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Willow Coyote-Maestas

@willowcoyote.bsky.social
1.3K followers 655 following 67 posts

Associate Professor at @UCSF_BTS | @HHMINEWS HGF | | Loving membrane proteins every day www.wcoyotelab.com

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Reposted by Willow Coyote-Maestas
Abby Buchwalter @abbybuch.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
It has been a pleasure to watch @jmella.bsky.social lead this project - a technical tour de force that brought saturation mutagenesis to cardiomyocytes for the first time, revealed CM-specific effects of LMNA mutations + new features of lamin structure and quality control.
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Willow Coyote-Maestas @willowcoyote.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Extraordinary work by Jess Mella. In a technical tour de force she got over nearly 20k variants into hipscs to study the effects in an important nuclear envelope protein LMNA. She used it to dive into cell, structure, and human genetics biology. Keep an eye on her and her future is bright!
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Annual Reviews @annualreviews.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
The 2026 volume of the Annual Review of Biomedical Data Science is now available. The most downloaded article so far is "Mechanistic Mutational Scanning to Uncover the Secret Life of Proteins" by @matthewkhoward.bsky.social and @willowcoyote.bsky.social. Read it here bit.ly/3ULlwgT
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Harmit Singh Malik @harmitmalik.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
For a few years the gates were genuinely open before being shut again — a kind of pulse-chase experiment. Even if the movement doesn’t survive this political moment, the scientists who earn tenure and do great work at top universities will prove the point: talent is universal, but opportunity is not
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Harmit Singh Malik @harmitmalik.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
Come be our colleague. I have been in this Division for 27 years (4 as a postdoc and 23 as a PI). It is an amazing place to work, collaborate, and be inspired. If you are applying to be an Assistant or Associate Professor this Fall, don't miss this deadline.
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christine liu / two photon art @christineliu.art · 10/07/2026
I joined the Sohal lab with one major hypothesis: psychedelic drugs can be powerful psychiatric treatments, depending on underlying neurobiology. Indeed, psilocybin restored cognitive flexibility in one circuit model of dysfunction, but not another! Then, we had to find out how! 🧠🍄🧪
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Vikaas Sohal @vikaassohal.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
New preprint led by @christineliu.art! How do psychedelics improve cognitive flexibility? Psilocybin prevents inflexibility caused by aberrant mesocortical error signaling (but not inflexibility due to other mechanisms); this is tied to plasticity of PFC-MD neurons: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
Psilocybin selectively rescues cognitive flexibility impairments caused by aberrant prefrontal error signaling
Psychedelic drugs show remarkable potential for treating psychiatric disorders, but the mechanisms underlying their therapeutic effects remain relatively unknown. Here, we demonstrate that psilocybin ...
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Willow Coyote-Maestas @willowcoyote.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
For the last 5 years, my lab has focused on developing mutational scanning methods and learning how to answer specific questions in protein biology. @matthewkhoward.bsky.social and I wrote a review on experimental decisions and future directions for our nascent field! doi.org/10.1146/annu...
annualreviews.org
Mechanistic Mutational Scanning to Uncover the Secret Life of Proteins
Deep mutational scanning (DMS) has emerged as a transformative tool for dissecting individual protein function and broader cell biology. DMS methods enable comprehensive interrogation of sequence–func...
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Willow Coyote-Maestas @willowcoyote.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
Happy to announce that I received tenure! This is all down to the brilliant team I get to work with every day and my collaborators and supportive colleagues. Now UCSF can’t get rid of me…
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Amir Bitran @amirbitran.bsky.social · 05/07/2026
I am delighted to share that my newest manuscript and the first of my postdoc in the Marqusee and Bustamante labs, “A detailed molecular picture of protein folding during active translation”, is now on the BioRXiv! (1/n) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
A detailed molecular picture of protein folding during active translation
All proteins can begin to fold on the ribosome, and many proteins critically rely on co-translational folding to attain their native conformation. The molecular details underlying this crucial process...
