Quentin Smith

Excited to share our story published today @nature.com! 🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41... Read about how we uncover the molecular mechanisms that enable Cas9 to bind and cleave negatively supercoiled ((-)SC) off-targets! Have a quick read of some of the key events in the thread below🧵:

AFM turns 40 this year! Our new review in J Microscopy looks ahead: HS-AFM pushing towards 100 fps, line scanning & height spectroscopy at ms–µs resolution, ~4 Å localisation AFM, and new software and ML/AI workflows for analysis and autonomous experiments 🔬🧪 doi.org/10.1111/jmi....

Don't miss our session "Lessons learned: choosing mentors at different career stages" at #SACNAS2026! 📅 Sat, Oct 31 ⏰ 10:30 AM PDT 📍 Room 104 C, Level 2 Hear from a great lineup of speakers as we dive into mentorship strategies for every career stage. See you there! 🙌 @sacnas.bsky.social

Happy to share the news that I have received the University of Arizona 2026 Graduate Teaching and Mentoring Award universityevents.arizona.edu/person/micha...

getting close to recreating Jane Richardson's style 😎

Best news ever- I have finally earned my PhD in Neuroscience!!🧠 My thesis was completed in the lab of Dr. Gregory Corder @flybottleescape.bsky.social & is titled: “Opioidergic Organization of the Nociceptive Medial Thalamus & A Behavioral Model of Placebo Analgesia”

My fellow colleague Alba (@svnddlsns.bsky.social) and I had the pleasure of hosting the 2026 GRS for Single Molecule Approaches to Biology in Switzerland 🇨🇭☀️!

Pseudosymmetry in the wild 🙃🌻

Our latest paper is out! 🎉 We show that the HSV-1 origin binding protein UL9 tethers dsDNA thereby forming intramolecular DNA loops and intermolecular DNA tethers. 🤝 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The first paper from my postdoc, looking at how tension activates DNA cleavage by the endonuclease ANKLE1, is out in @narjournal.bsky.social. ANKLE1 processes ultrafine bridges, persisting linkages between chromosomes that can lead to catastrophic DNA ruptures. (1/3) doi.org/10.1093/nar/...

🚨 Preprint alert 🚨 Excited to share our latest bioRxiv preprint introducing DeepDiffusion, a tool for analysing facilitated 1D diffusion! 🔗 Preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... (1/3)

Join us! Postdoc position (2-3 years) in our lab @molbiolau.bsky.social Looking for candidates with experience in cell culture, genome editing, biochemistry, and/or structural biology. Application opens in August via AU's system but informal enquiries by email are welcome from now. (1/2)

#cryoem folks- we keep seeing this popping up in 2d classes. Sample is a recombinant complex from insect cells

Archaea the hornets of the microbial world. Discuss. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... TLDR: Archaeon kills bacterium with secreted phospholipase. Pretty nifty way to kill bacteria if you are a microbe with a very different lipid make-up, I reckon. No need to worry about accidentally killing yourself.

Might enjoy using this tool and see if it’s the model building or innate to the dataset! CrystalBoltz soniaminseokim.github.io/crystalboltz...

Huge congratulations to @ashleyonthebrain.bsky.social on her successful thesis defense 🥳 It has been a joy to serve on her thesis committee alongside @dr-autumnivy.bsky.social. We are glad to have you in the community of Black women neuroscientists, Ashley! 🧠✨

Ding lab in 2026❤️Continue growing❤️ @johninnescentre.bsky.social

Surprised to discover that Thermo Fisher appears to show a fake western blot for the validation of one of their p53 antibodies. I've added a diagram to show the very similar bands. This does not appear to be one of the "published figures" but their own internal data.

Try this new online training game from Leandro F. Estrozi designed for newcomers in structural biology, with a focus on cryo-EM and cryo-ET map interpretation: rico.ibs.fr/helixplo...

Congratulations to Della Syau and the Farnung Lab @lucas.farnunglab.com on this outstanding work!

⭐ #NARBreakthrough! ⭐ New #cryo-EM study reveals how #transcription factor IWS1 promotes #RNApolII #elongation. Its C-terminus contains #modularmotifs that bind elongation components, stabilizing the complex. IWS1 also competes with #RECQL5 for Pol II binding. 📖 Read here: doi.org/10.1093/nar/...

Job navigation in table view, searchable tags, 3D mesh optimized for masks, and many more features! 👉👉👉 github.com/hanjinliu/hi... Let's make our RELION directory a better place.

Registration is opened for the FASEB conference DNA Topoisomerases in Biology and Medicine ! July 20th-23rd 2026, Nashville, TN Abstract Submission Deadline: Monday, May 25, 2026 Early Registration Deadline: Monday, June 8, 2026 #DNATopSRC John Nitiss, Valerie Lamour & Keir Neuman

Excited to co-organize the @keystonesymposia.bsky.social on Integrative Structural Biology with Alex De Marco @NewYorkStructuralBiology and Niccolò Banterle @embl.org! ⭐️Stellar speakers & keynote by @fraserlab.com! keystonesymposia.org/conferences/... RETWEET&APPLY #KSStructuralBio27 #CryoEM #AI

55 stars on GitHub for SpliceCraft! Thank you all so much for the interest. Gonna make y'all proud.

