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Stephen Royle

@steveroyle.bsky.social
3.3K followers 1.4K following 513 posts

I'm into chord changes and cell biology. Professor - University of Warwick. Director - The Company of Biologists. Views are my own and not those of any organisation I am associated with. Mastodon: @steveroyle@biologists.social Lab: roylelab.org

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Stephen Royle @steveroyle.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
Terrible photo of the Women’s Tour of Britain peloton heading past Kenilworth castle on the final stage. #procycling
Cyclists heading round a corner in tight formation
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Stephen Royle @steveroyle.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
The shops are sold out of solar eclipse glasses… time to befriend a biochemist with a western blot drawer of shame.
Overexposed western blots where the X-ray film is black. These can be overlaid to look at the solar eclipse happening in the UK this evening
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Stephen Royle @steveroyle.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
Wow, these vinyl colours are getting a bit out of hand...
Screenshot of Pylon by beabadoobee on bandcamp showing that it is available in "Bird Shit" vinyl
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Stephen Royle @steveroyle.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
VolcanoPlotR: a new package for visualising proteomic data in R. Explainer: quantixed.org/2026/07/15/e... Code: github.com/quantixed/Vo... Docs: quantixed.github.io/VolcanoPlotR/
The hexsticker for the package. It has a lilac background and the emoji for Vulcan hand salute (vulcan, get it?) and VolcanoPlotR is in black letters at the top.
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Stephen Royle @steveroyle.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
This AI stuff.... Anyone else feel like they're one of the remaining unbitten characters in a zombie movie?
Mastodon post that says: I feel like I'm one of the remaining unbitten characters in a zombie movie.

In the past week:
- marked student papers with clear LLM use
- attended student hearing for academic integrity due to LLM use
- received peer review comments that seemed AI generated
- important email from a colleague that was riddled with banal LinkedIn-ese and must also be LLM-generated

This post is human-created!
#IsThereAnybodyOutThere #AIApocalypse
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Stephen Royle @steveroyle.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
Cellpose: psychedelic version
segmentation result of some cells in 3D. The colour scheme of the different cells is bright and multi-coloured. At the junction of two cells there is a weird little spiral of two colours intertwined. It looks trippy!
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Stephen Royle @steveroyle.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
A mystery at @mechanochemistry.org ! There’s a carrot that is neatly placed in the corridor. None is admitting to owning it. How did it get here? Where will it go next? 🥕
The CMCB corridor with a suspect item on the floorA close up of the carrot. It’s just chilling on a blue hand towel.
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Stephen Royle @steveroyle.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
Off to a flying start on the final day of #JCSimaging with @christlet.bsky.social. He described work on clathrin-coated pits and exocytic events in “clearings” in the membrane-associated periodic skeleton in axons.
Christophe standing on the stage. I somehow managed to take the most boring photo that features none of his amazing imaging data on the slide!
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Stephen Royle @steveroyle.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
Beautiful location here at #JCSimaging
View across trees to mountains. The sky is blue and a few large clouds are moving by. The sun is shining on the tiny houses down below
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Stephen Royle @steveroyle.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
Now online! Lovely work by Vanda Gunning et al. "Mechanistic design of cell-penetrating disruptors for phospho-dependent TACC3-CHC interaction" Collaboration between labs of @molecularrichard.bsky.social, Eileen Kennedy and me. authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...
Graphic abstract showing how we designed a stapled peptide inhibitor to the TACC3-clathrin interaction site
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Stephen Royle @steveroyle.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
A colleague said that the reason funding has got more competitive in the UK is due to increased grant costs, meaning less to go around. A quick crunch of the numbers to see if they have a point. 🧪 New Value: increasing cost of UKRI research grants quantixed.org/2026/04/22/n...
A plot from the post showing how the annual cost of grants at BBSRC has increased over time
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Stephen Royle @steveroyle.bsky.social · 16/04/2026
How many proteins in the human proteome have transmembrane domains? And of those, how many examples with n TMDs are there? Couldn't find an answer, so I calculated it from Uniprot data with some #RStats magic (and I did some model organisms while I was at it). 🧪 quantixed.org/2026/04/16/m...
About one quarter of the 20659 proteins in the human proteome have TMDs. Most have 1 TMD, there's about 1000 with 7 TMDs. Details are in the post, which is linked.
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Stephen Royle @steveroyle.bsky.social · 14/04/2026
A follow up post using #RStats to answer the question of how to optimally pace a (sub 3 h) marathon. Note: sub-3 is a daydream to me, but other people doing it (or not) was help to get an answer. #Running #DataViz quantixed.org/2026/04/14/m...
