Sign in

Basil Greber

@bjgreber.bsky.social
2.6K followers 555 following 1.3K posts

Structural biologist. High-resolution imaging of macromolecular assemblies (and landscapes). MRC career development fellow/group leader at the Institute of Cancer Research, London. Views my own.

PostsRepliesMedia
Reposted by Basil Greber
Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 2h
Selling out Ukraine to side with Russia in order to marginally reduce the negative impacts of his dumb war with Iran
21459113
Reposted by Basil Greber
Gerry Doyle @mgerrydoyle.bsky.social · 13h
credit where credit is due, this is straight ahead factual and well written
261728419
Reposted by Basil Greber
Kit Yates @kityates.bsky.social · 9h
Who doesn't love a good spreadsheet error. Especially when it informs policy. Wonderful.
theguardian.com
Tories overstate net zero cost by nearly £500bn in apparent spreadsheet error
Exclusive: Badenoch’s flagship conference policy document cites £957bn estimate, twice the total in climate advisers’ data
1417
Reposted by Basil Greber
Vytaute Boreikaite @vytaute.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
I’m very excited to share my postdoc work in the @plaschkalab.bsky.social, where we investigated the very final act of splicing – spliceosome termination, revealing the stepwise dismantling of the spent spliceosome www.nature.com/articles/s41... (1/11)
nature.com
Mechanism of spliceosome termination - Nature
A coordinated sequence of RNA helicases and associated factors dismantles normal and defective spliceosome complexes to enable intron degradation and ensure accurate gene expression.
27626
Reposted by Basil Greber
cryoEM papers @cryoempapers.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Structural basis of PARP2 recognition of nucleosomal DNA breaks and inhibitor trapping pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42831429/ #cryoEM
032
Reposted by Basil Greber
Alex Merz 🇺🇸🇨🇦🇺🇦 @merz.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
"Photograph 51 was not the result of an experiment in need of analysis, but was refined documentation for calculations that she had already performed on the earlier photograph." link.springer.com/content/pdf/...
33518
Basil Greber @bjgreber.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Travelling through Lisbon without having a go at taking a photo of Vasco da Gama Bridge at sunrise? Impossible!
Vasco da Gama Bridge in Lisbon at sunrise. The water and clouds are smoothened by a very long exposure. The overall hues are cool, except for the warm glow where the rising sun breaks through the clouds.
0130
Basil Greber @bjgreber.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Also happened when I applied for faculty positions in Europe, and as far as I can tell it still happens.
010
Reposted by Basil Greber
Karolin Luger @nucleosomepolice.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇
062
Basil Greber @bjgreber.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Is he familiar with the concept of “clouds”?
010
Reposted by Basil Greber
Tim Carmody @tcarmody.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
This is the funniest thing I've seen today, possibly ever
A tweet by SarahStarberry that says "oh god read the vertical axis" on top of a chart measuring AI models' release dates and model numbers rather than any real capabilities
41120453122
Reposted by Basil Greber
Julian Sale @juliansalelab.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Congratulations Tanmay, on receiving the @embo.org Gold Medal! @mrclmb.ac.uk @embl.org @dunnschool.bsky.social
2394
Basil Greber @bjgreber.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
👀
051
Basil Greber @bjgreber.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
BH is the one we use most, yes. We did combine datasets but did not mix peptides. That is certainly another way to tailor the “interface coating” to your needs.
010
Basil Greber @bjgreber.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
... and they do not reduce particle numbers in the way many detergents do. Have a look at our examples, and give it a shot if you think it might help with your specimens!
130
Basil Greber @bjgreber.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
We do not claim that cryo-tides will solve all your #cryoEM sample prep issues, but it certainly helped us in several instances. The advantage of this approach is that it is trivial to obtain the peptides, they induce negligible background and are compatible with small targets...
130
Basil Greber @bjgreber.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
During this time, @amymcgeoch.bsky.social in my lab started working with the CDK11 complex, which showed strong preferred orientation. Addition of the original (BH) cryo-tide induced additional particle views, which eventually helped us determine the 2.3 Å-resolution structure of the complex.
151
Basil Greber @bjgreber.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Strikingly, @claudioalfieri.bsky.social and his team demonstrate that using cryo-tides, they can obtain high-resolution structures of APC/C, which otherwise requires carbon support.
