Laina Hall (@lainahall.bsky.social)

Laina Hall

@lainahall.bsky.social

Graduate Student in the Lucas lab at UC Berkeley

114 followers 271 following6 posts

Laina Hall reposted

@asantiagofrangos.bsky.social

Our lab's first preprint! The antiphage protein Tiamat is an ATPase and DNase with homologs across the tree of life. What started as undergrad Shirley Yuan's summer project grew into a paper and a collaboration with @jpkbravo.bsky.social's group. Link: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Laina Hall reposted

Casper Berger

@casperberger.bsky.social

We developed Adaptive Polishing for the consistent preparation of ~150 nm thin FIB-lamellae. This was done by using imaging feedback to adjust parameters for each lamella, or Adaptive Milling, rather than applying a fixed recipe. Preprint: doi.org/10.64898/202...

Laina Hall

@lainahall.bsky.social

25 July

With Cryo-ET/EM, the macromolecules we study (and biological questions we ask) are SNR-limited. Here, we share Nilas, a low-voltage milling method named after thin sea ice. Nilas produces thin (sub 50 nm in places!), minimally damaged lamellae. biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.07.21.739890v1

biorxiv.orgOptimized cryo-FIB milling strategy to generate thin, minimally damaged biological lamellaeFocused ion beam (FIB)-milling has been adapted to thin frozen cells for visualization of macromolecular structures in situ with cryogenic electron microscopy. However, only a few large and abundant c...

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Laina Hall

@lainahall.bsky.social

25 July

We also provide a direct comparison of the damage layers caused by milling with gallium, argon, and xenon at 30 kV, and find that xenon is significantly less damaging.

Laina Hall

@lainahall.bsky.social

25 July

Huge thanks to @bronwynalucas.bsky.social for her mentorship and collaboration on this manuscript, and to all co-authors, colleagues, collaborators, and funding sources who made this work possible!

Laina Hall

@lainahall.bsky.social

25 July

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Laina Hall

@lainahall.bsky.social

25 July

Next, we wondered if we could use the improved signal in Nilas-milled lamellae to find smaller macromolecules.

Laina Hall

@lainahall.bsky.social

25 July

-Using a truncated ribosome, we predict the increased signal with Nilas would enable detection of 1.5x smaller macromolecules (220 kDa) -We find macromolecules from 2.5 MDa to 200 kDa within Nilas-milled lamellae, including glycolytic enzymes and RNA Pol III

Laina Hall

@lainahall.bsky.social

25 July

Laina Hall

@lainahall.bsky.social

25 July

We compare Nilas-milled lamellae to standard gallium 30 kV polished lamellae and show that Nilas produces: -Thinner lamellae with increased contrast -Significantly reduced damage layers -Higher signal and improved detection of ribosomal subunits -Improved 3D reconstructions with fewer particles

Laina Hall reposted

Josh Dickerson

@joshdcryoem.bsky.social

8 Dec 2025

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...

journals.iucr.orgLeopard-EM: an extensible 2D template-matching package to accelerate in situ structural biologyIn 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...

Laina Hall reposted

Josh Dickerson

@joshdcryoem.bsky.social

28 June 2025

Check out our recent review discussing the merits of tilt series vs single micrographs for in situ cryo-EM! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

sciencedirect.comTo tilt or not to tilt? Strategies for in situ cryo-EM data collectionRecent breakthroughs in single-particle cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM) and protein structure prediction have transformed our ability to resol…

Laina Hall reposted

Innovative Genomics Institute

@innovativegenomics.bsky.social

22 Jan 2025

New research from IGI Investigator Dave Savage and first author Noam Prywes details the landscape of possible Rubisco variants, suggesting ways to make the world's most abundant enzyme better at its job. 🌱 Read more: ow.ly/t2JO50ULh10

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