A graphic from the post which shows different pacing strategies for trying to run a sub-3 marathon. Most of the folks that succeed use an ahead-of-pace strategy.
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Stephen Royle @steveroyle.bsky.social · 10/04/2026
ICYMI: How have publication lag times in cell bio journals changed over the last 20 years? 🧪
A graphic showing the publication lag times at 19 cell biology journals. There's a lot of info in the plots but the quoted post has a link to the blog post that has all the details (screen reader friendly)
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Stephen Royle @steveroyle.bsky.social · 05/04/2026
A 49-year wait to publish this article in a Special Issue of MDPI journal Cells. Yes, I know the submission date is an error, but it amused me.
Screenshot of an article published in 2019 where the submission date is stated as 1st January 1970
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Stephen Royle @steveroyle.bsky.social · 16/03/2026
This weekend I got around to building these 3D printed bacteriophage. A friend gave me four flat pack assembly kits that they'd printed.
4 bacteriophage: purple, black, bronze and white sit on a wooden table. You can see the detail of the 3D print (lines across flat faces) when looking closely. Bacteriophage look like water cooler towers on legs.
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Stephen Royle @steveroyle.bsky.social · 19/02/2026
We use this vesicle capture trick a lot and we realised that it would allow us to hold on to vesicles and prevent their mobilisation by insulin. 5/n
micrographs of cells to show that GLUT4 is mobilised (put on the cell surface by insulin. But if we capture GSVs on the mitochondria, they cannot be mobilised.
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Stephen Royle @steveroyle.bsky.social · 19/02/2026
Using vesicle capture and imaging we determined that GLUT4 and associated proteins are in INVs. This suggested that GSVs are actually a subtype of INVs. (This image is an EM view in cells where we used a genetic trick to glue certain vesicles onto mitochondria) 4/n
This image is an EM view in cells where we used a genetic trick to glue certain vesicles onto mitochondria. The mitochondria look like big ovals and they have tiny circular vesicles over their surface.
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Stephen Royle @steveroyle.bsky.social · 19/02/2026
🚨 We have a new preprint out! 🧪 In this paper we look at GLUT4 trafficking. This is a short explainer thread, but please read the paper! 1/n 🧵 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
A model to describe what we show in the paper. INVs are important for sequestering GLUT4 and related proteins into GSVs, the vesicles that are mobilised in response to insulin.
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Stephen Royle @steveroyle.bsky.social · 31/12/2025
I forgot to post my 2025 #running shenanigans here. The goal was to get to 3650 km (10 km per day). I reached that on Dec 24th and ended on 3672 km. Aim for 2026 is for less total distance and to improve my marathon time. I ran 3 this year and knocked off 8 min, but feel I can do better.
Strava screenshot. Shows 3672 km in 418 runs.
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Stephen Royle @steveroyle.bsky.social · 26/12/2025
Good morning, cells! Surprisingly hard to get a good picture down the TC microscope.
View down a microscope. Lots of ovarian cancer cells in a dish but from a distance it looks like a full moon.
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Stephen Royle @steveroyle.bsky.social · 16/12/2025
The answer: hyperlinks to extend the application are still banned. The guidance doesn't rule out hyperlinks to papers as a form of referencing (by my reading) although two examples given are not hyperlinks and are clearer than a hyperlink to a paper that the *reviewer is not required to click on*.
Screenshot of the guidance which for some reason won't parse so I can include the ALT text. Hyperlinks to extend the application are not allowed. Two examples of referencing are given, neither of which are hyperlinks.
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Stephen Royle @steveroyle.bsky.social · 12/11/2025
Off the hook... 😅 #LifeOfPI
Screenshot at Review Commons that says "Thank you for your time, but unfortunately we already have enough Reviewers for this manuscript"
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Stephen Royle @steveroyle.bsky.social · 14/10/2025
Seems like Wiley journals are down? Maybe I'm just unlucky...
Screen shot that says This site is currently unavailable. It has Wiley branding and gives a 521 error that means server is offline.
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Stephen Royle @steveroyle.bsky.social · 17/09/2025
Congrats. I had a bit of trouble reading. Seems the formatting is messed up? Figures look nice!
screenshot of author version of a manuscript except the layout is messed up so that the text is arranged in a weird diagonal shape and partly off the page. The title says that delta-type glutamate receptors are ligand-gated ion channels.
