iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Hannes Maib @maiblab.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

Thank you for being such an active voice throughout this whole shitshow and standing up for scientific integrity and the microscopy community!

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Hannes Maib @maiblab.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

Congrats Volker! This is a massive gain for Hong Kong and you will be missed in Berlin. I wish you all the best for this new adventure and am looking forward to all the great science yet to come!

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Reposted by Hannes Maib

Mill_lab @cilialab.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

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...

tinyurl.com

Open letter to Nikon Small World in Motion

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Hannes Maib @maiblab.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I hope they will do what's right and come out in defence of scientific rigour. Their reputation is at stake! We are currently at the deciding stage between acquiring a Nikon N-Sparc or an Zeiss Airyscan990 and promoting AI slop is going to damage our trust in their AI denoising algorithms!

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Hannes Maib @maiblab.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

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!

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Hannes Maib @maiblab.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Hopefully the reputational damage of being on the front line international news will make @healthcare.nikon.com reconsider how they deal with this disgrace to the microscopy community and their inaptitude to adhere to their own rules www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

bbc.co.uk

Tiny image sparks big backlash in Nikon photo contest

Dr Ning Xu denies he broke the rules of Nikon's annual Small World In Motion contest.

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Hannes Maib @maiblab.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Don’t know. I think it is importantly to address the reality that decent sounding proposal can also be written by AI and flood the capacity for detailed in person reviews. I think there are no easy answers and having open discussions is what is needed and what the ERC are trying to do

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Hannes Maib @maiblab.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Coming at a problem from two completely different backgrounds and ways of thinking is really what drives scientific progress!

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Hannes Maib @maiblab.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

It’s amazing how much some mathematical modelling can add to a cell biology problem. When I hired my first postdoc two years ago I took a bit of a gamble by hiring someone with computational background and little wet lab experience and I think it’s was the best decision ever.

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Hannes Maib @maiblab.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Finally reached the point where I completely hate the paper I have been writing and working on for the last three years! This means we must be getting close....

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Hannes Maib @maiblab.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

I know I am probably very late to realising this but I really don’t like the layout of @embojournal.org website since they joined with springer. Makes it look just like another run down the mill Springer journal and has lost its own identity

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Hannes Maib @maiblab.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

I always though the civil service looks like a great place to work. But I only really go by my experience of watching “Yes Minister”….

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Hannes Maib @maiblab.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

I would be very cautious with boasting about this. This AI driven rankings on preprints is viewed very critically by the community and goes against everything that preprints are supposed to stand for

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Hannes Maib @maiblab.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

When I tell my friends in the UK how unreliable the trains in Germany are they never believe me! They still believe the myth of German efficiency….

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Hannes Maib @maiblab.bsky.social · 13/06/2026

Just good old Phalloidin. The microscope is amazing but sadly we don’t have our own Elyra yet. We have taken these images when we went to Zeiss in Germany for a demo of the system and are now trying to get funding for one. So fingers crossed…

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Hannes Maib @maiblab.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

Yes, this was taken with @zeiss-microscopy.bsky.social Elyra 7, 3D structured illumination. A fantastic piece of microscope!

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Hannes Maib @maiblab.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

Congrats Henry! Great to see what you have been up to and wishing you the best for your own lab as well!

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Hannes Maib @maiblab.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

Stay tuned to find out how this PI(3)P homeostasis is regulated to link endosomal cargo density to membrane identity! Hope to submit the preprint in a month or two but please get in touch if you want to talk about it

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Hannes Maib @maiblab.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

Starting to write up the first mechanistic paper from my lab about regulation of endosomal PI(3)P. We see retromer tubules (Vps35) budding from PI(3)P positive sorting endosomes with Actin at the neck. When PI(3)P homeostasis is perturbed this organisation breaks down and cells cant recycle cargo.

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Hannes Maib @maiblab.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

Nothing better for procrastination than going through some live cell imaging of Endosomes... Today we have the fusion of two equally sized PI(3)P positive endosomes. This is at 5s framerate, wish I had taken it at higher temporal resolution but still super cool to see

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Hannes Maib @maiblab.bsky.social · 09/05/2026

How do Endosomes dance? Looks like a waltz? Or maybe the more of a cèilidh? Cells expressing the PI(3)P probe imaged every 5s for ~15min. Currently preparing a really exciting paper about the regulation of endosomal PI(3)P homeostasis. Stay tuned!

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Hannes Maib @maiblab.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

Starting to put together an exciting paper about endosomal membrane identity and PowerPoint's AI knows exactly what I am up to: "A collage of different spots". Sums up this whole paper pretty well 😅

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Hannes Maib @maiblab.bsky.social · 05/03/2026

Every good research opens up new questions and new possibilities. Stating that “No more research on this topic is needed” is the pinnacle of hubris and ignorance

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Hannes Maib @maiblab.bsky.social · 05/02/2026

Being on your podcast has been great fun and I really enjoyed it! Hope you will find something else and I am sure it wont be the last we hear of you 😊

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Hannes Maib @maiblab.bsky.social · 30/01/2026

Great resource and evaluation on everything to do with preprints in the life sciences! Preprints have been transformational and there is a lot of good work being done at @ripplingideas.bsky.social !

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Hannes Maib @maiblab.bsky.social · 21/01/2026

Imaging phosphoinositides during mitosis ! Cells stained against PI(4,5)P2 using recombinant biosensors (tinyurl.com/447fabz8) PI(4,5)P2 is up regulated for cortex-membrane attachment. Also notice the membranes being shed and taken up by non-mitotic bystanders. #blebbisomes @mag2art.bsky.social?

