Leon-Samuel Icking

If iGEM Freiburg has 100 fans, I'm one of them. If they have 10 fans, I'm one of them. If they have one fan, I'm that fan. If they have 0 fans, I'm dead. @biologyunifreiburg.bsky.social @cibss.bsky.social

I was saddened to hear of last month's passing of Tsuneko Okazaki September 22, 2026 (and maddened not to heard of it until now!–though at least her Google page no longer merely refers to her as “Reiji’s wife . . .) Tsuneko, together Reiji, discovered “Okazaki fragments” youtu.be/3F6M-dfsmc0

Huge congratulations to @vivzhong.bsky.social, @michaelajonesphd.bsky.social and team on the publication of their work in Nature Biotechnology today! They engineered plants to produce a non-canonical amino acid that regulates gene expression in engineered microbes! 🌱 doi.org/10.1038/s415...

🌱 How do plants read chitin length? The receptor CHIP13 works like a molecular measuring tape. What began 13 years ago with a recalcitrant protein is now in @science.org. Thanks to all my co-authors and colleagues! doi.org/10.1126/scie...

USA only preorder?

LoL-align is out in @natmethods.nature.com! It aligns protein structures without superposition. More sensitive than TM-align and DALI, producing better alignments 5–20× faster. Now available in Foldseek! 📄 www.nature.com/articles/s41... 💾 github.com/steineggerlab/foldseek 🌐 search.foldseek.com

Anyone brave enough for an adventure in the uncharted waters of plant immunity and cell biology? We have a PhD studentship available as part of the NRP DTP - join us! biodtp.norwichresearchpark.ac.uk/projects/how...

Oh good another grant rejection. We have applied for 7 grants so far this year, with a bunch more we’ll be applying for this fall. We’ve been rejected by 6, and got runner up for 1 of them, resulting in $1000. Our annual operating budget is 250k. Oh wait that reminds me. Anybody need a tote bag??

Tenure track assistant/associate professor positions open in my university. Within life sciences, INCLUDING PLANT SCIENCES. Please RT jobs.helsinki.fi/job/Helsinki...

Still one week to apply!

Another one

Finally a more intuitaive way to learn pLDDT/pAE? 😎 sokrypton.github.io/protein_figh... (Character idea from @hannes-stark.bsky.social & Alex Waldherr)

Was darf Satire

It's incredible how many AI generated figures I've seen over the last few days at a conference. Most of them unnecessary, optional illustration that could be skipped or a proper image could be used. Do you/did you see this as well this year?

Closing today!

📣 Please share! We’re recruiting to build predictive models of gene regulation in plants. We’d love to hear from anyone with strong foundations in regulatory genomics or ML and fluency with coding agents. Any career stage; no plant background needed. noborilab.org 1/5

hello scientists: do I know anyone who could talk to me about the red-lipped batfish? 🧪

📣 #JobAlert The @biologyunifreiburg.bsky.social of @uni-freiburg.de invites applications for a position as Head of the Life Imaging Center (LIC) – the core facility for light microscopy. ❗ Application Deadline: 6 September, 2026 🔗 kurzlinks.de/2126 #Biology #LightMicroscopy #Imaging

Sensing pectin damage: Rhamnogalacturonan-I as a ligand for receptor kinases and an immune elicitor #spotlight #MolecularPlant cell.com/molecular-pl...

Man, this stuff is amazing! Check out DABEST2.0 for multi-group comparisons. I was just struggling with how to best account for the block-type set up of my microplate growth experiments and here it is! Sorry, for the censored data. #microsky 🧪

Riboseek is a fast RNA/DNA search. More sensitive than nhmmer at 250x speed. Structure-aware realignment produces MSAs approaching rMSA quality. Plus 1.7M precomputed RNA MSAs, and an API to search your own 📄 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 💾 github.com/steineggerla... 🌐 search.foldseek.com/riboseek

#reminder #today 👇

The only guy I'll ever address as big dawg

A new "Dr." on the office door. Congratulations, Dr. @seinabnoura.bsky.social 🎉🌱 A proud day for our community @dompsfr.bsky.social @cibss.bsky.social @uni-freiburg.de

We are very proud and happy to have you @seinabnoura.bsky.social! Amazing defense! 👏👏👏

Join us for the next 📢 #CIBSS Seminar! 🗓 21 Jul 2026 | 12:00–13:00 👉 Prof. Dr. Christine Faulkner @pdchristine.bsky.social (John Innes Centre, Norwich, UK @johninnescentre.bsky.social) 📍 BIO II/III, KS 00 009, Schänzlestr. 1 🔗More info: kurzlinks.de/fkvz #Seminar #PlantScience

We have just launched our newest self-paced tutorial! Protein domains: structure, classification and evolution: www.ebi.ac.uk/training/onl... Learning time: 3 hours Free via EMBL-EBI Training on-demand. @pdbeurope.bsky.social @ebi.embl.org 🧬🖥️

📣 #JobAlert The Faculty of Biology of @uni-freiburg.de invites applications for a Professorship (W3) for Bioinformatics and Molecular Genetics. ❗ Application Deadline: 15 August, 2026 🔗 kurzlinks.de/roi8 #Biology #Bioinformatics #MolecularGenetics

Imagine being him

Forgot to post the mandatory picture

Everyone gets fooled sometimes, but if you credulously post an image or video that people reply to tell you is fake/AI-generated and you leave it up anyway (because “it’s still funny” or whatever) you’re making the misinformation problem worse and will be blocked immediately.

The SynBio team’s plasmid collection is one of the coolest aspects of @thesainsburylab.bsky.social What’s even cooler is their vision of sharing it with everyone and the partners who are helping make it happen 💪 🧬

Great summary of #SpudCell from @dereklowe.bsky.social. I had only read a secondary article (heavily based on the press release) on it, and despite the enormous hype inside could not figure out from that article whether it was even a top-down or bottom-up approach! www.science.org/content/blog...

We are looking for someone to lead the new Facility for Protein Biochemistry & Biophysics at the MPI of Immunobiology and Epigenetics in Freiburg — please spread the word and apply if you are interested!

We often talk about complex protein folds but what does that really mean? Turns out we don't have a good metric for it. So we made a game to make one! Head over to our website to vote on which fold you think is more complex and why! pacesalab.com/foldcomplexi...

The 2026 United States of Science Challenge starts NOW! Each bubble represents classrooms we’ve matched with scientists this year. This a competition to fill bubbles with $10 donations to support @skypeascientist.bsky.social The first region to fill all bubbles wins. 👇🏻 givebutter.com/USS2026

Few days left to apply!!!

Apply until Friday!

New paper! 🚀 A high-affinity anti- #mNeonGreen #nanobody turns #mNG into a #multifunctional Tag. @nanotag.bsky.social decided to openly share the #nanobody for research use. Not common, but we strongly believe well-defined reagents are key for reproducible science. We hope you find it useful! 💚

The paper is out which means the MD trajectories are finally available! #MolecularNodes #b3d #GeometryNodes

Development of approaches and identifying limitations towards functional yeast surface display of FLS2 by Daniel R. Woldring and team: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Cool idea to make FLS2 assays quicker and fantastic honesty reporting that it does not work well yet. Kudos to the authors!

Glad to see Anna's final PhD paper as a pre-print. Marchantia as a bioproduction chassis not only for markers but also for useful proteins. #PlantScience #SynBio www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Does anyone has long-reads genome for the Van-0 accession of Arabidopsis? Thanks

Are cells worth having? Royal Society President Paul Nurse answers the hard questions youtu.be/7B4jko1VFP8?...

Out Now! Phages tame plant pathogens #MicroSky