Holthuis Lab

#lipidtime: It's a lipid universe. Today in Nature we publish the Lipid Brain Atlas, the first map of membrane lipid composition across the entire mouse brain, a layer of organisation that cell-type and transcript maps had left out. #lipidomics #neuroscience #BrainAtlas

☕ @majarad.bsky.social et al. show that phosphatidylinositol 3-phosphate (PI3P), produced by the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase PIK3C3, is formed on ER domains after lysosome damage. ER domain PI3P helps to recruit the ATPase DFCP1, which promotes lysosome repair. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

AI and authorship: Norms and uses to preserve human-led science academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...

Dear friends, take note of this position paper issued by the German Science Foundation on how to make the research ecosystem resilient against growing threats. Assuming this will blow over is a mistake. Academic freedom is an achievement of free, democratic societies that must be actively defended.

Sign our petition in support for Dr. Fauci! : zurl.co/6tdkA Article: zurl.co/1zgnt

Stand Up for Science is excited to be expanding internationally to strengthen the global fight for evidence-based policy and support emerging pro-science movements and communities. Threats to science don’t stop at borders, and neither does our movement. Article: zurl.co/wlV0z

Lipids build the membranes of all cells, but identifying their precise functions is extremely challenging. Here’s our attempt to change that: How to find and understand lipid-protein interactions, by Katelyn Cook & company. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

From the major German Funding Agency, the DFG; content-wise independent from the Government. Run by the universities and the scientists! 👊🏼 @dfg.de

A new, rather unexpected glycolipid class. Very well done study. Given how they look structurally, I think it makes a lot of sense to test these lipids against a panel of GPCRs. Lipid biology keeps surprising me. I like that. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

The anatomy of an AI-supported academic article is becoming more apparent. I desk reviewed ~70 manuscripts this week for our journal. Reckon 20ish had significant AI assistance. On top of hundreds of others recently I'm starting to see patterns. Are other editors are seeing the same or similar? 1/

Yale isn't just deciding whether to settle one investigation. They're deciding whether to cave to the Trump administration's campaign to use civil rights to control higher education. Yale has the resources to stand up for academic freedom. I hope they do(1/2) www.insidehighered.com/news/governa...

Deeply shocking, these White House draft regulations regarding federal funded research in the US, primarily aimed at advancing the interests of one individual. Hope 🇺🇸 scientists will make some coherent noise to divert a disaster that will undermine science & innovation in the US and far beyond

📯Congratulations to Michael Timme, who defended his PhD thesis “Decoding the tumor suppressor activity of ceramides through molecular dynamics simulations” with flying colors today 🎩, leaving behind two proud (and somewhat tipsy) Doktorvaters 🥂 @melolab.bsky.social & @holthuislab.bsky.social

📯 Our paper “VPS13C/PARK23 initiates lipid transfer and membrane remodeling for efficient lysosomal repair” out now in Nature Communications rdcu.be/frKmN

Truly bizarre story of how two papers from the 1940s by physics pioneer Max Planck have been "retracted" from Naturwissenschaften, potentially by an algorithm, for anachronistic "plagiarism" issues, leaving the current editor baffled (but it is Springer Nature so.... www.science.org/content/arti...

Check out my interview at @maastrichtu.bsky.social www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/news/researc...

If you are looking for a cool PhD project on lysosome biogenesis under supervision of an excellent mentor in a thriving research community, this is your chance ungermannlab.bsky.social👇

Advice for @erc.europa.eu : Prohibit the use of LLMs for grant writing. Let applicants sign a declaration that they have not used such systems and that the text is written by them and them alone.

If you are looking for a cool PhD project on lysosome biogenesis under supervision of an excellent mentor in a thriving research community, this is your chance ungermannlab.bsky.social👇

“We must protect and cultivate the ecosystem of human knowledge. AI models can mimic the appearance of scholarly work, but they are (by construction) unconcerned with truth — the result is a torrential outpouring of unchecked but convincing-sounding “information”. — as quoted in Guest et al. (2026)

While BioNtech & Moderna become household names because of their Covid vaccines, those emerged from different projects: finding ways to treat the most challenging cancers. They hypothesized that we could vaccinate patients against their own tumors, & evidence is mounting that they were right! 1/n 🧪

📯Proud to share a preprint of a joint paper with Michael Timme and @melolab.bsky.social on how ceramides disrupt hexokinase binding to VDACs and modulate channel tilting. Our CG-MD simulations reveal a potential mechanism by which ceramides may induce apoptotic cell death📯 bsky.app/profile/bior...