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jp flores (he/him) @jpflores.rbind.io · 07/06/2026
A proposed OMB rule would allow political appointees to override scientific peer review when making federal research funding decisions. For ECRS, this isn’t abstract. It affects training, jobs, and future discoveries. Read more ⬇️ sciencepolitics.org/2026/06/05/w... From us @snapcoalition.org
sciencepolitics.org
What Happens to the Next Generation of Scientists if Politicians, Not Peers, Determine Research Funding - Science Politics
Fewer trainees today will mean fewer scientific discoveries tomorrow.
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Vijay Ramani @vram142.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
Delighted to share our lab's latest (w/ inimitable @genophoria.bsky.social) in final form at @nature.com. Enormous lift by Sean Wang, @palindromephd.bsky.social & @martyyang.bsky.social to address extensive & constructive reviewer comments & see this through. (1/n) www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Pervasive and programmed nucleosome distortion on single chromatin fibres - Nature
An analytical pipeline called Iteratively Defined Lengths of Inaccessibility (IDLI) maps the genome-wide occupancy of a range of nucleosome types and shows that most nucleosomes exhibit programmed ‘di...
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bioRxiv Biophysics @biorxiv-biophys.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
The Phenotypic Landscape of a Circadian Clock www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/20…
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Nicholas Southern @neuroscinikolai.bsky.social · 15/04/2026
1/28 How do you optimize a dynamic protein property that emerges from multiple states? Our finally published paper in @NatureComms takes on one of the hardest problems in protein engineering with phage assisted evolution: evolving allosteric switches🧵
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Stephanie Wankowicz @stephanieaw.bsky.social · 06/04/2026
I'm ecstatic to share that I'm joining the @diffuseproject.bsky.social (diffuse.science) full-time as Scientific Program Director at @asterainstitute.bsky.social .
diffuse.science
The DiffUSE Project
Unlocking Protein Dynamics
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Harmit Singh Malik @harmitmalik.bsky.social · 05/03/2026
Rebecca is starting her lab as a UCSF Sandler fellow in August 2026; folks at #Dros26 interested in host-parasitoid interactions should try to catch her at the meeting to find out about available positions: www.tarnopollab.org/people
tarnopollab.org
People — Tarnopol Lab
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Maitreya Dunham @maitreya.bsky.social · 04/03/2026
Check out the new, improved version of our Mutation Browser preprint. We worked with a team from the Broad including their outreach office, a great summer intern, and the G2P project to add a new browser panel that maps mutations onto yeast protein structures! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
biorxiv.org
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Willow Coyote-Maestas @willowcoyote.bsky.social · 27/02/2026
Congrats @jeromics.bsky.social on getting your facs model out - we literally use it all the time and was so happy to work together with you on it!
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@KayTrue (Sarah L. Keller) @kaytrue.bsky.social · 24/02/2026
Of course, I am over the moon with happiness that @veatchlab.bsky.social won the 2026 Agnes Pockels Award from the @biophysicalsoc.bsky.social. Moreover, TWO students in Sarah's lab won poster awards at the BPS Meeting! What a year for the Veatch Lab! #bps2026
Photo of Lynmarie Thompson, the president of the Biophysical Society, presenting a plaque to Sarah Veatch for winning the 2026 Agnes Pockels Award.
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Willow Coyote-Maestas @willowcoyote.bsky.social · 20/02/2026
A wonderful first for me at the upcoming @biophysicalsoc.bsky.social meeting in SF is having many lab members present! See 6 brilliant graduate students postdocs from the lab present talks and posters on how they are pushing the boundaries of technology and mechanistic membrane protein biology
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Chrystal Starbird @drstarbird.bsky.social · 19/02/2026
If you’re attending #BPS2026, there are several opportunities to hear about ongoing projects in the Starbird lab. Looking forward to seeing everyone at BPS!
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madameprofessor.bsky.social @madameprofessor.bsky.social · 17/02/2026
Awesome seminar today by UCSF's @willowcoyote.bsky.social! He is not afraid to blaze his own trail, redefining paradigms along the way!
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Willow Coyote-Maestas @willowcoyote.bsky.social · 12/02/2026
Excited to share emerging studies in the lab and learn from all the brilliant scientists at uw Madison!
