Philippe Van der Stappen

You like #LLPS? #TeamTomo? #Rubisco? Check out our latest preprint! What a great collaboration this has been!

New to me and I found 2! I love finding successional fungi, fungi growing on fungi. This has to be one of the more unique I've found. I believe these are Asterophora lycoperdoide, or the Powdery Piggyback Mushroom! More ⬇️ #Parasite #FungiFriends #Fungi #Nature #Guttation

I’m very excited to share the first big project from my PhD (my first proper-first, yay!) where we use cryoET and a fun new flavour of CLEM to study the re-organisation of photosynthetic machinery of cyanobacteria growing beyond the red limit of light. doi.org/10.64898/202...

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Struggling to choose a pixel size for your cryo-ET acquisition? Worry not: super-resolution processing can take in situ subtomogram averaging beyond physical Nyquist! We reached 2.8 A loc-res of a ribosome dataset with 4.78 A physical Nyquist limit! Our new preprint 👇: doi.org/10.64898/202...

Shawn Zheng leads Biohub’s work to streamline cryo-electron tomography, which images cells in 3D at near-atomic resolution. His team’s AreTomoLive automates cryoET reconstruction and denoising in real time and cuts processing from months to days. Learn more: sbgrid.org/software/tal...

In their Cell Science at a Glance article and associated poster, @phaips.vd.st, Benjamin Engel @cellarchlab.com & @manondemulder.bsky.social highlight the current insights and future directions of pyrenoid and CO2-concentrating mechanism research. journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/...

Intrigued how #biomolecularcondensates evolve? Want to work with a condensate system that has a global impact? We’re recruiting a 4-year PDRA to explore the evolution of CO2-fixing pyrenoids: www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DTE394/r... Please repost. #pyrenoids #photosynthesis

And your regular reminder of the innumeracy of this metric (a pseudo mean calculated from two different datasets and applied to a non-normal distribution) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Nice @jcellsci.bsky.social "at a glance" review about the convergently evolved organizing principles of pyrenoids, chloroplast compartments that enable diverse algae to supercharge #CO2 fixation. BONUS: It comes with a poster for your wall 🖼️. Great work @phaips.vd.st & @manondemulder.bsky.social 🌊🌾🧪

What even is a pyrenoid? Check it out 👇

🎉 Out today in Cell: the paper I've been looking forward to sharing for a long time 🎉 We used cryo-ET to find a molecular machine nobody knew existed on the surface of a minimal bacterium, and worked out what it does. 🧵(1/7) #TeamTomo #cryoET

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 ..

The PhD and Postdoc application links are now live! Come join me at UNIL to work on deep learning for protein structure, interactions & design. pickybinders.org#open-positions

A wild publishing ride to get here... but finally! (first bioRxiv: January 5th, 2024 🙃) Amazing work from @lorenzlamm.bsky.social and colleagues 🤗 Special thanks to the community who jumped early on the boat, sharing feedback and training data to make MemBrain v2 a reality 🙏🏽

Can we predict the stoichiometry of proteins in a complex from their sequences - fast and accurately? Congratulations to the #ECCB2026 🧬 proceedings paper award 🎉 @daniil-litvinov.bsky.social @ninjani.bsky.social @cellarchlab.com academic.oup.com/bioinformati...

Unsupervised machine-learning identifies latent pyrenoid states linked to mitotic remodeling defects and CO2-dependent growth https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.08.25.746929v1

Remember this? bsky.app/profile/did:... Rigorous visualization of the structure in your high-dimensional data. Fantastic work by @dhdegroot.bsky.social With help of the reviewers of Nat Biotech it is now updated, extended an officially published here: www.nature.com/articles/s41... 1/n

Lateral organization of cytochrome b6f in thylakoid membranes controls photosynthetic electron transfer efficiency www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

As a component of aseptic technique, Bunsen burners do not universally decrease deposition of microbe-containing particles journals.asm.org/doi/full/10.... #jcampubs

Permanent academic position as a Lecturer in cryo-ET open at York. We are looking for someone to lead a research program making the most of the stunning advances occurring in cryo-ET. It's a research and teaching post but with a focus on research in the early years. jobs.york.ac.uk/vacancy/lect...

It’s either that, or In Situ Plus, In Situ Pro, In Situ Ultra, and In Situ Max. With Max reserved strictly for when you put an entire frozen human in the TEM (is anyone working on that yet?)

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 🧪

Why do intrinsically disordered proteins behave so weirdly during SDS-PAGE? This is the question we aim to answer in our recent paper: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

🚀 New preprint 🥳 Fantastic work by our recent PhD graduate Daan ! How are mRNPs remodeled as they exit the nucleus? We identify PAIP1 as a factor that promotes exchange of the nuclear poly(A)-binding protein PABPN1 for cytoplasmic PABPC1, coupling mRNA export to cytoplasmic mRNP maturation.