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Stephen Royle @steveroyle.bsky.social · 20/07/2025
This morning's run took me over 2,000 km for 2025 so far. Average is just under 10 km/day (today is the 201st day of the year). I got fatigued/jaded + a bit injured in June/early July, and fell a bit behind. Now building for autumn marathon. Week 1 of 15 done. Feeling better!
YEAR-TO-DATE
Runs = 237
Time = 174h 22m
Distance = 2,000 km
Elev Gain = 16,201 m
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Stephen Royle @steveroyle.bsky.social · 18/07/2025
Parallel processing FTW #RStats
Activity Monitor on macOS showing many R processes each running at close to 100% CPU
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Stephen Royle @steveroyle.bsky.social · 14/07/2025
For example, here is the LaBeRling of mitochondria-ER contact sites in a mitotic HeLa cell. To find out more about the method, take a look at the paper!
Four cells are shown in a 2 x 2 arrangement. It's the same cell showing the process of highlighting mitochrondrial-ER contacts. The LBR goes from red ER lines inside the cell to bright spots just touching the green mitochondria
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Stephen Royle @steveroyle.bsky.social · 27/03/2025
Shaping up to be a beautiful day here in Liverpool ☀️ for the final day of #Biologists100 Blew away the cobwebs from the gala dinner with run 3. #running
Tuesday’s run 12.2 km easy paceWednesday’s run some tempo repsTodays run. Supposedly marathon pace
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Stephen Royle @steveroyle.bsky.social · 26/03/2025
It’s @drmichaelway.bsky.social talking about @jcellsci.bsky.social and the benefits of publishing there. He announces that the JCS Best Paper Prize has been renamed in honour of David Stephens, JCS editor, who sadly died last year.
Outrageously dressed scientist on a stage with a huge screen in the background showing a picture of David Stephens
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Stephen Royle @steveroyle.bsky.social · 02/03/2025
I ran Middlesbrough half today and got a new PB! Very happy 😃. It was a bit breezy but otherwise perfect to set a good time. 15th in my category. 2640 runners out there #running
Strava screenshot of the course. It looped out to Acklam and then did a few loops near Riverside and the Transporter Bridge.
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Stephen Royle @steveroyle.bsky.social · 07/02/2025
Heads up Early Career Researchers! You can apply for a funded place at the upcoming @biologists.bsky.social Workshop "Democratising Microscopy in Latin America: Imaging Across Scales and Regions". Deadline 14th Feb! www.biologists.com/workshops/gl...
Workshop runs 12-15 Oct 2025 in Baños de Agua Santa, Ecuador
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Stephen Royle @steveroyle.bsky.social · 02/02/2025
Cool, dry and sunny out there today. Lovely conditions. Warwick Half Marathon course is quite tough and so I was really not expecting a PB today. Over the moon. #running
Strava screenshot showing the course on a map - circular route from Warwick racecourse - and my time 1:28:38
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Stephen Royle @steveroyle.bsky.social · 17/01/2025
Congratulations @mafesenko.bsky.social on your successful PhD viva. Many thanks to @satooze.bsky.social and John James for examining.
Picture of Sharon, Mary and John stood smiling after the viva
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Stephen Royle @steveroyle.bsky.social · 13/01/2025
It's @biologists.bsky.social Centenary and I am really looking forward to their Biologists@100 meeting in Liverpool. For cell biology folk, the @bscb-official.bsky.social annual meeting is incorporated and there are lots of great speakers. See you there?
Poster for the meeting showing photos of Liverpool's waterfront and a list of keynote speakers.
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Stephen Royle @steveroyle.bsky.social · 30/12/2024
Update: I made it to 3,500 km for 2024. Would have been easier without getting ‘flu in Dec (why didn’t I get a jab?? Won’t make that mistake again). If you’re inspired to run - just go for it! Couch to 5 km, parkrun, there’s loads of ways to start or get back into it. It’s basically free.
Summary running stats showing that I ran 3502 km in 2024
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Stephen Royle @steveroyle.bsky.social · 20/12/2024
My 2024 #running highlights: 1. HM PB 1:29:37 2. 5 km PB 19:33 3. 10 km PB 40:33 4. Completed an Ultra (66.8 km) I’m still chasing a 3500 km total for the year. Sidelined with illness this week but back running today. Quite a few kms to go 🥵 and not much time left! Will update if I make it!
Strava end of year graphic - hey, Strava it ain't over til it's over! Shows I am at 3,383 km total running.
