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Ben Engel

@cellarchlab.com
6K followers 2.7K following 1K posts

cellarchlab.com Univ. of Basel Biozentrum🇨🇭. Exploring molecular architecture inside cells with #CryoEM #TeamTomo. Plants and algae in a changing climate. ❄🔬 OF 🌿 4THE 🌍!

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Ben Engel @cellarchlab.com · 28/09/2026
Ah… Shakespeare and Chlamy. The finer things!
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Ben Engel @cellarchlab.com · 24/09/2026
Insane in the #MemBrain 🤖🧠 #TeamTomo 🧪
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Fanny Le Blanc @fannyleblanc.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Thank you for organizing! It was great to meet the swiss cryo-ET community and hear about all the exciting science happening here :)
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Florent Waltz @florentwaltz.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Great success for the 2nd edition of the Young Swiss Tomo Meeting in Bern 🔬, co-organized with the DCI, and @leonieanton.bsky.social, Elsa Bauda, @zanettakechagia.bsky.social and Agnes Moe who's joining the team for the next edition. Thanks to @dectris.bsky.social and @thermofishersci.bsky.social ..
Kuppelraum at Bern university. 70 people attending the conferenceThe organizers
Florent Waltz, Leonie Anton, Elda Bauda, Zanetta Kechagia and Agnes MoeThe view from Uni BernThe organizers plus the workshop teachers, Philippe van der Stappen, Sofie van Dorst and Imre Gonda
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Ben Engel @cellarchlab.com · 23/09/2026
Perhaps someone can write a community-signed letter (without using gen AI 🤪) to raise these issues more formally? I would sign it, but don’t have time to write it. I agree we shouldn’t let this pass. Whoever is interested — Please feel free to use some of these points: bsky.app/profile/cell...
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Ben Engel @cellarchlab.com · 19/09/2026
And then those purple "mitos" --watch how the hallucination drifts during the movie. Plus, mitos aren't packed at that extreme density in an actin-free central zone but excluded from the apical region of the cells. The AI learned the style of immunofluorescence but not scale or cellular context. 2/2
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Ben Engel @cellarchlab.com · 19/09/2026
And the red? The AI is trying to mimmic the style of an actin stain delineating the boundaries between many cells in an epithelial layer. But it got the scale completely off when combining this with the monster cilia 🦕. 1/2 🧪
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Ben Engel @cellarchlab.com · 19/09/2026
We absolutely can tell which, and it’s not even close. See the comments in the thread.
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Ben Engel @cellarchlab.com · 18/09/2026
FYI— we were talking about the Nikon Small World winner. Indeed, it’s really disheartening…. bsky.app/profile/reit...
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Ben Engel @cellarchlab.com · 18/09/2026
Of course @centriolelab.bsky.social was just demonstrating the scary power of AI to hallucinate data. But as for that Nikon competition winner… yeah that seems quite deliberate to me. And it worked 👀
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Ben Engel @cellarchlab.com · 18/09/2026
Well no, I understand that this was pure hallucination of @centriolelab.bsky.social asking ChatGPT to make the cilia in their U-ExM image beat. Scary 😱
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Ben Engel @cellarchlab.com · 18/09/2026
The future of cilia biology his here!! 🤣. Yeah very scary— this Nikon contest hoax was easy to spot, but someday soon (ok probably already), it will be very difficult to determine what scientific data has been hallucinated 🤖🧪
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Ben Engel @cellarchlab.com · 18/09/2026
Very jealous!! But they do have mitochondria and nuclei, of course. Although @florentwaltz.bsky.social prefers to get his mitoribosomes from cauliflower 🥦. Check out that elephant!🐘 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Structural insights into cauliflower mitoribosome in translation state and in association with a late assembly factor - Nature Communications
Plant mitoribosomes are crucial for mitochondrial protein synthesis. Here, authors use cryo-EM to determine high-resolution structures of cauliflower mitoribosomes, and combined with sequencing and ma...