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Martin Kampmann @kampmann.bsky.social · 28/01/2026
Our paper is (finally) out in Cell today! CRISPR screens in iPSC-derived neurons reveal principles of tau proteostasis www.cell.com/cell/fulltex... Great collaborative effort - read more from first author @asamelson.bsky.social below:
cell.com
CRISPR screens in iPSC-derived neurons reveal principles of tau proteostasis
CRISPR screens in iPSC-derived neurons reveal that the E3 ubiquitin ligase CRL5SOCS4 ubiquitinates tau, that CUL5 expression is correlated with resilience in human Alzheimer’s disease, and that electr...
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Dimitri Drekonja, MD, MS @dimitridrekonja.bsky.social · 24/01/2026
Alex Pretti was a colleague at the VA. We hired him to recruit for our trial. He became an ICU nurse- I lover working with him. He was a good kind person who lived to help and these fuckers executed him. White. Hot. Rage.
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🧬Jacob L Steenwyk @jlsteenwyk.bsky.social · 13/11/2025
NEW pub in @science.org 🥳 Is it sponges (panels A & B) or comb jellies (C & D) that root the animal tree of life? For over 15 years, #phylogenomic studies have been divided. We provide new evidence suggesting that... 🔗: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
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Harmit Singh Malik @harmitmalik.bsky.social · 07/11/2025
When people celebrate the individual genius of folks in science, they should also mourn the collective loss of genius of folks who were actively discouraged or disadvantaged from a career in science because of the same person(s)
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Alex Merz 🇺🇸🇨🇦🇺🇦 @merz.bsky.social · 01/11/2025
Zara was one of the best people I've crossed paths with in this career, in this life. A fissure has opened with her departure, and I will miss her terribly.
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Sweta Agrawal @hokuba.bsky.social · 31/10/2025
Zara was an inspiration. We never met in person but became friends through Leading Edge. She zealously advocated for her ideals, but was also passionate about helping others realize why they should too. Her loss is gutting & the world is the worse for it. RIP, I'll do my best to continue the fight.
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Tina Termini @cterminiphd.bsky.social · 31/10/2025
We are all better because of the energy, inspiration, brilliance, and tenacity that Zara was. A bright light, role model, advocate & snarky tweeter... everything I needed in a person when I was navigating dark times when we met in 2021. You will be missed deeply, Zara, but never forgotten ❤️
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Evelyn Strickland @strickland-evelyn.bsky.social · 31/10/2025
Zara was a great inspiration and mentor... Its really sad the excellent often leave us too soon... You will be missed Zara 💕
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Paul Jenkins @pjenkinslab.bsky.social · 31/10/2025
Zara will be missed. Such terrible news.
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eartha mae @endoeartha.bsky.social · 30/10/2025
Zara Weinberg was a brilliant, loving, and beautiful woman. She inspired everyone who she interacted with, and always strived to make the world a better place for everyone. Tho the world is a little less bright today without her, her memory will always be a blessing. She was truly one of the best.
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Chrystal Starbird @drstarbird.bsky.social · 30/10/2025
Truly one of the best. We worked on various initiatives/wrote a paper together, and had the best conference meet ups. She was a bold and tireless advocate for change. Last time we met, we had a great time trying new cuisine and imagining a future that’s so different for trainees than we experienced.
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Willow Coyote-Maestas @willowcoyote.bsky.social · 31/10/2025
Zara Weinberg passed away earlier this week. She joined my lab earlier this year when her postdoc lab formally closed. She was a brilliant scientist, supportive mentor, dear friend, avid music fan, rabid believer in public transit, open science champion, and above all just an amazing human.
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Ruth Huttenhain @rhuttenhain.bsky.social · 29/10/2025
We are #hiring for a Tenure Track Assistant Professor position in the Department of Molecular&Cellular Physiology (med.stanford.edu/mcp.html) at @stanfordmedicine.bsky.social. Please apply or forward the opportunity to anybody who might be interested. facultypositions.stanford.edu/en-us/job/49...
facultypositions.stanford.edu
Stanford | Faculty Positions: Details - Assistant Professor of Molecular and Cellular Physiology
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Camille Moore @camille-moore.bsky.social · 02/10/2025
Today I am so pleased to present our work on how chromatin remodelers affect mesoscale chromatin organization. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
science.org
ATP-dependent remodeling of chromatin condensates reveals distinct mesoscale outcomes
Adenosine triphosphate (ATP)–dependent chromatin remodeling enzymes mobilize nucleosomes, but how such mobilization affects chromatin condensation is unclear. We investigate effects of two major remod...