The artist formerly known as #thatmitoriboguy has now become #thatchlororiboguy Check out some cool tomo from @florentwaltz.bsky.social @phaips.vd.st

And 2 complementary 📜: 1️⃣ Cyanobacterial & vascular plant chlororibos🌿 (by @michaelwebster.bsky.social, with contrib from @sofie-dot-rec.bsky.social, @cellarchlab.com & I): biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.07.03.736309v1 2️⃣ Marchantia chlororibos 🥬: biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.07.14.738477v2

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! 🙏

Regulatory logic of the Chlamydomonas CO2-concentrating mechanism: coupling carbon flux, energy supply, and pyrenoid architecture www.frontiersin.org/journals/pla...

Regulatory logic of the Chlamydomonas CO2-concentrating mechanism: coupling carbon flux, energy supply, and pyrenoid architecture www.frontiersin.org/journals/pla...

Engineering a pyrenoid into crops could boost yields, but testing components in plants takes months. To accelerate engineering, we made Nicotiana benthamiana with hybrid algal Rubisco, enabling the reconstitution of pyrenoid number regulation in a plant! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

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... 🔗

(3/16) What is a pyrenoid? It is a droplet-like compartment inside the chloroplast that packs Rubisco (the enzyme that fixes CO2) together with a CO2 delivery system, raising local CO2 around Rubisco and making carbon fixation faster and more efficient.

(1/16) Nearly two-thirds of ocean carbon fixation flows through a diverse organelle: the pyrenoid. Our new paper maps its 3D architecture in the alga Chlorella and identifies new proteins — expanding the toolkit to engineer this CO2-concentrating machine into crops🧵 #Pyrenoid #CCM #Photosynthesis

4/4 Our data supports the convergent evolution of a biomolecular condensate. We show that the main pyrenoid assembly protein, SUPA1, has minimal sequence conservation to characterized unicellular algal Rubisco-condensing proteins, binding to a different surface region of Rubisco.

3/4 We provide a unique insight into Rubisco condensation. We combine multi-discipline approaches to reveal the helical folding of Rubisco Binding Motifs upon binding, combined with steric hindrance that halves the available binding sites from eight to four.

Excited to share our latest preprint on #PhycologyFriday. We map out the carbon fixation pathway for the first time in a multicellular alga, the green seaweed Ulva, and reveal a unique Rubisco-Linker interaction in the pyrenoid, a chloroplast condensate. Below I summarize some key points. #seaweeds

First glimpses into the molecular kaleidoscope of pyrenoid diversity www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

AF-CALVADOS is now published doi.org/10.1002/pro.... We combine AlphaFold and CALVADOS to simulate flexible multidomain proteins at scale: — Ensembles of >12000 full-length human proteins — Comparison of IDRs alone and I n context for >1500 TFs @sobuelow.bsky.social @kejohansson.bsky.social

Excited to share my paper! 🥳 Today in #Nature we reveal an 8 MDa Hdr electron bifurcating super-assembly in class I methanogens that couples the first and last steps of hydrogenotrophic methanogenesis. A lineage-specific adaptation to anaerobic niches. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Tired of AI-generated figures? I asked our talented scientific illustrator Manon Zuurmond to draw some of the instruments and lab equipment we missed in NIH's otherwise fantastic BioArt resource. First batch now available as CC BY. Free for everyone to use in publications: github.com/Center-for-P...

The algal pyrenoid turbocharges global CO2 fixation. Central to its function are specialized membranes that deliver CO2. We discovered that the protein RBMP2 makes these membranes—and found that the mysterious minitubules appear to enhance CO₂ delivery! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Mature plant chloroplasts form reversible gyroid cubic membranes www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

New Assistant (tenure-track) or Associate Professor position in Climate #Biophysics! Join our international research community to explore fundamental molecular mechanisms underlying climate-relevant biological processes. Apply by 7 Sept 2026! www.biozentrum.unibas.ch/de/open-posi...

A versatile tool for gene editing in the diatom Thalassiosira pseudonana academic.oup.com/plphys/artic... @plantphys.bsky.social

From v0.2.0 MissAlignment now has an inference mode where you can apply the trained models from one dataset to a new dataset to skip training time. I haven't tested it extensively, so double check if the results look decent 😉 The program calls changed slightly, see here: github.com/warpem/miss-...

I will be hiring at all levels so if you are interested and want to learn more, please get in touch! 📻 ❄️ 🔬 🦠 🧬 #cilia #cryoet #proteomics #exm #protistsonsky

Happy to finally share that I will be starting my independent group at the @fmiscience.bsky.social in Feb 2027 in a vibrant new environment. We will use integrative in situ structural cell biology methods to investigate ciliary structure and dynamics in several model (and non-model 👀) systems!!