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Ben Engel @cellarchlab.com · 18/09/2026
static.klipy.com
Star Trek Data
ALT: Star Trek Data
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Ben Engel @cellarchlab.com · 18/09/2026
Duuude! What indeed?? Airway epithelia have 100s of cilia per cell (not one or two), and they aren’t 10x longer than the cells themselves. Then there’s that mysterious purple layer below… made of mitochondria? And the motion😵‍💫. It looks like #AIslop may have taken over the small world competition? 🔬🧪
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Ben Engel @cellarchlab.com · 10/09/2026
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Man Taking Notes Seriously
ALT: Man Taking Notes Seriously
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Ben Engel @cellarchlab.com · 10/09/2026
Really wonderful! Lab retreats are so important for building a supportive and creative scientific culture 👩‍🔬👨‍🔬. I hope the bean counters in university finance offices don’t forget this. Such events pay for themselves 100 times over in sparking inspiration💡 and collaboration 🤗
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Ben Engel @cellarchlab.com · 09/09/2026
11/13 ophthalmologists recommend this lab 👍
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Caitie McCafferty @computingcaitie.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
I am looking for a lab manager for my group that I will be starting at the @fmiscience.bsky.social in February! We will use in situ structural biology to investigate dynamic ciliary processes. More info here —> bsky.app/profile/comp... #cilia #teamtomo #proteomics #protistsky
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Ben Engel @cellarchlab.com · 08/09/2026
#MemBrain v2 🧪 @lorenzlamm.bsky.social 🦾
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Ben Engel @cellarchlab.com · 08/09/2026
Could not have said this better! Thank you, Juan😁. I always love posting to @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social, which greatly accelerates science. But this was probably our most important use of preprints ever. For method development, it's absolutely essential to get it to the community early and iterate.
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Ben Engel @cellarchlab.com · 08/09/2026
MemBrain v2 is on @natmethods.nature.com now? I never had a @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social with 164 citations before😅 ...Which is also to say: Thank you to the amazing #TeamTomo community, many of whom not only beta tested, but also contributed diverse training data. This one belongs to all of us! 🤗🔬🧪
BioRxiv FTW
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Ben Engel @cellarchlab.com · 08/09/2026
static.klipy.com
Soon Hamster Peeking
ALT: Soon Hamster Peeking
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Florent Waltz @florentwaltz.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Yoooo it's out 🥳 MemBrain v3 when ?
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Juan Carlos De la Concepcion @delaconcepcionjc.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
The beauty of posting in @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social. This amazing tool was available for the community long before it showed up on a journal. I even forgot this publication was not "peer-reviewed", but it was definitively "community-reviewed". Kudos to @lorenzlamm.bsky.social and all the authors!
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Ben Engel @cellarchlab.com · 07/09/2026
Awesome possum!! Also, super fantastic name, well done! 🙌
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Ben Engel @cellarchlab.com · 04/09/2026
This is a beautiful and important study with mechanistic structural insights into ESCRT function. Congrats Mareike!! 🧪
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Ben Engel @cellarchlab.com · 31/08/2026
This has been a fun and interesting exploration of new frontiers, thanks to the @biozentrum.unibas.ch PhD Fellowship for enabling @daniil-litvinov.bsky.social to create a novel project between labs 🧪🤗 Now that we can predict complexes… Next up is Visual Proteomics 🔬. Daniil can do it, no sweat! 💪😅
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Ben Engel @cellarchlab.com · 31/08/2026
LAST WEEK TO APPLY!!! 🧪 @biozentrum.unibas.ch seeks a new group👩‍🔬 exploring molecular questions relevant to climate 🌍, including biogeochemical cycles (e.g., carbon, nitrogen) ♻️, bioenergetic energy conversion (e.g., photosynthesis, chemosynthesis) ☀️⚗️, and the adaptation to environmental change 🌊🌡️🦠🌾
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Ben Engel @cellarchlab.com · 17/08/2026
Meanwhile, in Europe— No rain all summer, deadly heat waves, dying forests, and raging fires 🔥 🌍 I hate this climate future we are so determined to race into as fast as we can…
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Ben Engel @cellarchlab.com · 17/08/2026
We could use some of that rain in Basel. Many trees have died this summer 🍂😢
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Martina Preiner @preinerin.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
New preprint out! We cycle flavins from reduced to oxidized and back under hydrothermal conditions and investigate if the structure of flavins can influence their prebiotic function... Congrats to first authors Delfina and Oskari!
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Ben Engel @cellarchlab.com · 13/08/2026
John is a visionary in our field. I always like hearing his new ideas, many of which end up proving to be rather prophetic. #PlantScience 🌾🧪
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Plant Science Spotlight @plant-sci.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
🧬🌱 Algal chloroplast ribosomes have a unique arm domain, revealed by cryo-ET and cryo-EM. It may stabilize mRNA and organize polysomes. Chloroplast translation is more structurally diverse than expected. #plantscience @natplants.nature.com www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Chloroplast-encoded small subunit extensions reshape the Chlamydomonas chlororibosome - Nature Plants
Using in situ cryo-electron tomography, researchers found a unique ‘arm’ domain on the small subunit of Chlamydomonas chlororibosomes. This discovery suggests that chlororibosome structure is more evo...