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Willow Coyote-Maestas @willowcoyote.bsky.social · 08/09/2025
I love writing spontaneous and unsolicited reviews. I would be thrilled folks did it to me too! I think it gets the heart of what we do science for - giving and getting feedback to get closer to the ‘truth’! Otherwise why post a preprint if you don’t want people to read and respond?
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Seth Shipman @seth-shipman.bsky.social · 08/09/2025
Check out MitoScribe in our new preprint led by Linhan Wang: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... It's an analog molecular recorder that uses neutral base edits to the mitochondrial genome to store information about historical signaling in a cell. Single cell resolution at scale (see next post)!
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Joslynn Lee, Ph.D. @theoreticalfun.bsky.social · 26/08/2025
1st day of classes went well for this associate professor! I’ll ride this tenure/promotion wave for another week. I’m teaching a new chemical biology class this semester. Excited to bring computational chemistry topics & hands-on activities in the computer lab. Also still masking this semester!
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Guillaume Diss @guillaumediss.bsky.social · 25/08/2025
Latest pre-print from our lab is out. Great work by @alexbendel.bsky.social and team. Full deep mutational scan of an entire human protein interaction domain family 2M quantitative measurement of protein-protein interaction -> deep learning model to predict PPI from sequence More details 👇
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Alexandra Bendel @alexbendel.bsky.social · 25/08/2025
I am happy to finally share this preprint of my PhD project in @guillaumediss.bsky.social lab at the FMI in Basel. We used ddPCA to map the genetic architecture of the entire human bZIP interaction network. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Thanks to all our co-authors for the great collaboration!
biorxiv.org
The genetic architecture of the human bZIP family
Generative biology holds the promise to transform our ability to design and understand living systems by creating novel proteins, pathways, and organisms with tailored functions that address challenge...
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Joslynn Lee, Ph.D. @theoreticalfun.bsky.social · 13/08/2025
I got to share a bit about Indigenous values in chemistry on this pod! Thanks @nature for the feature and joining some an amazing list of ChangeMakers!
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Tadashi Fukami @fukamit.bsky.social · 06/08/2025
Assistant Professor position in Traditional Ecological Knowledge at Stanford University. Applications due Sept 30, 2025 facultypositions.stanford.edu/en-us/job/49...
facultypositions.stanford.edu
Stanford | Faculty Positions: Details - Assistant Professor in Traditional Ecological Knowledge
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Nature Methods @natmethods.nature.com · 04/08/2025
ProDomino is a machine learning-based method that predicts domain insertion sites and helps guide the engineering of functional multi-domain proteins. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
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Willow Coyote-Maestas @willowcoyote.bsky.social · 04/08/2025
Awesome work from @jingyour.bsky.social, @hjp.bsky.social and a lil bit us! New stats framework for mutational scanswhere we measure multiple phenotypes like expression & activity. Jingyou is able to pull out immediately patterns that took us otherwise weeks to months data digging. Amazing work!
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Willow Coyote-Maestas @willowcoyote.bsky.social · 01/08/2025
So lucky to have the brilliant @jingyour.bsky.social joining the lab as a postdoc! It’s been inspiring collaborating the last couple years and I can’t wait to see the extraordinary things she’ll do :)
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Harold Pimentel @hjp.bsky.social · 22/07/2025
Super proud of my first student, @jingyour.bsky.social! Well done! Looking forward to the amazing work you will do in the future 🥲 bsky.app/profile/jing...
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Jingyou Rao @jingyour.bsky.social · 21/07/2025
Thrilled to share that I just successfully defended my PhD! Thanks to my committee, collaborators, and everyone who’d supported me throughout my seven years at UCLA. A special thank you to my PI Harold for his incredible mentorship! @hjp.bsky.social
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