fibers, a hallmark of Alzheimer’s, spotted making deliveries to sperm | EurekAlert! www.eurekalert.org/news-release...

New review from the Zhang Lab in @natmethods.nature.com led by @ammgest.bsky.social ! Explore recent advances in fluorescent proteins and biosensors, including improved photostability, high-throughput screening, quantitative imaging, and multiplexing.🔬 Check it out now!👇 doi.org/10.1038/s415...

🚨New preprint! Ligands at the same GPCR can produce wildly different signaling outputs. Why? We built a mutational scanning platform to measure ~10,000 µOR variants across 15 opioids, yielding ~400k measurements of how sequence and ligand chemistry set signaling. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 1/10

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...

Check out our latest paper on efficacy photoswitches that can locally light up opioid receptors, thus avoiding unwanted central and peripheral side effects (respiratory depression, constipation). www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Our Department of Pharmacology at the University of Minnesota is looking for another tenure-track Assistant Professor! Please pass along to those in your network who may be interested. 💛〽️ Join us! 👉 jobs.sciencecareers.org/job/680440/ass… ���#FacultyJobs #Pharmacology #TenureTrack 🧪🔵🧠

For the last 34 years I have been on the faculty of the UNC-Chapel Hill Department of Biology and have never regretted that decision. This year we are hiring TWO new Assistant Professors in the broad area of Molecular, Cell, Developmental Biology 1/n bio.unc.edu

I'm excited to share our new preprint, where we show that fine-tuning gold nanoparticle conjugation to different Fab structural elements can produce powerful, rigidly coupled, labeling tools for in-situ cryo-ET. Take a look if you want to see an AuNP in an EM map!🔬🧠 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

📢Today at 4 pm CET we will host Dr. Saif Khan in the #GPCRECIzoominar! Join us to learn about his exciting research on #opioid research.🚀 📩As always, send a DM to receive the JOIN link or check the GPCRForum mailing list. @stjuderesearch.bsky.social @gati.bsky.social #structuralbiology #GPCRs

The Department of Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania invites applications for a tenure-track position at the rank of Assistant Professor in the broadly defined area of organic chemistry. I have the honor of chairing the search committee. apply.interfolio.com/192648

No predefined reaction coordinate. No mechanistic guesswork. No massive sampling campaign. Gen-COMPAS reconstructs biomolecular transition pathways from endpoint structures alone. Protein folding, allostery, membrane transport. Now in Nature. @nature.com @springernature.com

Interested in molecular animation? Give ProteinBlender a try! It's free and open source. animation-lab.github.io/ProteinBlend... The latest tools include a DNA builder (shown in the tutorial video below). We'd love to hear what you think! We have short tutorials that cover all the features!

First day here and I brought a paper. Three years of cryo-FIB-ET on human airway cells, nine proteins identified and two new PCD genes at the end of it. Grateful to the teams in Munster (Omran Lab), Boston (@alanbrownhms.bsky.social, Hawkins Lab) and Geneva (@centriolelab.bsky.social).

Millions of beating cilia keep airways clean. At the base of each is the transition zone (TZ), a gate that controls which proteins enter and leave. In our paper out today in Science, we used cryo-FIB-ET to image the TZ inside human airway cells www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Some invitations leave you lost for words. An enormous honor to speak in the MCP Department at the Stanford School of Med, in a series featuring luminaries like Feng Zhang. And the invite came from the grad students themselves. Heading back to my old stomping grounds! @stanfordmedicine.bsky.social

Such an honor to receive the Francis Crick Medal from the Royal Society. As I always say, I am just very lucky to have worked with amazing people. Big shoutout to all past and present lab members, mentors, colleagues and collaborators for continuing inspiring me!

Our preprint is now published!

My lab at Stanford University School of Medicine is recruiting! We are looking for a postdoc at the interface of quantitative proteomics, structural biology and G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) biology: postdocs.stanford.edu/prospective/...

A long-standing question in neuroscience is why the eCB system uses two ligands for the same receptors and how their release differs. To address it, we’re happy to share a pair of selective GRAB sensors that detect 2-AG and AEA, respectively, in real time. biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

We can design "static" binders routinely now, but design of "dynamic" shape-changing proteins has remained quite hard. Jeffrey Chang and I asked: why can't we couple small-molecule binding to shape change? After all, natural proteins do it every day. In a new preprint, we show how it can be done. 🧵

For the last 5 years, my lab has focused on developing mutational scanning methods and learning how to answer specific questions in protein biology. @matthewkhoward.bsky.social and I wrote a review on experimental decisions and future directions for our nascent field! doi.org/10.1146/annu...