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Ben Engel @cellarchlab.com · 08/08/2026
Baumi once said “In Situ Senu Stricto” 🙄
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Florent Waltz @florentwaltz.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
We've been seeing a lot of "in situ" lately in titles from fancy journals (not pointing any fingers 👀). I’ve delayed posting this, but as more and more come out, I'm afraid "in situ" is becoming an empty buzzword, much like "near-atomic" was for SPA 🔬 1/n #cryo-ET #cryo-EM #cryoET #cryoEM 🧪
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Ben Engel @cellarchlab.com · 07/08/2026
Also ESCRT spirals 🌀 @buzzbaum.bsky.social @rouxlab.bsky.social
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Ben Engel @cellarchlab.com · 07/08/2026
Looks like 3D membrane segmentations! 🌀🤩
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Ben Engel @cellarchlab.com · 07/08/2026
One month left to apply!! 🧪 @biozentrum.unibas.ch seeks a group👩‍🔬 exploring molecular questions relevant to climate 🌍, including biogeochemical cycles (e.g., carbon, nitrogen) ♻️, bioenergetic energy conversion (e.g., photosynthesis, chemosynthesis) ☀️⚗️, and the adaptation to environmental change 🌊🌡️🦠🌾
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Juan Carlos De la Concepcion @delaconcepcionjc.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
PLEASE SHARE! New job openings in my lab @zmbp-tuebingen.bsky.social. We have a broad interest into the mechanistic basis of how molecular complexes are rewired during cellular development in plants and during invasion by pathogens. 🌱🍄🔬 See details below 👇 #PlantSciJobs
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Ben Engel @cellarchlab.com · 02/08/2026
Congrats!! 🥳
static.klipy.com
Kermit
ALT: Kermit
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sofie.rec @sofie-dot-rec.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
The artist formerly known as #thatmitoriboguy has now become #thatchlororiboguy Check out some cool tomo from @florentwaltz.bsky.social @phaips.vd.st
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Ben Engel @cellarchlab.com · 28/07/2026
The final version of @florentwaltz.bsky.social's Chlamy chlororibosome "hat" is now online at @natplants.nature.com 🌾 📜 nature.com/articles/s41477-026-02361-1 🧪🔬 #TeamTomo The charge complementarity in the arm domain is striking. Blue & red proteins wrapped around each other, like a barber pole💈
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Ben Engel @cellarchlab.com · 28/07/2026
Fantastic work Florent!! Thank you for revealing all the beauty of the chlamy chlororibo hat 🎩. After over a decade wondering about this structure, it's a dream come true 🙏 Now, we just have to figure out what it does... 😅🧪
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Florent Waltz @florentwaltz.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
This story is now published in @natplants.nature.com ! 🎉🎩 Check out the final article here: nature.com/articles/s41477-026-02361-1 Very similar to the original bioRxiv preprint, with the addition of some cool polysome analysis (in the supplementals)! Thanks and congrats to everyone involved! 🙏
nature.com
Chloroplast-encoded small subunit extensions reshape the Chlamydomonas chlororibosome - Nature Plants
Using in situ cryo-electron tomography, researchers found a unique ‘arm’ domain on the small subunit of Chlamydomonas chlororibosomes. This discovery suggests that chlororibosome structure is more evo...
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James Barrett @james-r-barrett.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
Check it out! Deeper insights into the pyrenoid of Chlorella. More evidence Rubisco has convergently evolved as an organising hub, cool membrane architectures and evidence that most of the rest of the CCM is conserved with other green pyrenoids! 💚 Preprint here 🔗: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 🔗
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Ben Engel @cellarchlab.com · 22/07/2026
It’s a pyrenoid party! 🪩🌍 Awesome collab🤝 of @phaips.vd.st & @manondemulder.bsky.social with Mihris and the @mackinderlab.bsky.social crew to reveal the molecular architecture🏗️ of the Chorella pyrenoid. Algae have so many convergently evolved compartments to supercharge #CO2 capture. #TeamTomo 🔬🌾🌊🧪
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Ben Engel @cellarchlab.com · 22/07/2026
Woah!! 🧲🚀
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Ben Engel @cellarchlab.com · 22/07/2026
It's been fun following the birth of Bertha. How common is it for a tropical storm to form de novo inside the Gulf like this? I'm more used to seeing them track in from the Atlantic... 🌊🌀
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Ben Engel @cellarchlab.com · 18/07/2026
Fellowship of Zee Ring 🥁
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