Stephen Royle

PhDishing emails: cold emails asking for a PhD position. LLMs have supercharged the Dear Professor email of old and muddied the distinction between spam and genuine contact. quantixed.org/2026/10/27/s...

I just published: The Church of Impact Factor is selling indulgences Bribery allegations at Cell Press. The open secret of scientific publishing is out. I'm shocked. I'm not surprised. #CellOnions #Elsevil #ScienceCrisis kamounlab.medium.com/the-church-o...

Let's test the hypothesis that Nature can do anything - charge a crazy high publication cost, use AI in peer review - and it won't matter because authors are desperate to publish in Nature. What would it take for authors to choose to submit elsewhere?

No one deserves this award more than @ctrue.bsky.social His (and his team’s) tireless work on #Fiji powers the daily research of thousands of scientists. Imagine your daily work without Fiji >.< Yet the work is often thankless. We reach out when things break, rarely when they work.

#iykyk @roylab-ucsd.bsky.social @franbottanelli.bsky.social @christlet.bsky.social a copy in the wild.

Just published 🎉🥳 Two-photon #FLIM of NAD(P)H is a promising readout for cellular metabolic changes. However, multiplexing with fluorescent proteins is surprisingly hard🤔😅 ... But it can be navigated! www.cell.com/biophysrepor... @biophysreports.bsky.social

I enjoyed this piece on empty clathrin cages. It's intriguing what these assemblies are doing and what they are for...

Cell division for this fluorescence Friday. Mitochondria are blue, actin is orange.

Hive mind: can anyone recommend a good colocalization analysis tutorial/paper for fluorescence images that would be beginner-friendly? Ideally, it would cover the various coefficients (e.g. Pearson's, Mander's, etc.) and show some examples of applications.

Lead the next discovery at the LMB. We’re recruiting Group Leaders to join our Structural Studies and @cellbiol-mrclmb.bsky.social Divisions. Benefit from long-term support, access to outstanding core-facilities and a collaborative environment where science thrives. ➡️ mrclmb.ac.uk/research-lea...

How curious? This myeloid cell, even with its chromatins completely condensed, refuses to complete its mitosis. I thought this was my chance to image its division, but after awhile, it just moved away from me, even with its chromosomes still condensed! 🔵=MLC, 💜=H2B+LifeAct. #FluorescenceFriday

QIAGEN has announced an agreement to be acquired by EQT Private Equity through an all-cash public takeover offer at €46.50 per share. lnkd.in/p/dgtptXTb

Calling cell biology ECRs - the British Society for Cell Biology are looking for new student and postdoc committee reps. Apply now! I guarantee you will learn a lot, meet interesting people AND you get to attend the annual BSCB meeting for free!

Hey editors of scientific journals, I know you are struggling to find reviewers now, so please can you just make a decision after review without sending it back to the reviewers for another round of review after revisions? Especially when the changes are minor and the authors made them all.

Today I am sharing a new preprint and accompanying blog post. Hundreds of published papers include impossible western blots showing protein expression in cell lines that have deleted or mutated genes. These clumsy mistakes are widespread and repeated by LLMs.

How we are approaching AI at openRxiv - new blog post prompted by growing adoption by researchers, submission patterns, and questions from the community openrxiv.org/approach-to-... 1/n

ShieldFont: A typeface that protects written content by poisoning unauthorized AI training datasets. shieldfont.org

Less than 5% chance!!! Come on @erc.europa.eu We need to find a solution. Otherwise, we will lose a generation of young researchers.

"Because manuscripts reflected real progress towards our field’s goals, our assessment systems began relying on them as primary metrics...which is obviously flawed...Generative AI has broken this already-flawed proxy completely" journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

Online by @baptscc.bsky.social @aidybarnett.bsky.social and David Causeur Suspected distortion of citations in high-impact cancer journals 🧪 #PaperMills that produce & sell manuscripts may be manipulating citations, but the extent of any manipulation is unknown. 1/5 www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10....

I wrote something (as did Mehul Malik) More importantly, @royalsociety.org has just launched a series: a practical guide to starting your PI career royalsociety.org/blog/2026/10...

TIL of zbib.org. I've been using Zotero for years, but sometimes I need to generate a quick reference for a misc webpage like a blogpost or news article. Copy-paste the url here and boom, a formatted ref. You can also enter a doi, ISBN, or other identifier 🧪 #AcademicSky

Laith Bahlouli, Marc Edwards and colleagues identify atypical PI3Ks as specialised regulators of signal attenuation, cAMP relay organization and membrane uptake in Dictyostelium. journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/...

Immune cells don't only interact with the ECM, they also interact with surrounding cells in tissue as they migrate. This video gives me so much joy because there is just so much biology here to be discovered. Sticky cells! Here, immune cells are 🔴, ectodermal cells are ⚪. Happy #FluorescenceFriday

BiO is proud to be a PCI-friendly journal. Submit your PCI recommended preprint to BiO for a decision within five days. Find out more: peercommunityin.org/pci-friendly...