Welcome to the lab, Yijin Wang! 🎉 Yijin joins us as a Neuroscience grad student, fresh from UCLA, where she trained in systems neuroscience and stroke recovery across the Silva and Carmichael labs. She's now bringing that lens to GPCR structural pharmacology. Thrilled to have you! @dornsife.usc.edu

CryoSPARC workshop in Toronto! Beyond consensus refinements: Advanced cryo-EM data processing with CryoSPARC Sept 24-25, 2026 (part of the Canadian Cryo-EM Nexus) Register here: cvent.me/dL1wem Please see details in the link or the image Alt text @structurabio.bsky.social @sickkidsto.bsky.social

Recently graduated grad student @lauanderson.bsky.social ‘s paper is now officially published! We got some great feedback from reviewers, leading to a more solid manuscript, as the peer review process should work! doi.org/10.1016/j.jb...

Incredibly proud of Messi Haile @mehsehret.bsky.social, a founding member of the Ho Lab, for her beautiful work uncovering the inner workings of a central piece of the malaria parasite invasion machinery: the malarial moving junction, out today in @cellpress.bsky.social! tinyurl.com/4p3md2eb 🦠❄️🔬

Come join the new Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Protein Design as a group leader Cool science in a great scientific environment in wonderful and very family friendly Copenhagen There are two positions that can either be at TT assistant or associate prof level employment.ku.dk/tenure-track...

Excited to be giving a seminar at Harvard Medical School's Dept. of Biological Chemistry & Molecular Pharmacology! A big thank you to Andrew Kruse for hosting,it's a privilege to share our lab's work on GPCR conformational dynamics and opioid receptor pharmacology with such an outstanding community.

Welcoming Dr. Jeppe Nielsen to the lab! Lundbeck Foundation-funded Postdoc, recent graduate from the University of Copenhagen, and the person who helped show the world what cocaine looks like bound to the dopamine transporter. Great to have you back! 🎉 lnkd.in/gRjxdC3r @lundbeckfonden.bsky.social

This is money well spent. Well done @biophysicalsoc.bsky.social

One, perhaps two, of our postdocs are moving on to faculty positions this year (more news soon!). While they're truly irreplaceable, it does mean that we have openings for new members to join our team studying #cilia. If interested, please apply: academicpositions.harvard.edu/postings/15526

That’s a wrap on #ASPET2026 in Minneapolis! Our lab attended our first ASPET meeting this year, and it did not disappoint — brilliant presentations, cutting-edge science, and one of the warmest scientific communities we’ve been part of. Safe travels to everyone heading home. See you next year!

Thanks for sharing your plasmids! 💙🧬

Next stop NYC! 🗽 Thrilled to present our latest work on the conformational landscape of opioid receptor activation at Weill Cornell Med Biochemistry & Biophysics. Thanks to my friend & collaborator Dr. Joshua Levitz for the invitation - can’t wait for the discussions! @weillcornell.bsky.social

We're sharing our nuc-BRET plasmids on Addgene! This assay measures GDP/GTP-dependent BRET signal changes as a proxy for affinities, which correlate with ligand efficacy at opioid receptor-G protein complexes. High sensitivity for low-efficacy partial agonists that slip through conventional assays.

Huge day for our lab! Congrats to Aaliyah Tyson on TWO incredible milestones: the prestigious USC WiSE PhD Merit Award AND passing her qualifying exam with flying colors! She embodies the brilliance, determination, and grit that drive great science. Onward to the dissertation home stretch! 🔬

I’m looking for an automated way to read others’s scientific data without giving credit or acknowledgement, and also claim full credit for insights from it. And I want it to have a fitting name OAI: say no more

What membrane properties do cells maintain through regulation of lipid metabolism? In a new paper, we identify intrinsic curvature stress as one such parameter and show how different (eukaryotic) cell types employ different lipids to do that www.cell.com/cell-reports...

Structural insights into biased signaling at chemokine receptor CCR7 pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42054364/ #cryoEM

New online: Determinants of drug efficacy and the dynamics of G protein activation

Excited to see our Khan et al. manuscript highlighted in a News & Views by Henrik Dohlman in Nat Struct Mol Biol today, alongside three other papers capturing nucleotide-bound GPCR–G protein intermediates. A great synthesis of where the field is heading - looking forward to what's next: 💊 🧪

Excited to share the first study from the Morstein Lab on a new approach that enables selective editing, tagging, and visualization of mammalian lipids www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/... #chembio #lipidtime @caltech.edu @caltechcce.bsky.social @harayamajrlab.bsky.social @logan-tenney.bsky.social

I'm elated to share that I’ve been promoted to Associate Professor! I'm forever grateful for the support by my incredible lab and colleagues. The plan remains the same: tackling fundamental questions in GPCR biochemistry and pharmacology, while questioning the dogma. Looking forward to what’s next!

Incredibly proud to celebrate our very own Dr. Saif Khan on receiving the USC PhD Achievement Award tonight! It was wonderful to have you back with us. We're excited to see all the amazing things you’ll accomplish next. Wishing you continued success in all your future endeavors!