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Stephen Royle @steveroyle.bsky.social · 27/11/2024
Since when did Yoda take over as the spell checker in MS Office?
Text says: who is a new student in my lab and will carry on… the spell check has underlined “is a new student in my lab” and suggests “a new student in my lab is”
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Stephen Royle @steveroyle.bsky.social · 22/11/2024
GitHub make a nice butterfly if you add your profile there.
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Stephen Royle @steveroyle.bsky.social · 09/11/2024
Today’s run took me over the 3000 km mark for 2024 (3011 km total) 🎉 To mark the occasion I ran ~12 km to Warwick racecourse. Then ran a 19:34 parkrun (my first at Warwick). For new followers: don’t worry, my insufferable running posts are few and far between.
Strava screenshot
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Stephen Royle @steveroyle.bsky.social · 08/11/2024
Who needs immunofluorescence? Focal adhesions (or cell feet as they were known then) were first observed in this 1975 paper by Abercombie and Dunn doi.org/10.1016/0014... This gem comes from the obituary of Graham Dunn published in J Cell Sci today. doi.org/10.1242/jcs.... 🧪
A still from a cine film down a microscope showing dark patches in two cells that are recognisable to a cell biologist nowadays as focal adhesions. The view is through the eyepieces i.e. circular, as though we are spying on the cells.
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Stephen Royle @steveroyle.bsky.social · 07/11/2024
I like seeing preprints as "works in progress”. Here the authors appeal to any readers who might be able to contribute to their study.
The analysis of barcode yields across different reagents, based on re-exported live-singlets, is also novel. Comparing the performance of the myriad combinations of barcode and sample source is not frequent in the literature, and it behooves the community to have a more complete picture of the advantages and disadvantages of these methods. [note to preprint readers - if you are willing to share non-debarcoded data and a debarcoding key, please reach out! We are hoping to expand the data in the barcode comparison plot in Figure 4! Many thanks to those who already provided data.].
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Stephen Royle @steveroyle.bsky.social · 27/10/2024
Running a sub-90 min half marathon has eluded me until today. Very happy! #running
Strava screenshot showing 1:29:37 for Stratford-upon-Avon’s big half
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Stephen Royle @steveroyle.bsky.social · 18/10/2024
Whatever happened to the "ergastoplasm"? #CellBiology
screenshot of a pubmed search for “ergastoplasm” excluding “endoplasmic reticulum” shows a peak of papers in the 1970s declining to only 2 papers in the last 20 years
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Stephen Royle @steveroyle.bsky.social · 12/09/2024
We present the first INV proteome, with ~600 proteins, including 17 Rabs, SNAREs and many cargoes, suggesting that these vesicles have a variety of functional identities or “flavours". In the lab, we think of the cell as a bag of skittles with the different INVs being different flavours. 2/n
Treemap showing proteins classified by function - the map is multicolouredA picture of multicoloured skittles (candies/sweets)
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Stephen Royle @steveroyle.bsky.social · 25/04/2024
The Company of Biologists is accepting proposals for Workshops to be held in 2026. www.biologists.com/workshops/pr...
Poster describing the call for workshops. It shows scientists discussing lofty ideas in the sunshine. There's a bit of text, but the important thing is the deadline - 19th July 2024.
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Stephen Royle @steveroyle.bsky.social · 07/04/2024
Very pleased to complete A Coventry Way today. Conditions were not great and my pacing was 🫣 but happy to finish (just about) intact. #running
Strava screenshot showing the course (circumnavagates Coventry) and that I ran 66.8 km in 8:11:08My feet in socks and running shoes completely caked in mud
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Stephen Royle @steveroyle.bsky.social · 14/03/2024
I just read that it's now possible to add your verified ORCiD to your GitHub profile. Very easy to do. Erm, verified if you have to look past the fact that I have a split identity between biologists.social/@steveroyle and fosstodon.org/@quantixed
screenshot showing my GitHub profile sidebar now displaying ORCiD
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Stephen Royle @steveroyle.bsky.social · 02/02/2024
Christopher Wren architecture style data distributions in my analysis this morning.
A plot in R which shows many spots assembled by density. The log scaling on the y-axis means that they look like towers on old buildings.
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Stephen Royle @steveroyle.bsky.social · 23/01/2024
I'm all for bees in structural biology papers Source: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Figure from a cryoEM paper showing a protein complex that looks like a flower. Schematic diagram shows a cartoon bee flying into the “petals”, and on the right a closed form of the complex, with the bee not entering the flower.
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