Don’t forgot to sign up and watch this live tomorrow! Two awesome speakers (@lauracopeland.bsky.social and @madic.bsky.social ) with some very very pretty plant pictures! 🌱🔬😎 #microscopy #plantscience 

We wanted to understand why academics leave their jobs (doi.org/10.1126/scia...). We asked: “Tell us your story: what needs/needed to be different about your position?” I thought we would get a few hundred responses and I’d learn a bit more about the context of academic retention for myself.

Have you ever had a control become the experiment because of unexpected biology? It’s happened to me or my trainees a few times. I would love to hear other examples.

Some personal news! After 14 fantastic years at the University of Sheffield, I will be taking up a new role as a professor in @warwicklifesci.bsky.social early in the new year. I'm really excited to get to know more of the brilliant scientists in Warwick and to grow our research in a new home

Need help analysing your image data? Don't know where to start? Have you heard about @uk-bias.bsky.social ? Come along to our first online helpdesk, hosted by @lankylaste.bsky.social and Anneliese Jarman, to find out more - details below.

Love this. As seen on Mastodon. HT @tomstafford.mastodon.online.ap.brid.gy

Please see our latest paper on TANGO1. This work was instigated by the great, late David Stephens and we're so happy his legacy continues. Congrats to first author @lizzielawrence.bsky.social and co-authors @hammofish.bsky.social, Esther, Judith, and Lorna! journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/...

Weird how silo’d science can be. notification this morning that this paper from a decade ago on NEMO has had a spike in readers. Few weeks ago I pointed it out to a colleague who was unaware of the model and the experiments that support it, which contradicted their models. doi.org/10.1074/jbc....

Our movie won at the @inp-marseille.bsky.social retreat! Behold NeuroCyto's latest blockbuster: "Neuronal culture is a piece of cake" 🍰

Do you know an outstanding cell biologist? Nominations are OPEN for our 2027 medals: 🔬Hooke Medal for outstanding contribution in cell biology 👩‍🔬Women in Cell Biology medal 🧫 Postdoctoral Researcher medal 🔬Raff PhD medal award Deadline 1st November 2026 For more details: bscb.org/competitions...

🚀 Rxiv-Maker is now peer-reviewed and open access! Write your manuscript in Markdown and get a typeset PDF or an editable Word file, with figures, citations and cross-references numbered for you. Led by Bruno Saraiva, with @guijacquemet.bsky.social's lab 🔬 doi.org/10.1242/jcs.265183

Nikon just announced it has withdrawn first place in this year’s #SWiM after finding winning video did not comply with its generative AI rules. www.nikonsmallworld.com/news/nikon-s... Letter still open until Monday- this is a starting point to engage & discuss how AI is transforming microscopy 🔬

We are updating our Expansion Microscopy (U-ExM) website with : - Protocols tips to help you get started - Examples of applications across different biological systems. - work in progress - an antibody database 👉 mocel.unige.ch/research-gro...

Microscopy images are scientific evidence, and that image processing must be transparent and faithful to the underlying biology. Reinforce those standards, especially now-insist Nikon uphold them. #NikonSWiM2026 Read the letter: tinyurl.com/OpenLetterSW... Add your name: forms.gle/TyGRELnCxq5z...

One of my favourite things to do…whiteboard brain storm. Early conceptualisation of my team’s 2024 paper ….(in Feb 2019 …😆) how it started..how it finished….( article: www.nature.com/articles/s41... ) #microtubules

Fresh preprint from St Johnston lab in collaboration with Paluch lab. "Fast, 3D SMLM imaging modality, Intrinsic3D, which combines the speed and optical sectioning of oblique plane microscopy (OPM) with the nanometre resolution of SMLM using DNAPAINT". Amazing imaging, here is one of my favourite:

Localized optogenetic microtubule severing in osteosarcoma cells by recruiting katanin (magenta) to microtubules (cyan).

Membrane Trafficking Seminar series returns this week with two exciting talks exploring GTPase regulation and the making of lysosomes! Join @felixmendu.bsky.social @franbottanelli.bsky.social and me for an afternoon of fun cell biology. For more details: felixcampelo.wixsite.com/membranetraf...

Comparison of citation metrics. ACS journals (green) and Nature journals (blue). Discuss. 1/

I just rebuilt my website using Quarto 🎉 My publication list generates itself from my Zotero library, and papers include links to materials and OA versions. The website's first post is on how to build your own, featuring an app that does all the coding for you: dsquintana.com/posts/quarto...

This #FluorescenceFriday we have an Endosome sorting itself out! 37min of PI(3)P (green) positive sorting endosome with fluorescent Transferrin in Magenta. The sorting of Transferrin is tightly interlinked with PI(3)P intensity. Soon we will publish how cargo sorting controls PI(3)P levels!

arXiv rate limiting submissions in face of AI deluge blog.arxiv.org/2026/10/01/u...

How did I miss this? Serious membrane organisation story by my colleagues at @mechanochemistry.org @uni-of-warwick.bsky.social Lipids, actin, myosin, GPI-APs, and homo-FRET - what is there not to like?