Choice words from Dr. Szostak here. And while I am no Nobel Prize-winning scientist, I identify with the same quandary as an immigrant, moving here in 2009 and (proudly) becoming a citizen in 2023. I, too, don't recognize that country anymore 😢🇺🇸🧳🛫. newsletter.ofthebrave.org/p/im-a-nobel...

Wan’t to be faculty at a collegial host-pathogen focused department in a beautiful bikable city with amazing food? This link is for you: facultycareers-ohsu.icims.com/jobs/39006/a...

☕ @mathilda95.bsky.social @nadlerlab.bsky.social & co introduce a correlative light and electron #microscopy workflow, Lipid-CLEM, combining near-native #lipid probes and on-section labelling via click chemistry. Lipid-CLEM quantitatively analyses lipids in membrane nanodomains. bit.ly/4moYLJH

The 2026 Otto Warburg Medal winner Maya Schuldiner received the medal from @volkerhaucke-lab.bsky.social after a moving laudatio by Christian Ungermann Thanks to @elsevierconnect.bsky.social for the continuous support!

Looks like a great @embo.org workshop coming in September: “Lipid Code to Life”, with a who’s who of lipid #biochemistry… (e.g. @dimovalab.bsky.social @holthuislab.bsky.social @sciezgin.bsky.social etc ) More info and registration: meetings.embo.org/event/26-lip... #lipids #biophysics

New paper from my group in @science.org : "A small polymerase ribozyme that can synthesise itself and its complementary strand" www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... Outstanding work by @edogia.bsky.social

How did life arise from simple chemical building blocks? New #LMBResearch led by @edogia.bsky.social in @philholliger.bsky.social group has identified a small self-replicating ribozyme that could be the answer. Read more: mrclmb.ac.uk/news-events/...

📯Congratulations to Tobi Adeosun, who defended his PhD thesis on “transbilayer lipid dynamics & inter-organellar lipid transfer in lysosomal repair” with flying colors today 🎩 and joined Saron Tooze’s lab at the Crick Institute, leaving behind a proud and tipsy Doktorvater 🥂

Modern lipid biology has grown far beyond its roots. Advanced technologies offer novel opportunities to unravel the role of lipids in the organization of biological systems. Build on this momentum and join The EMBO Workshop "The Lipid Code to Life" Sept 7-11, 2026 meetings.embo.org/event/26-lip...

Have you registered yet? Early bird registration and abstract submission are open until January 31. mosbacher-kolloquium.org

Do register! It is really worth it, I promise!

Key determinants of VDAC-hexokinase I complex assembly revealed by a minimal vesicle-based interaction assay https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.03.686449v1

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...

Such a worthy recipient. Maya is not only a great scientist but also a fantastic mentor and a rich source of inspiration.

📯 shoutout for this beautiful work by Kenji Maeda’s lab, who mapped 300 lipid species across 6 compartiments of humane cells. Besides uncovering general principles of lipid organization, the paper establishes a framework for exploring how lipid landscapes are regulated in physiology and disease 👇🏼

🚨🚨🚨 We are launching the 2nd application round for the Erasmus Mundus Joint Master’s Program MemBioMed, offering cutting-edge training on exploring the complex behavior of cellular membranes & unlocking their therapeutic potential. Students can apply here: life.univ-cotedazur.eu/internationa...

🚨🚨🚨 We are launching the 2nd application round for the Erasmus Mundus Joint Master’s Program MemBioMed, offering cutting-edge training on exploring the complex behavior of cellular membranes & unlocking their therapeutic potential. Students can apply here: life.univ-cotedazur.eu/internationa...

I am proud to 📣 today’s superb thesis defense by Milena Wessing on “Molecular dissection of ceramide-induced apoptosis: a bottom-up approach”. Two papers describing Milena’s heroic efforts are close to submission. It was a privilege serving as her “Doktorvater” 🥂

I am pleased to 📣 today’s superb thesis defense by Christian Schroer on “Chemical strategies for studying lipid signaling and transport”. Part of his work was recently published in the JLR; the other part will follow soon. A very proud and somewhat tipsy “Doktorvater” 🥂

Great to see this work on imaging cellular lipid logistics in Nature, where it belongs. Chapeau! Many gratulations to Andre, Alf and their co-workers!

🔥🔥🔥 (= highly recommended) 👇🏼

A university & its leadership standing for academic freedom, truth, integrity & shared values deserve support from across the globe. Those believing in these virtues greatly outnumber those who seek to undermine them. As admirer of the 1st class scientists working at UVA, I gladly signed the letter👇

Science is the engine of an open, pluralistic society. So scientists serve a central role in defending it. In 🇩🇪, the association „Wissenschaft für Demokratie – Wir für Dich“ was founded to strengthen the role of science in the public debate & in the fight against disinformation wirfuerdemokratie.org