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Reposted by Hannes Maib

Dr Helen Weavers @helenweavers.bsky.social · 19/01/2026

We're hiring! Enjoyed @jackholcombe.bsky.social PhD Prize talk @edrc2025.bsky.social @fly-eds.bsky.social? We're recruiting a #postdoc to explore how cell biology is patterned in the #Drosophila renal system. Come join us for live-imaging, molecular cell biology and omics! Deadline 25th January.

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Reposted by Hannes Maib

Fran Bottanelli @franbottanelli.bsky.social · 06/01/2026

Early bird deadline in 10 days!! This is going to be amazing!

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Reposted by Hannes Maib

Lisa Smith @plantylisasmith.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

Two days left to apply for a PhD position in plant development with me, Sam Amsbury and Andrew Fleming!!

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Hannes Maib @maiblab.bsky.social · 23/12/2025

While this does not solve the underlying issues with for-profit entities exploiting the free labour of academics, it does make my life easier in the short term. At the moment funders require me to publish open access while refusing to pay for the APC (a bit of a catch22). So this will help with that

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Hannes Maib @maiblab.bsky.social · 23/12/2025

For the discovery of underlying truths about how life works. In my opinion it is the satisfaction of this intrinsic curiosity that has driven humanity to achieve so many great things. Science is not done for anyone but is an intrinsic human expression, just like poetry, dance and all art

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Hannes Maib @maiblab.bsky.social · 15/12/2025

I think it would be fun to see what “science” AI would come up with without any human input. I image it like putting Shakespeare through Google translate through 40 different languages to end up with complete nonsense.

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Reposted by Hannes Maib

Fran Bottanelli @franbottanelli.bsky.social · 03/12/2025

#membrane seminars are back this THURSDAY for a super session with @dr-downes.bsky.social from the @giuliazanetti.bsky.social lab and Xin Zhou from the Ikonen lab! @felixmendu.bsky.social @ishier.bsky.social

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Hannes Maib @maiblab.bsky.social · 03/12/2025

I completely agree. And local concentrations can be very variable and what is a competitor for one person might be an interesting interaction partner for another

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Hannes Maib @maiblab.bsky.social · 03/12/2025

And having high affinity, site specific binding to protein A does not rule out having weak and transient interactions with protein B

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Hannes Maib @maiblab.bsky.social · 03/12/2025

In no word have I mentioned LLPS. But to state that fuzzy interactions don’t occur or might not be physiologically important seems very limited. As you said yourself “fuzzy interactions are soluble in cytosol”. Therefore fuzzy interactions with partners in the cytosol exist and can be very important

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Hannes Maib @maiblab.bsky.social · 03/12/2025

Surely protein-protein interactions come at all scales of affinities and AlphaFold is very good at the high affinity interactions but less so for weak and transient ones

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Hannes Maib @maiblab.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

In most papers the spectre of the two phases need not be involved at all. The argument has become largely semantic and few people are actually thinking about LLPS that you described and are focused on multivalent (classical) biochemistry but have been tricked into selling this as phase separation.

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Hannes Maib @maiblab.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

However, as the result of this hype a lot of good science has been done around the importance of these multivalent interactions in many diverse processes. Also IDPs have gotten a lot of attention now and are being appreciated to be functionally crucial components of protein-protein interactions.

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Hannes Maib @maiblab.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

When LLPS hype first began, I tried hard to understand it and still found it quite difficult to make real sense of. I think some leading researchers have used language deliberately crafted to confuse people into reframing ordinary, weak, multivalent interactions as mystical “Phase Separation”

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Hannes Maib @maiblab.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

That’s exactly it! I think the hype around LLPS has made people rediscover the importance of weak, multivalent, “fuzzy”, interactions as drivers of many diverse processes. I don’t really think most people think of the “true” liquid liquid phases and it has just become the trendy word now

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Hannes Maib @maiblab.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

Dont think liquidity is anything that can be inferred. I used to FRAP clathrin coated pits a lot during my PhD. They are very ordered lattices and recover in seconds. Wonderful dynamic structures but very much not liquid

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Hannes Maib @maiblab.bsky.social · 23/11/2025

* can’t trust…. (Sorry for the obvious typo)

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Hannes Maib @maiblab.bsky.social · 23/11/2025

This is making the rounds and people are be worried about fake data being published. I don’t see the point. All data can already be faked. All graphs and numerical data can freely be made up. Controls and samples can be switched. If we can trust scientists and institutions we might as well stop.

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Hannes Maib @maiblab.bsky.social · 14/11/2025

Thank you so much for having me! It’s been a great visit and I can’t wait to show the prime quality photo we collected to everyone. Some great science coming up!

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Hannes Maib @maiblab.bsky.social · 22/09/2025

Really glad to show our recent work using recombinant phosphoinositide probes to investigate membrane identity changes during endosomal trafficking. Should be a great mini symposium to highlight the power of fluorescent microscopy techniques for cell biology!

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Hannes Maib @maiblab.bsky.social · 28/08/2025

In what world do 15 hours courses send the right messages towards a healthily work life balance in academia? And this is definitely not balanced by a plate race or anything like that. It is no wonder that phd students get more and more burned out

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Reposted by Hannes Maib

Max Planck Institute for Medical Research @mpi-mr.bsky.social · 03/07/2025

📣Paper alert! Interested in faster and brighter protein labeling than before? 👀 @steffi-k.bsky.social & other colleagues have developed an improved tool for labeling proteins with synthetic fluorophores for bioimaging. Also works in STED microscopy 🤩🔬 Congratulations!🥳 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

nature.com

SNAP-tag2 for faster and brighter protein labeling - Nature Chemical Biology

SNAP-tag is a widespread tool for labeling protein for bioimaging. Now, Kühn et al. report SNAP-tag2 with increased labeling kinetics and brightness, which translates into a better performance in live...

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