Visualisations of the APC/C protein complex, with map overviews on the left (colour-coded by APC/C module), close-up views in the middle, and FSC curves on the right.
162
Basil Greber @bjgreber.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
We show that the addition of synthetic peptides - which we refer to as cryo-tides - to #cryoEM samples can protect them from denaturation and can mitigate preferred orientation issues.
131
Basil Greber @bjgreber.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
... check out the latest pre-print by @claudioalfieri.bsky.social & his team! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
Cryo-tides: synthetic peptides for cryo-EM grid preparation of multi-subunit protein complexes sensitive to the air-water interface
Cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM) has enabled rapid progress in structural biology throughout the last decade. However, cryo-EM sample preparation still represents a major bottleneck in high-res...
1195
Basil Greber @bjgreber.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Those who had a careful look at the methods section of our work on the #cryoEM structure of the CDK11-cyclin L-SAP30BP complex will have noticed that we added a short peptide to our sample before freezing. If you wonder why...
14220
Basil Greber @bjgreber.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Thanks! But it is actually work from @claudioalfieri.bsky.social’s lab. Due to some quirk, bioRxiv lists him as first author rather than last.
010
Basil Greber @bjgreber.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
👀
000
Reposted by Basil Greber
Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 01/10/2026
"An ambulance was seen arriving at the prison where Pike was to be executed and then leaving. Medical aid was being administered, according to online federal court records." The utter absurdity of the state trying twice to kill someone and then calling an ambulance. We must end the death penalty.
nbcnews.com
Tennessee inmate still alive after being administered two lethal injections, her lawyer says
Christa Pike, 50, was 18 when she murdered a classmate. She would be the first woman the state has executed in more than 200 years.
25647158
Reposted by Basil Greber
Melanie D. White @melaniedwhite.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
I spoke with @nature.com about the Nikon Small World controversy. As AI becomes part of scientific imaging, we need greater transparency about what was measured, inferred or generated. It's not about excluding AI. It’s about preserving trust in scientific evidence. www.nature.com/articles/d41...
nature.com
This award-winning microscopy image used AI — igniting controversy in a prestigious competition
Researchers say that using artificial-intelligence tools to visualize scientific images can become problematic when models misrepresent the underlying data.
44514
Basil Greber @bjgreber.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
This further highlights the risks of using tools that were created by companies who were, well, "not very selective" with how they sourced the information required to develop their models. It is becoming increasingly unlikely that users of these tools are being treated any differently.
072
Reposted by Basil Greber
c0nc0rdance @c0nc0rdance.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
The obvious conclusion (to me): if you have proprietary research & you upload it into the Plagiarism Nexus, it's not YOUR proprietary research anymore. Behave accordingly.
728193
Reposted by Basil Greber
Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 27/09/2026
Ignore for a moment the question about whether Anthropic trains on user sessions. I am I right in reading this as saying that Anthropic's "never-before-discovered" reverse transcriptase was *patented* three years ago?
Dr. Mestre first encountered the enzymes in jumbo phages in 2022 while searching for new reverse transcriptases. He worked briefly as a consultant for ReNegade Therapeutics, which filed a patent in 2023 on a number of reverse transcriptases, including the ones Dr. Mestre found. He is listed as a co-inventor on the patent filing.
10380112
Reposted by Basil Greber
Micah @rincewind.run · 26/09/2026
I think it is very important that Big Balls, personally, goes to jail there are a lot of young goons who think they are invincible and it is important to make it clear that they are not
7065721333
Reposted by Basil Greber
Mike Masnick @masnick.com · 26/09/2026
Yes, yes, I'm sure that will stop all interest in the film.
1346163
Basil Greber @bjgreber.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Please tell me this is not true.
110
Reposted by Basil Greber
Sebastian S. Cocioba @atinygreencell.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
IPTG >>> ChatGPT More wetlab for everyone!
2201
Reposted by Basil Greber
Craig Kaplan @triggerloop.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Cryo-EM peeps are living the dream www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
science.org
In-cell structures visualize human pre-ribosome assembly in the nucleolus
In eukaryotes, ribosome biogenesis initiates within the nucleolus, a hallmark multilayered compartment of the nucleus. Structures of pre-ribosomes have been characterized ex situ, but their assembly p...
