iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Bettina Böttcher

bioRxiv Molecular Biology @biorxiv-molbio.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

The Structure of Escherichia coli MscL and its dimer formation in Nanodiscs www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/20…

Reposted by Bettina Böttcher

John Rubinstein @johnrubinstein.bsky.social · 04/04/2026

Sad news on the passing of Prof. Andreas Engel, a pioneer in the field of cryo-EM (shared with the 3DEM community by Henning Stahlberg). Andreas' kindness, warmth, and enthusiasm for science and his colleagues will be missed.

Dear colleagues,
With deep sadness I share the news that Andreas Engel passed away last Wednesday, at the age of 82, after a courageous fight against an aggressive caner. Only half a year ago, he was out hiking in the Italian mountains with his wife Barbara, walking 160 km in a single week.
Andreas trained as a physicist in Bern, Switzerland, before heading to John Hopkins University in Baltimore for his postdoctoral work. He then led a research group at the Biozentrum in Basel, and in 1985 took on the role of a group leader in research and development at Ilford Ltd. in Fribourg, Switzerland.
In 1987, he joined forces with his colleague Ueli Aebi to establish the Maurice E. Müller Institute at the Biozentrum of the University of Basel. Together, Ueli and Andreas served as professors for structural biology there for almost a quarter century, leaving a lasting mark on the field of structural biology as we know it today.

Andreas Engel was a true pioneer. He was among the first to apply atomic force microscopy (AFM) with the tip operating under water, and one of the earliest researchers to perform 3D reconstructions using scanning transmission electron microscopy, achieving remarkable high-resolution maps of porin 2D crystals by STEM. He became a leading expert in membrane protein 2D crystallization, and his group played a key role in the determination of the first aquaporin structure, in collaboration with Peter Agre and Yoshinori Fujiyoshi.
As he approached retirement from Basel, Andreas founded the Center for Cellular Imaging and NanoAnalytics (C-CINA) of the University of Basel, which in 2009 operated among others one of the very early Titan Krios instruments. From 2008 also held a professorship at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, followed by a position at TU Delft in the Netherlands in 2013. In 2020, he was among the founding members of CryoWrite, a company in Basel that he led as CEO until recently.
His contributions to science, to the tools of str…

05726

Bettina Böttcher @boettchercryoem.bsky.social · 28/01/2026

🧪❄️🔬 We found that the proteins Nono and SFPQ assemble into long filaments. Curious to know whether these filaments also exist in paraspeckles. Very enjoyable collaboration with Dietmar Geiger at @uni-wuerzburg.de . We used #cryoEM for structure determination rdcu.be/e06t7 .

091

Reposted by Bettina Böttcher

Communications Biology @commsbio.nature.com · 22/01/2026

Filament formation of full-length NONO/SFPQ heterodimers and in vitro structural characterization may provide a scaffold for gene regulation, paraspeckle formation and DNA double-strand break repair in vivo. @boettchercryoem.bsky.social New article available at www.nature.com/articles/s42...

nature.com

The gene-regulating proteins NONO and SFPQ assemble into ordered filaments - Communications Biology

Filament formation of full-length NONO/SFPQ heterodimers was observed and structurally characterized in vitro which may provide a scaffold for gene regulation, paraspeckle formation and DNA double-str...

062

Bettina Böttcher @boettchercryoem.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

Very cool work by the Schindelin Lab@en-hxnu-enment.bsky.social @uni-wuerzburg.de. Very excited to see this preprint. Happy to have contribute some #cryoEM 🧪❄️🔬

020

Reposted by Bettina Böttcher

Institute of Agricultural Biology and Biotechnology @ibbacnr.bsky.social · 09/09/2025

Erice Structural Biology Course 2026 (29 May–6 Jun): apply! Train in Cryo-EM, Cryo-ET & ML to study macromolecular assemblies in cells. Hands-on + theory for next-gen structural cell biology. 🔗 erice2026.azuleon.org/application.... #CryoEM #CryoET #MachineLearning #StructuralBiology #CellBiology

erice2026.azuleon.org

International School of Crystallography :: APPLICATION

The International School of Crystallography - held in Erice, Italy, since 1974

051

Bettina Böttcher @boettchercryoem.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

🧪❄️🔬 We were very surprised to find out that the MscS-like channel YnaI does not tilt its paddle helices to open.... almost overlooked the huge pore in our cryo-EM maps Very proud that this is finally out: rdcu.be/eB3FF Well done, Vanessa @uni-wuerzburg.de

0143

Reposted by Bettina Böttcher

bioRxiv Biochemistry @biorxiv-biochem.bsky.social · 19/08/2025

SLC26A11 is an atypical solute carrier with dual transport-channel function mediating lysosomal sulfate transport www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/202…

052

Reposted by Bettina Böttcher

Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg @uni-wuerzburg.de · 14/07/2025

🎉 Congratulations to @angelifriedmann.bsky.social‬ on receiving an @erc.europa.eu Proof of Concept grant! With his project “SulFex”, he is working on a new strategy for treating a specific form of lung cancer #ERCPoC 📷Andreas Heddergott go.uniwue.de/poc-grant-an...

0163

Reposted by Bettina Böttcher

cryoEM papers @cryoempapers.bsky.social · 26/06/2025

Structure of lymphostatin, a large multi-functional virulence factor of pathogenic Escherichia coli pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40562750/ #cryoEM

011

Bettina Böttcher @boettchercryoem.bsky.social · 25/06/2025

Our paper on Lymphostatin is now out (rdcu.be/etk2v). It shows #cryoEM structures of this huge virulence factor revealing amazing domain reorganisations. Very enjoyable collaborating with the Stevens Lab in Edinburgh and the Boersch Lab in Jena to see how it gets into cells. @uni-wuerzburg.de 🧪❄️

0267

Bettina Böttcher @boettchercryoem.bsky.social · 22/06/2025

Very happy that this is now out. Cool collaboration with Weikert and Gmeiner group #cryoem #gpcrs 🧪 @uni-wuerzburg.de @fau.de

060

Reposted by Bettina Böttcher

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft @dfg.de · 22/05/2025

Die #Exzellenzcluster stehen fest: Heute hat die Exzellenzkommission 70 Projekte zur Förderung ausgewählt. 45 Cluster werden fortgesetzt, 25 neu eingerichtet. Die Förderung beginnt ab 1. Jan. 2026 für 7 Jahre, die Fördersumme beträgt insg. 539 Mio. €/Jahr. Die Liste: www.dfg.de/resource/blo... 1/3

Deutschlandkarte der Verteilung der Exzellenzcluster auf Bundesländer und Universitäten.

222592

Reposted by Bettina Böttcher

Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg @uni-wuerzburg.de · 18/02/2025

Die Uni Würzburg unterstützt die Petition "Geht wählen – mit Verstand: #Demokratie braucht #Fakten" Heute fand dazu ein Flashmob am RVZ statt - und 150 Personen folgten dem Ruf. 🗣️"Nur eine demokratische Gesellschaft schützt Forschungs- und Meinungsfreiheit", so Organisator Prof. Manfred Gessler.

Etwa 150 Personen folgten dem Aufruf zum Flashmob. (Bild: Jochen Kuper)

1185

Bettina Böttcher @boettchercryoem.bsky.social · 24/01/2025

Our joined effort with the the Maric Lab @hmariclab.bsky.social @uniwuerzburg.bsky.social on how to aggregate capsids of Hepatitis B virus inside cells is now out in Elife doi.org/10.7554/eLif... . #cryoEM 🧪❄️🔬

0132