The Farnung Lab is looking for postdoctoral researchers interested in understanding mechanisms at the intersection of chromatin, transcription, and replication. Find out more here: www.farnunglab.com

tl;dr: MissAlignment learns to score misalignment then wiggles your alignments around to reduce that misalignment -> no more misalignment = high res STA 🌟 Watching @martenchaillet.bsky.social chip away at this was a real privilege! I’m excited to see this out and what you all will do with it 🙃

Congratulations to @lapassmore.bsky.social, Joint Head of the LMB’s Structural Studies Division, who has been elected an international member of @nationalacademies.org Congratulations to #LMBalumni Andrea Brand who has also been elected. Read more: mrclmb.ac.uk/news-events/... #LMBNews

Re-entering the research field after a long break can be difficult. That’s why the LMB has introduced the Career Returner Fellowship: a 3-year, fully-funded postdoc placement to rebuild career momentum and reignite scientific ambitions. Applications open until 17th May. mrclmb.ac.uk/careers-and-...

New work from Sashi Weerawarana on how TFAM compacts mitochondrial DNA 🧬 TFAM oligomerizes on DNA to form compact, homogeneous higher-order complexes (see beautiful mass photometry data below), that still retain dynamic behavior. Congratulations Sashi and Wei. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

🚨 Applications are open for our Rising Talent Fellowship! Thinking of applying but have questions? Join our webinar today at 1pm to find out more. Hear from LMB Group Leaders and current Fellows. 👉 Register here: https://ow.ly/JggH50YQr3x

Congratulations to Dr Tianyi Zhang and Dr Layara Abiko@layaraabiko.bsky.social, who are recipients of Career Development Awards from Wellcome Trust. www.birmingham.ac.uk/news/2026/su...

A massive congratulations to @nicfarmer.bsky.social, Race Equality Lead at the LMB, who has achieved their CMI Level 6 Diploma in Professional Management and Leadership Practice, with a focus on leading EDI in an organisational context 👏 Read more: mrclmb.ac.uk/news-events/... #LMBNews

Calling all xray structure folks that have worked with denovo proteins. Do you suffer from high rfactors? Myself, someone else I know and now multiple structures all seem to suffer from this. Assuming we all tried our best in model building, what could be some causes?

PhD's & postdocs: dont miss the GRS partner conference, organized by @qmsmith.bsky.social & #AlbaGómez-Segalàs with lots of interaction opportunities and career mentorship: ⏰ June 27-28, 2026 🌍 Swiss Alpes (✈️ Geneva) ✅ APPLY now: deadline May 30. www.grc.org/single-molec...

Don't miss the #GordonConference on 𝑺𝒊𝒏𝒈𝒍𝒆-𝒎𝒐𝒍𝒆𝒄𝒖𝒍𝒆 𝑨𝒑𝒑𝒓𝒐𝒂𝒄𝒉𝒆𝒔 𝒕𝒐 𝑩𝒊𝒐𝒍𝒐𝒈𝒚, organized by #KevinWelsher & me: ⏰ June 28 - July 3, 2026 🌍 in the Swiss Alpes (✈️ Geneva) ✅ APPLY now: deadline May 31. We're 75% booked: register today & be there! 🙌 🕳️ 🧬🧪🧫 🔬🟩🟥🟩🟥🏋️‍♀️💥🪤 🍩 ... you get it... 😁

Has anyone had any luck using CDART from NCBI lately? It used to work really well for exploring domain architectures, but now seems broken... I guess InterPro is the closest replacement? www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Structure/le...

A new #Nature study from the Rueda and @alicepyne.bsky.social labs identifies the molecular mechanism of DNA supercoiling in CRISPR–Cas9 off-target activity. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Spent too much time in situ and forgot the level of detail you get with SPA 🍩 #cryoEM

PIs/group leaders, what was the most important aspect of the first paper your lab published 1️⃣ Establishing the lab's identity 2️⃣ Communicating an important discovery 3️⃣ Completing a project started as a postdoc 4️⃣ Other 📊 Show results

Some of my PhD work is now out in Nature! www.nature.com/articles/s41... Investigating the structural basis of off‑target Cas9 binding to supercoiled DNA with #AFM & cryo-EM. From my time in the lab of @alicepyne.bsky.social, in collaboration with @qmsmith.bsky.social and the team at the MRC LMS.

Nature research paper: Structural basis of supercoiling-induced CRISPR–Cas9 off-target activity go.nature.com/4t39bk8

Extended this (map_salami) a bit - added a movie option which will generate a labeled movie (1080p or 4k) transitioning between all scenes, with a short rocking motion at each scene for depth perception:

Added a little script to chimerax-trimmings to automate the creation of panels for model-map fit figures. It zones the map around (by default) 40aa parts of each chain (but doesn't cut in the middle of helices). Saves each as a png, metadata to csv. Saves each view as a scene for tweaking views.

Proud to share the yeast telomerase structure, led by the talented @hongmiaohu.bsky.social in collaboration with the Wellinger and Chartrand labs. Discovered 37 years ago and took us nearly 7 years but totally worth the wait 😍. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFE4...

Research from Imperial, @mrc-lms.bsky.social, & @sheffielduni.bsky.social reveals that the twisting of DNA could play a role in correcting CRISPR errors. 🧬 The team captured interactions between CRISPR and DNA, providing insights that could help eradicate errors. www.imperial.ac.uk/news/article...