16732
Reposted by Basil Greber
Arnaud Vanden Broeck @avbroeck.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Very happy to share the first paper from our lab, out now in Nature Communications!🎉🥳 Structural basis of step II Spliced Leader RNA trans-splicing in trypanosomatid parasites 🧬🔬 🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41... @natcomms.nature.com @universitedeliege.bsky.social @rockefeller.edu #cryoEM #cryo-EM
33410
Reposted by Basil Greber
Maya Voichek @mayavoichek.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Super excited to share my postdoctoral work at @imbavienna.bsky.social @viennabiocenter.bsky.social - We discovered that some retrotransposons, or "jumping genes" 🧬, are able to spread from cell to cell via a new viral infectivity route. A short thread: 🧵👇 (1/7)
AI-generated illustration of the soma-to-germline transmission of retrotransposons described in our work
20258148
Reposted by Basil Greber
BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
the priority here being the migrants and not the vigilantes is *insane* and also more evidence of my Belphegor theory.
744168
Reposted by Basil Greber
Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) @snsf.ch · 22/09/2026
🏆 Biochemist Martin Jinek is the winner of the Swiss Science Prize #MarcelBenoist 2026, considered the Swiss #Nobel Prize. He contributed to the development of molecular scissors, namely CRISPR-Cas9 technology. Read more ➡️ sohub.io/3hs4
66321
Reposted by Basil Greber
Christophe 🔬 Leterrier @christlet.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
This is the updated part. Looks like the movie is an AI-generated fluorescence image from a non-labeled acquisition technique. No indication that the Small World jury and organizers have requested and verified the raw data (as mentioned as a possibility in the competition rules)
155023
Reposted by Basil Greber
Richard Sever @richardsever.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
$3.7 billion spent on APCs in 2025. That's ~1000X more than it costs to run bioRxiv/medRxiv. Worth thinking about as we consider how to fund infrastructure... arxiv.org/pdf/2608.16322
arxiv.org
813379
Basil Greber @bjgreber.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Congratulations, Yuan & team!
010
Reposted by Basil Greber
Yuan He @yuanhejhu.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
A big week for the lab! Two new papers on how cells repair DNA double-strand breaks: one on getting NHEJ started in chromatin, one on processing the ends before ligation. Years of work by a fantastic team.
410940
Basil Greber @bjgreber.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Maybe pressure Putin to leave Ukraine alone. How about that?
040
Basil Greber @bjgreber.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
That may be the case, yes. I suspect some journals might be replacing all instances of movie with video when they create the proofs. I have had to undo such changes in some of my papers.
021
Reposted by Basil Greber
Prof. Stefan Rahmstorf @rahmstorf.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Sommer 2026: 16.000 Hitzetote 🥵 alleine in 🇩🇪. Dürre. Brände. 🤯 Die Bundesregierung subventioniert jetzt mit 2.500.000.000 € von unseren Steuergeldern die Ursache der Hitze: fossile Brennstoffe. Unfassbar. 🤯🤯🤯 Das meiste Geld landet dann wieder bei den Ölkonzernen, der Lobby gegen Klimaschutz.
832119932
Basil Greber @bjgreber.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
I have now read a fair few #cryoEM papers in which authors write "raw videos" instead of "raw movies" when referring to dose-fractionated exposures. I know that journal editors/copyediting staff often suggest this change. But nobody in the field says "videos", so maybe journals need to be told that?
1110
Basil Greber @bjgreber.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
What could go wrong?
020
Basil Greber @bjgreber.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
They openly disclose it in the figure legend, so seems ok. Also, for those wondering why the two cells in panels b, c look the same, it is because it is the same cell imaged with different methods.
010
Basil Greber @bjgreber.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
More could have been done, with more urgency, to prevent this calamity by legal means, but this did not happen. So, to reiterate, if you believe that everything will be different this time around, I hope you are right. All of that said, I apologise for the flippant wording of my initial response.
000
Basil Greber @bjgreber.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
There is well-known precedent for a criminal president being pardoned for the sake of “ending divisions” (though admittedly not by a Dem president). As for the rest, people spent years giddily posting about impending accountability (Muller! Impeachment! Garland! Smith!), but we got Trump II instead.
100
Basil Greber @bjgreber.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Jack Smith’s cases were dismissed because Trump managed to run out the clock after it took almost two years until a special counsel was appointed. My view that this was too long & that it was stupid to bring the classified documents case in FL was common at the time. Not sure how this is “bizarre”.
110